OK, after blacklisting the thinkpad_acpi module I now get 16 levels with the brightness keys in X via xfpm.
However, now in addition to not being able to adjust brightness in a text console, I cannot turn off my bluetooth radio.
It seems that the kernel ACPI handles things properly, which is why I got the correct behavior in text console with my stock setup. However, for some reason in under X, brightness adjustments are being invoked in both ACPI video and thinkpad_acpi if they are enabled. I recall that with the old xfpm in XFCE 4.6 I had only 8 brightness levels in the OSD.
So it seems that the situation is not as simple as ACPI and RandR making the same adjustments.
OK, after blacklisting the thinkpad_acpi module I now get 16 levels with the brightness keys in X via xfpm.
However, now in addition to not being able to adjust brightness in a text console, I cannot turn off my bluetooth radio.
It seems that the kernel ACPI handles things properly, which is why I got the correct behavior in text console with my stock setup. However, for some reason in under X, brightness adjustments are being invoked in both ACPI video and thinkpad_acpi if they are enabled. I recall that with the old xfpm in XFCE 4.6 I had only 8 brightness levels in the OSD.
So it seems that the situation is not as simple as ACPI and RandR making the same adjustments.