Bad number of steps in screen brightness on recent Sony Vaio notebooks, Intel GMA adapter

[Michael Lustfield]

This bug originates from bug 173652. (Unable to adjust screen brightness on recent Sony Vaio notebooks, Intel GMA adapter).

The screen brightness now works, but runs through very poor steps.

Comments from the other bug may explain this best:

"To be honest, with the patch I'm using in stable, I get 20 steps. I find this just a slight tad to many. mostly because I feel it should have a little better flow. 19 to 20 goes from I'd like this a little darker to completely black. Perhaps 15 would be a good number?

I'll have to grab an a4 cd and check it out. For me I know it'll be a matter of how well it works as opposed to working or not."

"On Jaunty with latest updates I now get 9 steps for the backlight with the
Fn key combination.
When I installed (Alpha 3) there were only 5 steps, so some update changed
it.
9 steps (while an odd number) is working a lot better now, and much more
usable because the difference between the steps is not so drastic.
I think its working very well now."

It sounds like the 10 to 15 steps is good, my personal vote is for 15. My other issue with what's left is that the last few steps in the process go from slightly dark to completely dark.

I don't have the test environment at my disposal at this point but I will get further information attached asap.

[Michael Doube (michael-doube)]

On Hardy (my day-to-day work install) I'm still using the script from bug 173652, which gives 11 steps in 10% increments (0% - 100% inclusive) by calling xbacklight -(dec|inc) 10. I like this particular setup and find 20% increments (6 steps) too coarse and 5% increments (21 steps) too fine.

[Michael Doube (michael-doube)]

Jaunty alpha 6 has 9 steps through 0-100% (I guess 12.5% steps), which is OK.

[Leann Ogasawara (leannogasawara)]

Hi Michael,

Care to confirm the latest Jaunty Beta has an acceptable number of brightness steps on you machine as commented above. Thanks.

[Michael Lustfield (michaellustfield)]

Same number of steps. I do wish it would go a little bit darker, for in my books, this is closed. I'll let the other Mike close it after he confirms this is still working.

Also, the osd-notifications is really really neat.

[Michael Doube (michael-doube)]

Leann: 9 steps from very dark to very bright on Jaunty Beta is acceptable.