Adjusting brightness on Dell Vostro 3500 won't work

Question

On a fresh install of Ubuntu 11.04, running Unity, I can't adjust the brightness via Fn+Up/Down. The brightness panel will show, and increase/decrease accordingly, but the actual brightness never changes.

This is an issue I also had on 10.04. I used to fix this by adding this line

Option "RegistryDwords" "EnableBrightnessControl=1"

to my /etc/Xorg/xorg.conf in Section "Device". However it seems this is not working anymore. I also noticed the config file is much smaller that what I remember. Here is the whole file:

Section "Device"
Identifier      "Default Device"
    Option  "NoLogo"        "True"
    Option  "RegistryDwords"        "EnableBrightnessControl=1" 
EndSection

Should I use this line somewhere else ? or is there something else to fix ?

For reference, here is the original issue on 10.04: https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-video-nv/+question/109012

Did you solve the problem? I've got the same on my 3500... – Mateusz May 14 '11 at 16:08 — Mateusz, May 14 '11 at 16:08
No, not solved. I'll post the answer if I find it. – PowerKiKi May 15 '11 at 11:06 — PowerKiKi, May 15 '11 at 11:06

score 4 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:24

4

i have same problem on dell vostro 3500 and solution from this question helped me to fix brightness bug: Screen brightness not changing on Acer 5742 notebook

The complete solution is:

edit /etc/Xorg/xorg.conf to add the following line in Section "Device":
```
Option "RegistryDwords" "EnableBrightnessControl=1"
```
edit /etc/default/grub to change the line into:
```
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="acpi_osi=Linux"
```
run the command:
```
sudo update-grub
```
reboot

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:24

Community

1

answered May 18 '11 at 16:43

Novarg

88

It worked for me, however I had to re-add the line in my xorg.conf as described in the OP. Thank to everybody involved in this answer ;-) – PowerKiKi May 18 '11 at 21:39
It's still working for Ubuntu 11.10 – PowerKiKi Nov 15 '11 at 01:06
It also works for Ubuntu 12.04 (Dell Inspiron 17R 7720; used "acpi_osi=" instead though but still worked) – Patelify Dec 27 '12 at 04:12
Still working on 13.04 with one difference. There is no xorg.conf by default. To create one stop Xorg and run from root following commands: X -configure and then cp /root/xorg.conf.new /etc/X11/xorg.conf – Novarg Jun 16 '13 at 13:03

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered May 14 '11 at 16:21

0

I believe you need to install Nvidia blacklight driver (nvidia-bl-dkms). The package itself has been developed for MacBooks, but they use same Nvidia model – G310M.

answered May 14 '11 at 16:21

vartec

6,975

Sounds like a good idea, but unfortunately it didn't help at all, even after a reboot. Another guy has similar result: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=10817972 – PowerKiKi May 15 '11 at 11:05

Adjusting brightness on Dell Vostro 3500 won't work

2 Answers2