I've been using thinkfan for a year now. I started using it because my
Thinkpad's fan was spinning at a near max speed all the time.
I was lucky that the (disabled) default values in the thinkfan configuration
are for the same series as my laptop, except mine has a weaker passively
cooled graphics chip. I played around with the the temperature points a bit
until it felt comfortable to me.
In the summer I'll sometimes do a manual override of the speed level if it
starts feeling too hot or if I'm doing something really intensive.
Some commands that might be useful:
sensors
It will tell you the temperature of various components and your fan speed.
cat /proc/acpi/ibm/fan
I'm not sure if the "ibm" part is different for non-IBM/Lenovo, but it shows
you your fan speed and level.
sudo -s; echo "level X" > /proc/acpi/ibm/fan
Where X is a value listed by the previous command. This way you can override
the fan speed temporarily.
(It won't run with just sudo, I have to switch to a root shell.)
My Thinkpad is a ~2007 model and it clearly hasn't been killed yet :).
