I finally got CPU frequency scaling working in Ubuntu on my laptop. I’d given it up for lost a while back, but this tutorial I happened to stumble onto worked. Huzzah.
…This is really something that could be set up by default. A bit of Python to parse the output of cat /proc/cpuinfo and modprobe the appropriate modules seems like a fairly trivial task. If not at initial installation, then as a wizard in a control panel or something.
Interesting, thanks!