My thinkpad has Fn + F8/F9 buttons for changing screen brightness. The buttons themselves work very slowly, to the point that I have to press them 7-10 times to adjust from lowest to highest and at intervals of 2-3 seconds. In addition openSUSE is not showing that brightness is changing the way it is showing volume change. Other distros that I tried (Ubuntu and Mint) didn’t have that problem, their onscreen display worked out of the box. So my question is, how do I install the on screen display and how do I make the buttons more responsive?
I tried searching on google but I found no answers.
Which desktop environment are you using?
FWIW, I have a HP laptop which uses Fn+F9/F10 for adjusting brightness (but no on screen display). I’m using KDE 4.12, and I have also defined global keyboard shortcuts (via KDE System Settings) using CRTL+F9/F10 to decrease/increase screen brightness, and this does provide OSD.
Im using KDE 4.11.4 on openSUSE 13.1
My brithness control work, it is just very delayed and slow and no on screen display.
Yes, I understood you. I was just suggesting a workaround - assigning some keyboard shortcuts (like I did)
System Settings >> Shortcuts and Gestures >> Global Keyboard Shortcuts, select ‘KDE Daemon’ >> ‘Decrease Screen Brightness’ and assign preferred key combination (can’t be Fn+ key combination). Do the same for ‘Increase Screen Brightness’.
This is nice; I learned something new.
On my IBM ThinkPad X41, OSD for the dedicated volume control buttons disappeared with a change from 12.2 to 12.3 (KDE 32-bit). See Access Denied I’m not sure if this ever had OSD for screen brightness changes (Fn+Home and Fn+End), but there are none in 13.1 KDE.
I added custom shortcuts for volume and brightness up and down, and OSD shows for those actions. On this X41, brightness changes with both the default Fn+Home and Fn+End and the new custom shortcuts are immediate, no delay.
Thanks,
Howard
Glad the workaround is okay for you. Works for me too. 
Thank you. That worked! Im 90% happy. However I would like to get everything to work properly, meaning, I would like to use Fn F8/9 keys. Is that at all possible at this point? Is it a bug? Or is this just lack of programing?
You didn’t mention the Lenovo model in question. There have been a number of issues reported with Lenovo models (amongst others), typically brightness keys not working (generally due to to WMI issues), or backlighting not able to be adjusted. It is a likely to be a kernel-related compatibility issue. (I haven’t researched much as I haven’t been affected.)
Or are you referring to your X41 model? Others may know workarounds or boot parameters than can help perhaps…
Im using Thinkpad X230. My backlight is working and so is my little LED light on top of the screen However both the mute button is not working and the adjust brightness is not working (well I got the workaround working very well but I would like to have everything working out of the box).
Is this consider a bug? Could I submit a bug report or is this a feature request?
Typically bug-related, but there is a chance that it may have been fixed upstream ie later kernel. Check kernel bug reports first and perhaps google is your friend here too.
Further to this, a quick search produced the following
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Lenovo_ThinkPad_X230#Backlight_Control_Keys
and links to this bug report
https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51231
A kernel parameter is suggested as a ‘partial’ solution. I’ll leave you to read and maybe consider trying it.
Comments 146 onwards (in bug report) look interesting. It looks like a new patch has been created to deal with a number of newer Lenovo models. They are referring to a patchwith kernel 3.12.0-rc5, and using ‘video.use_native_backlight=1’ kernel parameter. Not sure if it has been included into later kernel yet. Someone else may be able to comment/advise further.
Wow. Thank you guys for all the responses. I will wait until it becomes officially fixed. For now I have reassigned the keys.
I had a similar problem
the best solution I found was to install inotify-tools, and then use this script
worked for my sony vaio, with 13.1 KDE
What about the “mute button”? What workaround, if any?
I have a 4-year old ThinkPad SL510. First off, the mute button (volume) didn’t work. It was later fixed kernel/thinkpad_acpi, and is still working on my standard openSUSE 12.2, but broken again in 12.3 and 13.1 (standard and Tumbleweed). On Tumbleweed (now up to kernel 3.13.3) it’s still dead.