Brightness control Ubuntu 16.04

Question

I recently switched from Windows 10 to Ubuntu 16.04 and have been doing okay so far. One of my problems, though, is that I have to go to system settings to switch the brightness of the screen. I have looked up many solutions, but I'm not sure which one is the simplest, hopefully someone can teach me a way to have a keyboard shortcut for this.

I have an Asus Zenbook UX303L (not sure if matters).

I have tried editing in the grub GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash" to:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash acpi_osi="
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="splash quiet acpi_osi='!Windows 2012'"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash acpi_osi=Linux"

To no success, this actually makes me unable to change the brightness through system settings.

acpi_osi= boot parameter should enable Fn+F5 and F6 keys. Also you may need to et brightness control to Intel. There is lots of guides. — Pilot6, Oct 16 '16 at 17:48
Yes I did, every time I changed it i would update the grub and restart the computer — pggodoy, Oct 17 '16 at 14:11

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 17 '16 at 20:16

0

This is unrelated to your GRUB issue, but it does solve your having to go into the settings to change the brightness problem.

I did a Google search related to your topic and found this page:

http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2013/04/brightness-control-ubuntu

After installing this and testing it myself, less the keyboard feature, I can say it does work, minus a few quirks. (Scroll wheeling the icon messed the program up for me)

If you do not know how to install PPAs, you do it by opening up Settings, hitting Software & Updates, clicking Other Software, and clicking Add.

To install packages, you can either use apt-get or my preferred method, Synaptic.

answered Oct 17 '16 at 20:16

keyboard4238

31
1

Thanks! I also looked at that solution but I would like to make it work as intended. In the meantime I'm using this solution http://askubuntu.com/questions/174770/is-there-a-way-to-set-a-hotkey-to-change-screen-brightness – pggodoy Oct 18 '16 at 14:16
I can't use the fn+F5/F6 combo but it works (trying to get use to the askubuntu format) – pggodoy Oct 18 '16 at 14:18

score 0 · Answer 2 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:23

I was having the same problem with the brightness on my Gateway laptop (with integrated Intel graphics) and found this answer.

Instead of modifying the acpi_osi= value, what worked for me was to add acpi_backlight=vendor to the end of that command in "/etc/default/grub"

I had previously added acpi_osi=Linux to that line to solve the same issue in a previous version of Ubuntu (before upgrading to 16.04 LTS), so my full (working) line reads like this:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash acpi_osi=Linux acpi_backlight=vendor"

Of course, after editing that file, it's necessary to save the changes, then run sudo update-grub and restart.

After doing this, my keyboard shortcuts for brightness are working again.

Brightness control Ubuntu 16.04

2 Answers2