Automatic keyboard backlight and brightness FN keys for Vaio Pro

[LNTJ_]

I have a Vaio Pro 13. Tried both Kubuntu and Ubuntu from a USB stick. Ubuntu worked fine. Kubuntu worked pretty nice but 2 things were missing.
- Auto keyboard backlight, this does work under Ubuntu
- FN keys for brightness setting, also works under Ubuntu. Under Kubuntu I can adjust brightness by clicking the battery icon.
Why am I telling that it works under Ubuntu? Because it can work so should be possible. I am not completely new to Linux but not exactly a pro either. So I am looking for help on what I should install and/or how to make a script that auto-runs if that is necessary. Pleeeeeeease cause I love the Kubuntu desktop :P

[NoWorries]

You might have success by going to System Settings > Power Management > Energy Saving. There you will find a Keyboard Backlight setting as well as other useful settings for when your system is either on AC power or Battery.

I have an ASUS Laptop and I also have installed digitools which provides further control of other Function Key actions. I am not sure if that will help with your system.

Glad to hear that you love the Kubuntu desktop. It is a pity that there are not more people like you.

[LNTJ_]

Unfortunately there was nothing to find there for my keyboard.

I have also found out that the functionkeys for brightness dó work but with very small increments and there is also no indicator on the screen to tell me how bright I am setting the screen.

[richb]

I solved this problem by installing xbacklight for my Acer i5 with the recommendation of another user.

http://www.kubuntuforums.net/showthr...ght=xbacklight

I found that I have to run xbacklight once for my keyboard brightness keys to work for the remainder of the session. Therefore I placed icons on my panel to run the scripts mentioned in that thread. I run one of them once and then the keypresses work and give a visual indication of the brightness level.

[NoWorries]

Unfortunately there was nothing to find there for my keyboard.

I have also found out that the functionkeys for brightness dó work but with very small increments and there is also no indicator on the screen to tell me how bright I am setting the screen.

While I have a Laptop, I have the packages "plasma-netbook and libplasmagenericshell4" installed. To me it seems as though KDE is not recognising the fact that you have an ultrabook/netbook/laptop. Are these packages installed on your system.

BTW, I have F3/F4 that dim and brighten the lights and I get an on-screen display of the level. I certainly hope that you are able to achieve this with your system.

[ngandriau]

Hi
I am glad to see that there are other vaio pro user with kubuntu.
I just got mine today and I am trying to install kubuntu 13.10 64 bit on an external hard drive for testing.
But right now, the installation fails systematically during the copy of the files systematically at 74%.

I am a bit nervous to wipe out the windows partition, that's why I am making this experiment before.
Can you tell me what version of kubuntu you have installed and what is the setup?
And if you have any recommendation for the setup.

Thanks
Nicolas

[LNTJ_]

I installed it from a USB stick. Installed the image onto the stick with unetbootin. And while the installer wasn't completely stable (had it crash on me) it did install. Also, if you find that your fn-volume keys don't work then go to the settings for the sound and choose your internal sound as primary volume control. Let me know if you can't find what I mean and I'll look it up as I'm working on a W7 machine right now so I can't look up exactly what I am trying to tell.

Does anyone know where I can adjust how big the increments are for every keypress?

[ngandriau]

Hi @LNT_J and thanks for your answer.
Have you made the install on the internal hard drive of your vaio pro?
If yes, have you wiped out the windows installation or just resized the windows partition and installed kubuntu in the free space?

Globally, are you happy with the support of linux by the vaio pro?
So far I am very optimistic, booting from the usb key works very well.

Thanks
Nicolas

[LNTJ_]

I resized the partition and created a new one for Kubuntu. After that I followed some guides for getting GRUB back with UEFI. It mostly works well but there are a few things:
- FN keys for brightness work with very, very small increments and there is no visual feedback on the screen
- The volume-control adjustment as mentioned
- I have heard that the mic doesn't work but haven't tried that yet
- From what I understand the cores are stuck at 800mhz and you need the newest RC of 3.12 kernel
- The touchpad does work but with some small niggles

[ngandriau]

Thanks for the info.
This looks very good to me.
Is there any advantage to restore the "UEFI" boot mode? Beyond having windows working I mean?

I hope I will have the time to finalize the setup during the week end

[LNTJ_]

From what I understand much faster booting.

[ngandriau]

OK then I'll check for it.
I had no idea, this would improve the boot speed which is already very fast with the SSD

[LNTJ_]

From UEFI to GRUB is like 2 seconds or so.

[ngandriau]

Hi @LNTJ_
I spent more time on my viao pro but I am stuck with a kernel panic exception.
I created a dedicated thread here: http://www.kubuntuforums.net/showthr...895#post338895
Have you encountered this issue?

Thanks

Nicolas