Confirm on a Thinkpad T43p. Booting with the noacpi option still has this problem.
A workaround (to avoid going insane...) is to open the Power Mgmt preferences from gnome-control-center, and under your current setup (ie AC power), slide the brightness slider all the way up to 100%, then lower it back down to 95%. Close g-c-c, and it will stay at 95% brightness for the rest of the day. However, if you touch the brightness keys at all, it falls back to only the two lowest settings, unless you open g-c-c and do that over again. -- [Feisty] Thinkpad R51 LCD brightness control cycles between lowest settings only https://launchpad.net/bugs/81407 -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs