I am on a ThinkPad S430 with openSuse 12.3 and the cinnamon DE.
The brightness hotkeys do not change the brightness but I can change the brightness from “Brightness and Lock” in the menu.
I tried adding “acpi_backlight=vendor acpi_osi=Linux” to GRUB2 options but that did not work as well.
xev does not show any keypresses when I press the backlight keys. It may be worth noting that ThinkPads have hotkeys as the default and the function keys require the Fn button as opposed to most laptops. so I do not press Fn and the brightness key, it is just the brightness key.
I am using an intel i5 ivy bridge, and intel graphics 4000. Kernel is 3.7.10-1.1-desktop
I just tried using xbacklight inc 10 or xbacklight dec 10 and they are both working fine.
Brightness control works, the problem seems to be that the brightness keys are not registered.
Anyone have any idea how to troubleshoot them?
Only a guess from a quick google - Read this archlinux thread which may (or may not) be relevant. It links to another thread concerning a similar ThinkPad model (T430) with users experience the same issue. There it suggests adding
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="acpi_osi=\"!Windows 2012\""
to /etc/default/grub. In the case of openSUSE, the grub configuration then gets updated via a root terminal with
@deano_ferrari Thanks for the reply. I tried doing this but it still would not work
@consused They are the F7 nd F8 keys but without pressing the Fn Button. It is the other way around for my thinkpad (Fn+F7 = F7, F7 = Brightness up) This is the default I did not change it in the BIOS
I ended up configuring F7 and F8 (so I have to press Fn button) as keyboard shortcuts to xbacklight -inc 10 and -dec 10
Not ideal but good enough for me.
My model doesn’t have typical ThinkPad firmware, so the thinkpad_acpi kernel module doesn’t deliver any hot keys. I think the keyboards vary somewhat.
Brightness controls down/up is Fn+Delete/Home, working and used here. I also have Fn+ keys for browser navigation, and multimedia transport (play/pause, stop, etc) and numeric keypad on/off. They all work, but many Fn+ key assignments don’t except on Win7.
xbacklight works, but the setting here doesn’t survive a reboot and it resets to 100%. I think there is a workaround, but I can wait for KDE to start and set the backlight to a preset value via its power management feature.
i have same machine…which firmware do you use? 2.51, 2.52 (lenovo removed this one from their web site)?
for brightness key, you need to add: acpi_osi="!Windows 2012" in grub
i post some information for this machine there: La boîte à prog: Lenovo S430 et Linux
