[hardy beta] thinkpad contrast/brightness issue

[QPrime]

fresh install of Hardy beta on an IBM TP R51. display contrast/brightness keys function improperly. specifically, attempting to lower contrast via fn+end results in OSD applet and hardware lowering of contrast - yay! attempting to raise contrast via fn+home results in only hardware raising of contrast - very 'not'-yay!) the applet never seems to see the keypress or read the current hardware brightness value. attempting to again lower the contrast seems to result in the setting of the hardware brightness level to whatever the previous 'low' value was. in other words if you lower contrast all the way down, then raise contrast all the way up then simply lower the contrast again by one level, the actual result is that the contrast reverts to the lowest level possible. This is a change from the entire hardy alpha series which seemed to function properly. additionally, if I force compiz on I notice that I no longer get the compiz style contrast OSD, its always the regular non-compiz OSD. hope this rambling report makes sense!

[Matija Polajnar (matija-polajnar)]

Bug #198476 (of which this bug is supposed to be a duplicate of) is said to be fixed with kernel 2.6.24-16, however I do experience this problem as well.

matija@tom:~$ uname -r
2.6.24-16-generic

1. First lowering of brightness
  a) Screen brightness lowers one step for each keypress.
  b) OSD correctly shows the screen brightness.

2. Increasing screen brightness
  a) Screen brightness increases one step for each keypress.
  b) OSD doesn't appear.

3. Second lowering of brightness (only one keypress)
  a) Screen brigtness lowers one step under the last OSD indication, so one step under the lowest used setting so far.
  b) OSD indicates the real screen brightness.

So (ignoring the cosmetical non-compiz-style OSD part of the bug) is this really a duplicate?

[QPrime (mwells)]

I have noticed that an update (about a week or two ago ago?) seems to have fixed the OSD/hardware brightness mismatch for me. However the compiz OSD issue still exists. Additionally, I have resorted to pulling the nightly ISO image builds for Hardy as there have been a few oddities in the flurry of Hardy updates that seem to leave some packages (most obviously audio) in various states of disrepair on my testing system. Seeing as the updates from Hardy beta to current are almost exceeding the size of the current ISO nightly build, it's become SOP for me to grab a nightly build every week or so and do a fresh install. As usual, I'll see how things look after Hardy RC is official and report back any issues as I find them.

[Matija Polajnar (matija-polajnar)]

Well, it was hard enough for me to do a fresh install once, and I did that _yesterday_. (I had to fresh install to set up disk encryption that's essential on a laptop.)
Since then I only updated through package manager and I hope that'll do even after the final release.

As I said, I still experience said problem with brightness steps. I forgot to mention I use Thinkpad R52 with Intel i915 graphics.