Adjusting Screen brightness

[Colin23erk]

On the Xfce Desktop  PANEL" there an Option to Add a BRIGHTNESS PLUGIN . It works as expected except the SLIDER does not change the brightness. There are Brightness Function Keys on the keyboard that can move the slider display but have no effect on brightness .

Has anyone had the same problem or it would be useful to know if you can control the brightness on yours OK.

My PC is a Samsung NC 110 Netbook with an Integrated Intel Video Chip

Colin

[Scott(0)]

A quick Google of "xubuntu 14.04 brightness" shows this is clearly an issue.


This link looks promising.

http://itsfoss.com/fix-brightness-ubuntu-1310/

or

Results from Googling "xubuntu 14.04 brightness"

https://www.google.com/#q=xubuntu+14.04+brightness


If you get it fixed write back and let us know what worked.  ~Scott

[Reticent]

This is just one of many remedies needed throughout the decades to cope with hardware vendor pranks. Maybe it will suggest a productive direction of inquiry.

[Colin23erk]

Hi Scott
Thanks for the ideas . had looked at  http://itsfoss.com/fix-brightness-ubuntu-1310/
but its a Command solution and fails to respond at the Terminal stage for me . That opens a new can of worms for me for me to sort.

That was why I was looking for someone who had experience of using the Brightness Control . Does it work OK for them or not and  have they found a working solution for  Lite .

Colin

[Colin23erk]

Hi Scott
As you say its a old Problem .

I understand the developers time is limited and this problem may not be considered important and so does not get fixed . The downside it leads to a lot of frustrated users wasting time and effort trying to fix it themselves .
This can have a negative impact on the take up of Ubutu and its derivatives because they are deemed not fit for purpose for the non tech user who wants it to work out of the box  .


I found this --- but Lite does not have Gedit installed .  Should I be able to use the "Simple Text Editor " ad how do I get the equivalent of( sudo gedit /etc/default/grub)

Well my friends have been facing brightness problem in Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin. And every one were facing and asking me to help me out with it. So, I viewed all over the Internet and helped them out. I helped with it myself too in Dell XPS 13. And for friends Acer Aspire, HP Pavilion DV6. So it might work on most of all the PCs.

My friends were just trying the xrand solution that just decreases the Contrast which had no effect on the power consumption. So, this solution was the most to be kept. I am feeling quite when the Fn(Function key) and the Brightness Up and Down are working great. You can follow up the procedure that I have kept in an easy steps.

Open terminal ( Ctrl+Alt+T ) and type:

sudo gedit /etc/default/grub

You will find this line in the new opened window:


1
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"
Change it to:


1
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash acpi_backlight=vendor"
Save and close the window and type this in the terminal:

sudo update-grub

This will update your grub and while rebooting your PC, it will set an extra parameter on the grub menu during boot. This problem might have occur on due to the upgrade on kernel.

Enjoy the power saving system.

[gold_finger]

I found this --- but Lite does not have Gedit installed .  Should I be able to use the "Simple Text Editor " ad how do I get the equivalent of( sudo gedit /etc/default/grub)

Yes.

Gedit happens to be the text editor used in those instructions, but any text editor can be substituted.  The real name of the "Simple Text Editor" used in Linux Lite is "leafpad".  So just substitute "leafpad" wherever you see "gedit" in the instructions.

Instructions will work as shown with that substitution, but technically you should use "gksu" or "gksudo" in place of "sudo" when opening a GUI program from the terminal as root.

So, to open that grub file in leafpad:

Code:

gksu leafpad /etc/default/grub

Then just follow instructions to edit the file with changes; save the file; then close leafpad.

Once leafpad is closed, the prompt will return to the terminal and you can then run:

Code:

sudo update-grub

[Colin23erk]

Hi
No so good news , Good news  and Bad News

Tried it on Lite 2 no 2 -- did not work

Changed  to  lite 2 no 1 --- worked ok with half brightness after each boot

Bad  news  is that cannot boot to no 2  ( think it is expecting a name ?)

Think it is a Grub Problem .

Recently when I opt to use Lite 2 No 2 there is a lot of commands running before Lite Boots -- I was going to ask if it was normal behaviour. I have  2 x Linux-Lites 2 and Win7 in the boot list .

