I have a laptop mySN QMG6 / Chiligreen Mobilitas NW which is Quanta TW9 barebone with intel i3 and nvidia 335m GT onboard.
On ubuntu distros 10.04, 10.10, 11.04 and 11.10 i had problem with changing screen backlight with nouveau and nvidia drivers. FN+F4/F5 buttons did not change my brightness.
I tried to edit xorg.conf, adding
Option “RegistryDwords” “EnableBrightnessControl=1?
Also tried to add some lines to grub
acpi_osi="Linux" acpi_backlight=vendor
Neither worked for me.
Today I installed Ubuntu 12.04 beta2 and...
With nouveau driver my FN key works, and changes the brightness (is it a new 3.0.22 linux kernel, or patched nouveau driver, i don't know). This is a big step forward.
But, when installing proprietary nvidia driver (295.33) FN button stops working and i can't change brightness.
I also tried workaround with xorg and grub with no result.
Tried to install acpi from apt - no result.
Is there anything left to try?
I really need that nvidia driver working with FN keys, as i would like to have a working 3D acceleration.
P.S. Does the nouveau driver has 3d acceleration like nvidia drivers???
If there is need to provide some log data, please write what should i print, as i'm a bit new to Ubuntu.
P.P.S. Same problems i had with other Linux distros (Mint, Fedora and others)
P.P.P.S. Other FN buttons work with both drivers (Mute, VOL UP/DOWN, WiFi on/off, Bluetooth, Sleep, Start/Pause, Stop, Next/Prev song)
Some new thoughts...
CONFIG_BACKLIGHT_GENERIC=m
could this be an issue? Made this by
grep BACKLIGHT /boot/config-3.2.0-22-generic-pae
Full grep output can be viewed here: http://pastebin.com/sMRd2Z4k