Solution for Fan Problems in Ubuntu Running on a Toshiba Laptop

I have been running Ubuntu on my Toshiba Satellite laptop since I bought it. One pesky problem I have is that the fans run full speed. Here is the solution I found that fixes this problem for me.

After a lot of searching I found that I needed to add the acpi_osi kernel boot parameter in order to make the fans work properly. First, I tried it temporarily by manually editing the boot parameters in grub.
-Boot to the grub menu
-Use the arrow keys to select the default Ubuntu entry (usually the first one)
-Press "e" to edit the boot parameters
-Arrow down to the line that begins with: linux /boot...
-Go to the end of this line and add a space and then add: acpi_osi="Linux"
-Press CTRL-X to boot

The above change only lasts for the current session. The change is lost on a reboot.

If this works, we can make this change permanent.
-Use your text editor of choice to open /etc/default/grub. You will need to run it with (gk)sudo, e.g.
sudo vi /etc/default/grub
-Look for the line beginning with GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT
-At the end of the line add: acpi_osi=\"Linux\" (note that since the parameters after the equals sign are enclosed in quotes, we need to escape the quotes around "Linux" with backslashes)
-The line should look similar to this: GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash acpi_osi=\"Linux\""
-Generate a new grub config file:
sudo update-grub

Now the default Ubuntu boot selection will include the change and hopefully the fans will work properly.