Question

Everyone saying that tpb is preventing CPU from saving power and shouldn't be used but it is the only solution for Thinkpads I know that shows OSD for volume keys. hotkey-setup that came with Ubuntu Jaunty can't even intercept those keys. But is there a better alternative, that is good enough with CPU sleeping states and can show OSD?

Answer 1

The modern equivalent is hald. When hald is running you can:

1. Get or Set properites
2. Find device objects by property matching or by capability matching
3. List all the hal devices

Try:

lshal | grep input

or

hal-find-by-capability --capability input | xargs -n1 lshal -u

for a list of all the input devices & buttons known to hald

Update I'm using Gnome. If you're running KDE, you can try kcontrol. Refer to this HowTo - it's a bit dated. kcontrol is kde3, systemsettings in kde4. I think the nvram group setting are still applicable.

Answer 2

I don't have a ThinkPad to try these on, but googling for "thinkpad buttons linux" gave me these two promising links:
1. http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/How%5Fto%5Fget%5Fspecial%5Fkeys%5Fto%5Fwork
2. http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/ThinkPad%5FButton

Answer 3

OneSwarm is the modern alternative to The Pirate Bay :)