Things have improved a bit. I now have a situation where the backlight is adjustable a little bit. Less than it used to be in the good old days (of 15.1), but enough to protect my eyes in dim-light circumstances.
The font / cursor / dialog widths are still wrong, impractical. I can only find the mouse cursor by right-clicking (so that the context menu appears). But they all used to be ok!! I have seen other posts of people struggling with the same.
So I feel the issue has not yet been entirely solved.
Note that I have gone back to a fresh install of 15.2 + updates + nvidia driver (from repository).
Responding to the remarks / comments made above:
*/ There is no /etc/X11/xorg.conf. There is a directory /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d and there is a file /etc/X11/xorg.conf.install.
*) The screen has a resolution of 3840x2160, and the screen is just 15",
*) I don;t think there is any Intel graphics on board. I don’t see it in the BIOS, and it is also not in the output of
scarlatti:~ # /sbin/lspci -nnk | egrep -A3 "VGA|Display|3D"
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: NVIDIA Corporation GP107GLM [Quadro P2000 Mobile] [10de:1cba] (rev a1)
Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device [103c:8451]
Kernel driver in use: nvidia
Kernel modules: nouveau, nvidia_drm, nvidia
The presence of the noueau module still puzzles me, especially because this tiny cursor stuff is also what I got when I had only the nouvoudriver installed on the system. Is is possible that is still plays a role, somehow?
*) repeating the others commands that were suggested above:
hwinfo --gfxcard
18: PCI 100.0: 0300 VGA compatible controller (VGA)
[Created at pci.386]
Unique ID: VCu0.DuwXU5aeBkC
Parent ID: vSkL.ytxrR7AdL16
SysFS ID: /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:01.0/0000:01:00.0
SysFS BusID: 0000:01:00.0
Hardware Class: graphics card
Model: "nVidia GP107GLM [Quadro P2000 Mobile]"
Vendor: pci 0x10de "nVidia Corporation"
Device: pci 0x1cba "GP107GLM [Quadro P2000 Mobile]"
SubVendor: pci 0x103c "Hewlett-Packard Company"
SubDevice: pci 0x8451
Revision: 0xa1
Driver: "nvidia"
Driver Modules: "nvidia"
Memory Range: 0xe8000000-0xe8ffffff (rw,non-prefetchable)
Memory Range: 0xa0000000-0xafffffff (ro,non-prefetchable)
Memory Range: 0xb0000000-0xb1ffffff (ro,non-prefetchable)
I/O Ports: 0x4000-0x4fff (rw)
Memory Range: 0xe9080000-0xe90fffff (ro,non-prefetchable,disabled)
IRQ: 189 (94861 events)
Module Alias: "pci:v000010DEd00001CBAsv0000103Csd00008451bc03sc00i00"
Driver Info #0:
Driver Status: nouveau is not active
Driver Activation Cmd: "modprobe nouveau"
Driver Info #1:
Driver Status: nvidia_drm is active
Driver Activation Cmd: "modprobe nvidia_drm"
Driver Info #2:
Driver Status: nvidia is active
Driver Activation Cmd: "modprobe nvidia"
Config Status: cfg=new, avail=yes, need=no, active=unknown
Attached to: #13 (PCI bridge)
Primary display adapter: #18
journalctl -b | grep "backlight"
Dec 14 10:10:00 scarlatti systemd[1]: Created slice system-systemd\x2dbacklight.slice.
Dec 14 10:10:00 scarlatti systemd[1]: Starting Load/Save Screen Backlight Brightness of backlight:acpi_video0...
Dec 14 10:10:00 scarlatti systemd[1]: Started Load/Save Screen Backlight Brightness of backlight:acpi_video0.
Dec 14 10:10:03 scarlatti systemd[1]: Starting Load/Save Screen Backlight Brightness of backlight:nvidia_0...
Dec 14 10:10:03 scarlatti systemd[1]: Started Load/Save Screen Backlight Brightness of backlight:nvidia_0.
Dec 14 10:14:51 scarlatti org_kde_powerdevil[2389]: powerdevil: Kbd backlight brightness value: 0
Dec 14 10:53:47 scarlatti org_kde_powerdevil[2389]: powerdevil: Kbd backlight brightness value: 0
Dec 14 11:01:17 scarlatti org_kde_powerdevil[2389]: powerdevil: Kbd backlight brightness value: 0
systemctl status systemd-backlight@backlight:acpi_video0.service
● systemd-backlight@backlight:acpi_video0.service - Load/Save Screen Backlight Brightness of backlight:acpi_video0
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/systemd-backlight@.service; static; vendor preset: disabled)
Active: active (exited) since Mon 2020-12-14 10:10:00 CET; 1h 5min ago
Docs: man:systemd-backlight@.service(8)
Main PID: 1141 (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Tasks: 0
CGroup: /system.slice/system-systemd\x2dbacklight.slice/systemd-backlight@backlight:acpi_video0.service
Dec 14 10:10:00 scarlatti systemd[1]: Starting Load/Save Screen Backlight Brightness of backlight:acpi_video0...
Dec 14 10:10:00 scarlatti systemd[1]: Started Load/Save Screen Backlight Brightness of backlight:acpi_video0.
systemctl status systemd-backlight@backlight:nvidia_0.service
● systemd-backlight@backlight:nvidia_0.service - Load/Save Screen Backlight Brightness of backlight:nvidia_0
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/systemd-backlight@.service; static; vendor preset: disabled)
Active: active (exited) since Mon 2020-12-14 10:10:03 CET; 1h 6min ago
Docs: man:systemd-backlight@.service(8)
Main PID: 1981 (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Dec 14 10:10:03 scarlatti systemd[1]: Starting Load/Save Screen Backlight Brightness of backlight:nvidia_0...
Dec 14 10:10:03 scarlatti systemd[1]: Started Load/Save Screen Backlight Brightness of backlight:nvidia_0.