People're surprised Linux isn't popular on desktop, and here am I setting my screen brightness from the terminal using xbacklight, simply because there's no other way 😠

Yes, I tried all the GRUB kernel arguments without success.

@DGApps I'm a rather pragmatic person: I use whatever does the job the best. Linux is great for development, but it will never become popular if such a trivial thing as setting brightness requires additional software and terminal usage.

Well if you don't use any keyboard shortcuts it's not Gnu/Linux fault you know oO by the way xbaclight is absolutely not the only option to change screen brightness.

I use i3wm and simply created a shortcut to do so in like less than two minutes.

@Celes I would if they worked
@wildcard is it permanent? Whenever I restart my computer the changes are gone.

@620hun You have to add the shortcuts to your i3wm config file, which is permanent

Well in mint you can just do it from your panel or the same keyboard shortcut as on Windows 10

And here we have Problem 2: open source.

1 Problem
2994 Solutions
1 undocumented shitthing you need

@simo002m Doesn't work. That's my problem. The GUI indicator shows up and responds to my changes, but the screen brightness doesn't change at all.

"Desktop"

You mean laptop. Blame the laptop manufacturers for all developing shitty non-standard keyboards with retarded hotkey combinations.

@bittersweet No, I mean desktop. Also, it's a standard ACPI message that sucessfully triggers the GUI response without changing the screen brightness.

@demiko I was referring to desktop as in desktop OS. But the problem is on my laptop.

> Desktop
> Laptop
> Desktop
> Laptop
> I mean desktop OS on a laptop

This thread is a train wreck. 😞😧

@Ashkin Train wreck? Are trains desktops or laptops? They're mobile, but need to be hooked up with a wire to work...

@Ashkin It's very simple:

My rant consists of two parts. Firstly, I state that Linux is doing poorly on desktop (https://netmarketshare.com/operatin...). Secondly, I basically say that it's not surprising when you have to set your laptop's screen brightness via the terminal.

OSs can be divided into a few major groups: desktop, server, and embedded. Which one do people tend to have on their laptop? A desktop OS, because desktop and laptop hardware is more or less identical.

@620hun just one more thing, desktop environment / window manager, are not part of the OS. Which means that you're complaining about the window manager you use, not Linux itself.

Well let us know which solution you used in the end ^^

@Celes It's a kernel bug

It's such a common problem that there's a whole entry for it: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/...

@620hun if it was a kernel bug x backlight wouldn't work. Even write inside /sys/class/acpi_video/brightness wouldn't work.

We still didn't know what you are using exactly. Tell us which software you're using and we'll be able to help ^^

@Celes I read it somewhere that it was a kernel bug.

This is my config: https://gist.github.com/anonymous/...

@620hun it can be the kernel that Ubuntu built which got some problems with graphics drivers. Did you try another distrib, just with usb?

@Celes What distro do you recommend?

@620hun so your x backlight is ok, and you got some problems register keyboard shortcuts. But you tried a gui software which wasn't working?

Do you want some shortcuts or do you want a gui? Seems like you want to tell your computer to start with a specific brightness level right?

@620hun manjaro for standard users, it allow you to choose between a lot of windows manager ^^ but I don't think that's the kernel version the real problem. Maybe some config missing, because graphics card are the dark side of linux.

With your laptop you could have, a full intel config, a full nvidia config, a bumblebee​ config or maybe a prime config x)

@Celes I set the brightness using Fn+Up/down, but on Mint the brightness doesn't change. I get the expected GUI reponse showing what it SHOULD look like, but nothing actually happens. If I set volume using Fn+R/L that works fine. So the system does receive the ACPI commands, the error is somehwere later in the chain.

@Celes That config gist will tell you what is what, it's a mixture of Intel and Nvidia :P

@620hun I did see your gist, that's why I said 4 config was possible. I don't know what xorg config Ubuntu give you ^^

@620hun I just checked and gnome store the config inside a dconf binary database xD use dconf-editor app to read the database inside ~/. config/dconf/user and let's see what is the command that your shortcuts trigger

If a backend app works like xbacklight, that means the desktop environment UI will also work as that (or its underlying calls) is what it uses. Otherwise your DE is bugged. Also keyboard shortcuts are wrong, either choose your keyboard in settings or bind the key to xbacklight as last resort.

