Comment 180 for bug 568611

Upstream status:

I am happy to report that most of the core backlight brightness patches we've been waiting for (Matthew Garrett's work) have been integrated in the the mainline Linux 2.6.39 kernel source repository. This means that the new "intel_backlight" functionality will now get the necessary testing coverage required before we can pull them in to the official Ubuntu kernel. (One necessary patch has not yet been integrated; I am working with the author to get that missing piece resolved.)

Ubuntu Natty 11.04 (which includes kernel version 2.6.38) will *not* include these patches at release, a few weeks away. I will be working on getting these latest mainline patches backported, aiming to get them included in an official Stable Release Update kernel for Natty (and Maverick, hopefully).

I will continue to maintain the PPA https://launchpad.net/~kamalmostafa/+archive/linux-kamal-mjgbacklight for Natty and Maverick in the meantime.

Thanks again to everyone who has provided testing feedback.