> I have a year-old laptop with a pentium 4, running Debian testing with > kernel 2.6.6. After an initial 5 minutes of calm after booting, the > cooling fan comes on and remains on in a state of relatively high > activity; it is very noisy). I don't know about the activity, but to reduce the noise, pop off the fan blades, apply a drop or two of oil, and replace the blades. This worked wonders for me.