Comment 22 for bug 280518

From lspci:

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller
[8086:2a42] (rev 07)
 Subsystem: Gateway 2000 Device [107b:0390]
 Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
 Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx-
 Latency: 0
 Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 2298
 Region 0: Memory at f0000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
 Region 2: Memory at d0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
 Region 4: I/O ports at 1800 [size=8]
 Capabilities: <access denied>

So this is not an nvidia chip (as expected), so the problem is unrelated to bug #277589.

And the lshal output shows a laptop_panel device is present and recognized, so it's also not bug #345531.

And you've said that the brightness applet also doesn't work (including in the Ubuntu liveCD), so it's not a hotkey issue.

I'll poke around in the lshal output a bit more, but it looks like this might be a kernel problem.