How to get blue FN keys to work on Samsung RV510

[Myron]

Hope someone can help. A friends laptop's drive has died and I've installed the latest version of Kubuntu on the laptop. The installation has mainly gone without a hitch and it's just about ready to return to her. Here is my main problem and, yes, I am pretty new to Kubuntu and Linux. The only blue FN keys that work are for volume and turning the mouse-pad off and on but I can't control the brightness or other functions, like enabling and disabling the wireless card, etc....

I've tried my best to find something that might work and found something names samsung-tools, but it's in source code format and as you guessed it, don't know (yet) how to compile the source to binary and install it. That's if samsing-tools is what I need.

So, for a newbie who can follow instructions and knows enough Linux to get to the terminal and get the # root prompt and knows how to use nano, struggles to get rsync to work, etc... Can anyone please give me step-by-step instructions on here on how to enable full keyboard functionality for a Samsung RV510 laptop with Linux 3.13.0-37 generic OS?

At least, to enable the screen brightness to be adjusted from the keyboard.

Linux version 3.13.0-37-generic (buildd@roseapple) (gcc version 4.8.2 (Ubuntu 4.8.2-19ubuntu1) ) #64-Ubuntu SMP Mon Sep 22 21:30:01 UTC 2014 (Ubuntu 3.13.0-37.64-generic 3.13.11.7)
DMI > SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS CO., LTD. RV410/RV510/S3510/E3510 /RV410/RV510/S3510/E3510 , BIOS 03UC.P026.20101027.LX 10/27/2010
input > AT Translated Set 2 keyboard as /devices/platform/i8042/serio0/input/input4

Update:

Managed to install samsung-tools
samsung-backlight did not install.

root@S-RV510:/lib/udev/rules.d# apt-get install samsung-backlight
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
E: Unable to locate package samsung-backlight
root@S-RV510:/lib/udev/rules.d#

These configuration files do not exist:
/lib/udev/rules.d/95-keyboard-force-release.rules
/lib/udev/rules.d/95-keymap.rules

Help!

[SteveRiley]

Where are you finding samsung-tools and samsung-backlight? There are no such packages in the repository for 14.04.

[Myron]

Where are you finding samsung-tools and samsung-backlight? There are no such packages in the repository for 14.04.

https://launchpad.net/~voria/+archive/ubuntu/ppa

Official repository of the "Linux On My Samsung" project.
It provides fixed and new packages for a better Ubuntu experience on Samsung laptops.
Visit http://www.voria.org/forum for more informations.

I think I've managed to do what I needed without using samsung-backlight.

Try opening /etc/default/grub and change GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash" to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash acpi_osi=Linux acpi_backlight=vendor" save. Run in terminal sudo update-grub and restart. –

Soon as I reconfigured Grub, it all started to work almost perfectly. Still, if samsung-backlight becomes available then would wish to give this a try, I think it's because it's not available for Trusty get and I'm not guru enough to get the source, tweak and compile.

[SteveRiley]

Well, acpi_backlight=vendor is not-so-uncommon fix for getting brightness controls to work. Out of curiousity, will it still work if you omit acpi_osi=Linux?

[Myron]

The laptop I was setting up was for a friend. I'll have to try when I get my hands on it for a while, but I did try to omit acpi_osi=Linux and it didn't work. It does seem that it's the former that is needed. KDE just seems to be very keen a lowering the brightness of the LCD panel, but it's fine. The slightest activity on the screen or keyboard and the brightness comes back-up.

Without the tweak it's not just the keyboard control of the brightness that is lost. Ubuntu, in general, can't control the panel brightness. Glad the fix is simple.

(I'm learning quickly. Mind you, I have three WD NAS's where the manufacturer allows unrestricted bash shell access and also a Raspberry Pi to play with.)

[SteveRiley]

OK, then keep both kernel options there.

Very early during boot, the firmware tries to ascertain what operating system is being loaded. Some firmware will elect to disable certain features if detects an operating system other than Windows. Thus, the kernel by default now "spoofs" Windows; in other words, the Linux kernel pretends to be NTOSKRNL.EXE during the firmware's detection phase.

On some machines, the hardware will then make assumptions about what the operating system can do. In your case, the machine is assuming that "Windows" will control the brightness. Adding acpi_osi=Linux overrides the kernel's Windows spoofing; now the firmware adjusts itself accordingly. But to actually control brightness, the second parameter is also needed. This tells the kernel to issue vendor-specific ACPI commands to the display whenever you adjust the brightness.