Personally feel most the bugs people encounter are from the collection of gnome-based DEs. As there is only really 1 KDE based one, it seems to have less issues and is more focused.

These are all things that wouldn't be possible on Windows in this situation. Example: 2009 mbp in bootcamp. Without NVIDIA driver (unavailable for win10), you cannot change brightness at all on windows, period.

You definitely do not know how to use linux.

I personally consider it a massive advantage that Linux has over Windows that you can make an adjustment like that with a command. That means you can write whatever you want, in whatever language you want, to accomplish it however you want. The same simplicity and accessibility cannot be said of Windows.

@JMente you sound like an Apple engineer @bahua maybe I wasn't clear: it's not working the way it was meant by developers to work. I get GUI response: i.e. The brightness icon shows up, the slider changes value but the screen brightness doesn't change

@JMente it's like saying that you can't drive if your car's headlights don't turn on despite the headlight indicator being lit up

I agree with the other comments. It sounds like a WM issue.

I'll try with another distro when I get home

@Celes it works on Manjaro out of the box, exactly how it should but doesn't using Mint

@Celes Just to clarify: this isn't a shortcut. It's an ACPI message that has nothing to with me. It should work out of the box, exactly how it works on Manjaro and Windows.

Despite having the most users, Ubuntu/Mint has the most issues with default settings at my work too. Arch and it's variants seem to have most sane set up and 'just work'.

Temporary workaround: I made custom shortcuts for xbacklight. Better than eye strain after all.

For me, all of my servers and other devices run Linux.

However, for development and gaming, I use Windows 10 as my primary OS. (I'm open to development on Linux, I've just never really tried it.)

The most painful thing is switching from Windows to a Linux Server environment (Ubuntu server) and trying to mount a drive for the first time.

Dead simple after the first time, can be hell without a guide

Although I am deffo not going to invalidate your anger, there is a pretty good reason that linux isn't that popular I think. (before anyone thinks that, this is not an attack on anyone on here!)
Have you realized that about 99% of all computers and laptops are sold with Windows on it by default? Vendor deals with big money involved. (or, so I think).
There also are two major OS's which have enough money for advertisement: Windows and macOS.

I've had it many times that I showed someone Linux (mostly mint, fedora or ubuntu) and they went like "oohhhhh why is this not on the stores computers?! That's a good example of why Linux can't reach the masses easily imo.

Anyways, I hope you'll figure the stuffs out! @jpichardo @matsaki95 @Torbuntu @mrtnrdl @jckimble dear Linux army, please help this man out!

By the way, what distro/DE do you use?

@daintycode Are you implying that that's all what open source is?

@linuxxx Well it's my overall experience with it. Sadly. The idea of it is actually great..:b

@daintycode Then I am glad I can tell you that open source is awesome. It can bring people together, enable people to fix stuff themselves and not be dependant on vendors, verify software's integrity and so on :).

@linuxxx generally backlight problems boil down to one of two things. graphics card driver support, or the wm isn't reading the fn keys. Not alot of general fixes work for either case. The most you can do is search for others with your hardware and see if they have a fix especially if you're not experianced enough with /sys to find the backlight control and changing the brightness control path on your wm

@jckimble Fair enough, at least I tried.

@linuxxx linux army?

Besides using terminal for xbacklight means that u are just to lazy to do keybindings or a decent DE

@jpichardo some of the fossl peoples :P

@linuxxx I know

@linuxxx I know that's the main reason, I was being cynical :P This is the lastest Mint with Cinnamon.

Sorry I was working with my brother yesterday. I downloaded mint and tried to find the command used by brightness shortcuts, to see if it was some kind of access problem with systemd (mint use systemd if I'm right). But couldn't find it xp so let's hope that's just a problem with your xorg config like this article : https://itsfoss.com/fix-brightness-...

Basically this guy tell you to config xorg to use your intel graphics card. If your graphic card support optimus, you should use bumblebee or prime to access your nvidia card.

But did you try with the last linux mint cd install? My optimus laptop works fine with it.

God knows what's going on. I installed a fresh Mint KDE this time and it worked fine. I installed all the updates and it broke. Then I installed the latest nvidia binary and now it's working again. Go figure... At least it works for now.

@620hun it was probably a problem with your xorg config then :)

Now I only need to figure out why all GUI elements are ridiculously HUGE. it's almost like I'm on 800x600, except it's 1080p.

Got it, I had to force 96 DPI in the fonts settings