[Bug 61822] IBM Thinkpad volume keys handled wrong and made partly unusable

[Mika Fischer]

Public bug reported:

Hi!

This is related to Bug #51537.

My IBM Thinkpad (and all other thinkpads that I know of) have three
special volume contol keys: "volume up", "volume down" and "mute". These
keys are directly wired to the sound hardware, they need *no* software
support to work.

In Kubuntu edgy pressing the volume keys changes the volume as usual but
*additionally* changes the volume of the software mixer.

This is very unfortunate because: 1) I lose flexibility, 2) The volume
jumps are now very large. 3) Changing the volume via the software mixer
applet does not change the hardware volume, so the two come out of sync
making matters even mor confusing.

But the worst thing is the mute button. It is special in that it always
*mutes*. Tu unmute you have to press one of the other buttons.

But because kmilo (or whatever) also mutes the software mixer and this
one expects an "unmute" event, I can not get my sound back unless I
manually go to the software mixer and unmute the Master channel.

This situation is very unfortunate. I'm not opposed to *displaying* the
current status of the *hardware* volume keys but I'd much rather have
kmilo leave the software mixer alone for models where the volume is
controlled in hardware (like all IBM laptops I know of).

** Affects: kdeutils (Ubuntu)
     Importance: Untriaged
         Status: Unconfirmed

-- 
IBM Thinkpad volume keys handled wrong and made partly unusable
https://launchpad.net/bugs/61822