How to make brightness hotkeys work

arcull · September 14, 2009, 4:26pm

Hi everyone. This thing took me almost a month to figure out, so I thought it is worth posting the solution here as well. My original thread is on ubuntu forums [SOLVED] Hotkeys on acer with 64 bit os-how to? - Ubuntu Forums](http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1256788). To summarize in few sentences: I bought a brand new laptop Acer Emachines G725 and I couldn’t make my hotkeys for birghtness work (Fn+Left/Right Arrow). I currently have kubuntu 9.04 on my laptop, but I also tried with various other distros (live cd) including suse and there was everywhere the same problem, brightness hotkeys just didn’t work. After trying 100 other things I googled somewhere the solution, and that is, just put

acpi_osi=Linux

to the file /boot/grub/menu.lst at the end of each line where kernel words are, simple as that if you know it Maybe this can be applied to some other laptops too. Have a nice day.

ram88 · September 14, 2009, 5:27pm

arcull:

Hi everyone. This thing took me almost a month to figure out, so I thought it is worth posting the solution here as well. My original thread is on ubuntu forums [SOLVED] Hotkeys on acer with 64 bit os-how to? - Ubuntu Forums](http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1256788). To summarize in few sentences: I bought a brand new laptop Acer Emachines G725 and I couldn’t make my hotkeys for birghtness work (Fn+Left/Right Arrow). I currently have kubuntu 9.04 on my laptop, but I also tried with various other distros (live cd) including suse and there was everywhere the same problem, brightness hotkeys just didn’t work. After trying 100 other things I googled somewhere the solution, and that is, just put
acpi_osi=Linux
to the file /boot/grub/menu.lst at the end of each line where kernel words are, simple as that if you know it Maybe this can be applied to some other laptops too. Have a nice day.

Thank you for sharing!

dmera · September 14, 2009, 5:36pm

Thank you for the tip,but unfortunately it didn’t work for me. I have a Sony Vaio VGN-FS850. I added the line (via Yast–> Boot Loader) and no luck, nothing happens and I reboot the machine.
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27.29-0.1-pae root=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-TOSHIBA_MK1031GAS_Z58P1118S-part5 resume=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-TOSHIBA_MK1031GAS_Z58P1118S-part4 splash=silent showopts acpi_osi=Linux

Well maybe other will have more luck. Thanks anyway.

ram88 · September 14, 2009, 5:53pm

Take a look to Keytouch.
Hope that helps.

tetra6000 · October 10, 2009, 10:51am

just tried in ASUS K40Ij on OSS11.1, it works … many many thanks, it was really annoying b4.

knurpht · October 10, 2009, 1:42pm

There’s no need to do so on ASUS laptops. ASUS provides the kernel module asus-laptop. It does all the nice things for your Fn keys. On my brand new ASUS almost all buttons work OOTB.