Brightness regulation doesn't work (ASUS Vivobook X200E)

English Hardware
1

Hi everybody.

In the past I used Ubuntu and it worked quite good…but I had too many freezed and I really prefer Gnome on Opensuse.
The fact is that on my Netbook (ASUS Vivobook X200E) with Ubuntu 13.04 Brightness regulation worked very well,including FN keys.
But with Opensuse it doesn’t work at all , nor via system settings , nor with Fn keys.

First of all sorry because “code” is not marked , and also no bold font but somehow my browser doesn’t work properly…

Of course I tried:

  • editing Grub file by adding
    acpi_backlight=vendor acpi_osi=Linux
    (using “GRUB Customizer” software)

  • I also tried (after editing Grub file in previous step),to run:
    grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg
    but it doesn’t work (“command doesn’t exist”). Not even with sudo at the beginning.

  • I tried xbacklight , set and get , but…
    with -get I always get 100
    with -set nothing happens

I saw many people got the same problem as mine,but I still haven’t found any solution working for me. May I be doing something wrong?
And how I’m supposed to edit manually grub2 file? gedit won’t open it…

Thank you in advance for any suggestion.
Regards

2

So I am using a Dell XPS 13 Ultrabook, similar to yours with an “Intel(R) Core™ i5-3317U CPU @ 1.70GHz” cpu and brightness works with function keys and in the KDE power panel so it sounds like a PC UEFI setup issue to me. Have you updated the PC BIOS? It was the first step I took.

Thank You,

3

#jdmcdaniel3 Thanks for your suggestion. I tried to use BIOS update on my netbook but of course I have not a new bios.
So I google for new new but it’s written to be made to work with windows 8 (which was installasted as oem on my netbook). Furthermore The date is April 2013 and I bought my netbook in October 2013.

Do you have any suggestion on where could I find a LINUX “bios” and maybe some kind of repository of bios from different manufactures? (Can’t find one on ASUS web site…)

4

You always, always, always, always get drivers and BIOS updates from the manufacture and it took me little effort to find your model number at ASUS on the Internet here:

https://www.asus.com/Notebooks_Ultrabooks/ASUS_VivoBook_S200E/#support

They list a BIOS update 200 on 2013.07.19, but indeed they require Windows to load. It is the reason why I set my Latop up as dual boot with the OS it came with and for which I have paid. Getting rid of Windows, when it came with the laptop is often a very bad choice to make in my opinion.

Thank You,

5

Same issue here. Opensuse 13.1 32bit, asus ul30vt. Changing brigthness do not do anything. In Debian(wheezy) it works out of the box. Maybe not big thing to modify but I take a look later…

6

partial solution: works with keyboard shortcuts but not powermanager yms…(just allow that script to run sudo without pasword and then but keyboard shortcuts to it.


#!/bin/bash
export SEED=50
if  ! -f ~/.brightness ]; then
       echo 255 > ~/.brightness;
fi
export BRIGHTNESS=`cat ~/.brightness`
case "$1" in
       "up")
               export BRIGHTNESS=$$BRIGHTNESS+$SEED];
       ;;
       "down")
               export BRIGHTNESS=$$BRIGHTNESS-$SEED];
       ;;
       *)
               export BRIGHTNESS=1;
       ;;
esac
if  "$BRIGHTNESS" -gt "255" ]; then
       export BRIGHTNESS=255;
fi
if  "$BRIGHTNESS" -gt "0" ]; then
       echo $BRIGHTNESS > ~/.brightness
       sudo setpci -s 00:02.0 F4.B=`printf '%x' $BRIGHTNESS`
fi
if  "$BRIGHTNESS" -lt "0" ]; then
       echo "This makes your screen off";
fi
7

@kdmcdaniel3at the end I “solved” by

**
** xrandr --output LVDS1 --brightness**
**

although it looks more like a software tweak than a effective solution, since as far as I udnerstand it just changes gamma value , not brightness.

**@**Bysmyyr Thanks for the suggestion. Could you please explain yourself better? I don’t understand what I’m supposed to do with the code you gave me. Is it a python script?