DSDT (Differentiated System Description Table) is in the BIOS and this is where the OS looks for hardware and configuration info. It sometimes needs to be adjusted, in particular regarding ACPI. 67GTA has written a comprehensive tutorial for Ubuntu and Linux Mint: “HOWTO Fix A Buggy DSDT File” which currently works only up to Jaunty 9.04 release. I’m not sure I understand all the details, but reading through the thread, members seem to be able to fix a large range of ACPI related issues.
Credits to unutbu who suggested the tutorial. As unutbu puts it:
It is kind of amazing (at least to me) that fixing one file can solve such a variety of problems.