I was planning to completely wipe the Windows Boot Partition  -- !st reinstall / repair the Win7 Boot list and then use Easy BCD to add the Lites .
I have also got Grub Customiser installed on my Lites.

Have you any better thoughts

Colin

[gold_finger]

My turn for "Good News" -- "Bad News".

Good News:
My Toshiba laptop has never had backlight function working in any Linux I've had on it.  BUT ... I didn't care and never bothered trying to fix it....  Until today with you, Colin23erk, being just one of many recent posts I've read complaining about it being the inspiration for me to try running one of the fixes that gets recommended.

I ran procedure shown here and it worked -- my backlighting now functions.  (I still don't really care, but at least I know procedure works.)

My Toshiba has an AMD graphics card.  I don't know if doing same procedure will work with your Intel card.  You can try and see.  If doesn't work, just change file back to what it was to start with.

Another solution is the one that Scott(0) pointed you to before:  http://itsfoss.com/fix-brightness-ubuntu-1310/.  I can't test that -- don't have an Intel machine -- but that poster seems pretty confident in it and it looks like something that would work.


Bad News:
I haven't the slightest idea what you were talking about in the entire last post.  What are all of the references to "Lite 2 no 2" and "Lite 2 no 1"?  I don't know what you mean.

Did you try making changes to that grub file?  If so, did you run sudo update-grub after changing the file?

Can you open a terminal and post back here with the output from these three commands please:

Code:

cat /etc/default/grub
cat /proc/cmdline
ls /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/

I'm guessing that Scott(0)'s posted link has the solution for you since you have Intel graphics.  I don't know what part you got stuck on when trying that, but we can guide you through that if you need help.  First post back with above.  The last command will show something we need to know before guiding you through that link.

[Colin23erk]

Sorry Folks - I can confuse the best of people .

I will try again

I use Linux-Lite 2.0    I have it installed twice on separate Partitions  alongside the original Win 7  and Dual Boot.

I tried the brightness fix on one (new) install and it did not work
so I tried it on the (old )install and it worked .
But now when I try to boot to the (new) install it will not boot
All I get is " Error file name expected "--

Hope this is clearer .
My immediate problem is to boot to the new install so I can try to see if the fix now works . I expect if I can get a clean install of Grub I will be able to .

Colin

[Colin23erk]

Hi Scott

Did what you asked

Code:

colin@colin-NC110:~$ cat /etc/default/grub
# If you change this file, run 'update-grub' afterwards to update
# /boot/grub/grub.cfg.
# For full documentation of the options in this file, see:
#   info -f grub -n 'Simple configuration'

GRUB_DEFAULT="0"
#GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT="0"
GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT_QUIET="true"
GRUB_TIMEOUT="10"
GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR="`lsb_release -d 2> /dev/null || echo Debian`"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash acpi_backlight=vendor"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="acpi_osi=Linux"

# Uncomment to enable BadRAM filtering, modify to suit your needs
# This works with Linux (no patch required) and with any kernel that obtains
# the memory map information from GRUB (GNU Mach, kernel of FreeBSD ...)
#GRUB_BADRAM="0x01234567,0xfefefefe,0x89abcdef,0xefefefef"

# Uncomment to disable graphical terminal (grub-pc only)
#GRUB_TERMINAL="console"

# The resolution used on graphical terminal
# note that you can use only modes which your graphic card supports via VBE
# you can see them in real GRUB with the command `vbeinfo'
#GRUB_GFXMODE="640x480"

# Uncomment if you don't want GRUB to pass "root=UUID=xxx" parameter to Linux
#GRUB_DISABLE_LINUX_UUID="true"

# Uncomment to disable generation of recovery mode menu entries
#GRUB_DISABLE_RECOVERY="true"

# Uncomment to get a beep at grub start
#GRUB_INIT_TUNE="480 440 1"

colin@colin-NC110:~$ cat /proc/cmdline
BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-3.13.0-24-generic root=UUID=89f52e91-ebb5-49d5-930e-baf697c2457c ro acpi_osi=Linux quiet splash acpi_backlight=vendor vt.handoff=7

colin@colin-NC110:~$ ls /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/
10-evdev.conf         11-evdev-trackpoint.conf  50-vmmouse.conf
10-quirks.conf        20-intel.conf             50-wacom.conf
11-evdev-quirks.conf  50-synaptics.conf         51-synaptics-quirks.conf
colin@colin-NC110:~$