Comment 12 for bug 89269

For those still reading this bug report, I would like to add my $0.02 to Andrea's suggestions. It's always been a bit of a mystery to me why Ubuntu handles laptop mode the way it does. All of the functionality (enabling/disabling based on battery/ac power, based on lid switch, hdparm settings handling etc.) has been present in laptop mode tools from the get-go. The reason for putting separate functionality in acpi-support to steer laptop-mode-tools has never been clear to me. And especially the choice of including the full laptop mode config file for which lots of the options simply don't work (because of the acpi-support override), without even a single note, has always been a mystery -- and one of the "crime scene investigation" types, as far as I'm concerned.

FWIW, in Debian I solved this by removing the acpi-support logic for laptop mode tools completely (I maintain the downstream acpi-support package in Debian). Nobody has ever complained about this, or asked for it to be re-added.

Disclaimer: I am also the maintainer of laptop-mode-tools, the Debian package as well as the "true" upstream. That probably makes me biased. :-)