Screen

If the screen turns blank during boot ( Debian bug #712594 ), disable KMS by booting with kernel parameter radeon.modeset=0 . To disable KMS permanently, edit the file /etc/modprobe.d/radeon-kms.conf and replace the line options radeon modeset=1 with options radeon modeset=0 .

To enable high resolution (1400×1050, 16bit colors), boot with kernel parameter vga=837 . To enable high resolution permanently, edit the file /etc/default/grub and replace the line GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet" with GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet vga=837" .

Suspend / Resume

With a ATI Radeon Mobility X1400 graphics card, using s2ram without options results in graphical corruption. To prevent corruption, switch to a text terminal ( chvt 1 ) and invoke s2ram with the -m option to set VBE mode after resume ( s2ram -a3 -f -m ).

Fan

If the laptop runs too hot, load the thinkpad_acpi module with fan control enabled ( modprobe thinkpad_acpi 'fan_control=1' ), then disable the fan speed limit ( echo level disengaged | sudo tee /proc/acpi/ibm/fan ). To enable fan control permanently, create a file /etc/modprobe.d/thinkpad-acpi.conf containing the line options thinkpad_acpi fan_control=1 .