Description of Problem: The i8k driver being currenty shipped is version 1.7. It does not support the handle_buttons option, which is present in the current version (1.13), available from http://people.debian.org/~dz/i8k/ as part of i8kutils.
I just noticed that the current kernel Rawhide kernel (2.4.20-0.pp.9) comes with version 1.13 of i8k.c. I'm not sure when the upgrade really occurred, so I'm changing resolution to RAWHIDE. You can change it to CURRENTRELEASE if you can determine this was fixed in 8.0 (unfortunately I can't). Thanks.