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I have a Toshiba Satellite C55D-B5102 that I would really love to put Ubuntu or Mint on, however I am unable to lower the brightness settings at all under MATE, Cinnamon, KDE, GNOME, or XFCE. When I move the slider, it literally does nothing. When I press the brightness button, it puts the computer to sleep. I haven't noticed anything other than the trackpad not turning off, but I know how to disable that, so not too worried. Has anyone experienced this issue and if so, how did you fix it?

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  • Anybody? Is Toshiba incapable of having a Linux distro on it? I was able to load Mint with no problem other than display brightness and a distorted-looking cursor. Other than that, it ran like a dream. Is anyone here knowledgeable about the AMD 8 Chipset and configuring the display brightness to be lower. I've heard that Xbacklight only works with Intel-based cards and not AMD. Thank you for any help!
    – Kalthrix
    Apr 29, 2015 at 7:11
  • Please add output of "ls /sys/class/backlight" terminal command to your post.
    – Pilot6
    May 19, 2015 at 15:46

3 Answers 3

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This worked for my C50-B-14Z :

Step 1: Changing GRUB (using leafpad or gedit or whatever....)

1. Edit the grub configuration file:
Code:
gksu leafpad /etc/default/grub

2. Add the paramater to the line:GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=""...so that it reads:
Code:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="acpi_backlight=vendor"

3. Save the file.

4. Update grub with the changes:
Code:
sudo update-grub

Step 2: Make file "70-keyboard.hwdb" in /etc/udev/hwdb.d/

1. gksu leafpad /etc/udev/hwdb.d/70-keyboard.hwdb

2. Fill the file with (Exactly!) this: (Satellite.............wlan)

Satellite C50-B keyboard:name:Toshiba input device:dmi:bvn*:bvr*:bd*:svnTOSHIBA*:pnSATELLITEC50-B:pvr KEYBOARD_KEY_13c=brightnessdown KEYBOARD_KEY_13d=brightnessup KEYBOARD_KEY_13e=switchvideomode KEYBOARD_KEY_13f=f21 # Touchpad toggle KEYBOARD_KEY_158=wlan

3. Save the file.

4. Update the file
Code:
sudo udevadm hwdb --update

5. Reboot & Done
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Depends on kernel, but on mine I have to set brightness from the power management panel [KDE]. It isn't a problem once set.

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I have a C55D-B5310 running Mint 17.3. It has an A8 with the A4 APU for graphics. I had the same problem with the brightness controls.

I tried updating grub.cfg, adding "acpi_backlight=vendor" to the GRUB_COMMAND_LINUX line, but that did not work for me. I could not adjust the brightness from the keyboard, Power applet, or Power dialog in Settings.

[Edit: I had to remove "acpi_backlight=vendor" from the GRUB_COMMAND_LINUX line in grub.cfg to get the fglrx package to work.] When I installed the AMD fglrx package in Driver Manager, I was able to adjust the brightness from the Power applet and the Power dialog in Settings. If I remember right, I had issues with the fglrx-updates package.

I haven't had the patience/time to remap the keys as @user415738 suggested. Right now the brightness down key opens the Power Statistics dialog and the brightness up key suspends the computer. I tried @user415738 's solution, but have a feeling that I need to find different key values for my specific keyboard.

Good luck!

UPDATE: To get the brightness controls working right on Mint 17.3 with Cinnamon, I used the GUI in System Settings > Keyboard > Shortcuts to remap the brightness keys.

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