Comment 99 for bug 12637

This is weird. I have a dual boot with Windows XP. I have not booted Win XP for almost one month. Today I used it, just to check compatibility between an Open Office file and MS Word. Power off, reboot to Ubuntu: the screen is bright since the beginning of the boot process (Asus splash, grub, Ubuntu splash, etc.). Shutdown and boot again: everything is still bright. I activate a virtual console and go back to gnome: bright screen. MPlayer: bright. This is very hard to understand. ("Yes! Bill Gates made the miracle!!!" -- gosh: could not be worse than that.) A new test: I run acpi_listen before loading mplayer and _no acpi codes_ are being sent any more when I run mplayer (when the screen went dim, acpi codes were sent every time mplayer started).
Windows has certainly not fixed a bug in the Linux kernel. If running mplayer resulted in some weird acpi codes being sent, and (2) these codes are not sent any more, and (3) the kernel is the same, the only thing I can think of is that some kind of bios flag has been switched on or off by WinXP. Some idiosyncratic feature of my laptop that is probably hidden to the Linux developers and probably open to Microsoft.
The conclusion I am inclined to draw is that it is high time for the Linux community to find effective ways for pressing on the manufacturers. Something like boycotting especially hostile manufacturers or explicitly and strongly recommending manufacturers that produce Linux drivers and Linux friendly machines.