T60p Volume Hotkeys on certain linux distros

[dray]

Hello,

Apologies if this has been asked before, after endless googling i decided i'd ask here - none of what i have read seem to offer a solution, or if they do, not one i can understand...

Having previously briefly used linux 5 or 6 years ago and being forced to use a mac for work since, i decided i would give linux another whirl on my old T60p. I've tried a handful of distros and finally settled on Chakra for the pure KDE experience. However, first thing i noticed was the volume hotkeys had no effect whatsoever. What is baffling me is that on openSUSE, they worked out of the box.

From reading thinkwiki article on thinkpad_acpi - it should just work without any tinkering, but thats not the case. Ive found what i thought was a workaround, "echo enable,0xffffffff >/proc/acpi/ibm/hotkey" - until i read the following -

One important difference from ibm-acpi for those who wish to enable all possible hot keys, is that thinkpad-acpi automatically enables them. One should not need to do anything to get the best possible thinkpad-acpi configuration for his ThinkPad (as long as he is using the latest thinkpad-acpi).
In particular, old documentation that tells you to "echo enable,0xffffffff >/proc/acpi/ibm/hotkey", or to give thinkpad-acpi any hotkey= module parameters to enable hot keys by default, is likely incorrect.

Is there anyone that has encountered the same problem, and do they know the correct way to resolve this? What baffles me is that it works in some other select distros and others it doesnt - so is there a config file or module that needs loading, or something else entirely?

Appreciate any help!