Cant change the screens brightness

Support Graphics & Display
1

I cant change the screen brightness. The slider in battery and brightness doesn’t work and the buttons on my on the keyboard to adjust my brightness dont work either. I do not know the reason for this problem. Here is my graphics section in inxi -Fxxz :

Graphics:
  Device-1: Intel Core Processor Integrated Graphics vendor: Dell
    driver: i915 v: kernel arch: Gen-5.75 ports: active: LVDS-1
    empty: DP-1,HDMI-A-1,VGA-1 bus-ID: 00:02.0 chip-ID: 8086:0046
  Device-2: Microdia Laptop_Integrated_Webcam_1.3M type: USB
    driver: uvcvideo bus-ID: 1-1.6:4 chip-ID: 0c45:6461
  Display: x11 server: X.Org v: 21.1.4 compositor: kwin_x11 driver: X:
    loaded: modesetting alternate: fbdev,vesa gpu: i915 display-ID: :0
    screens: 1
  Screen-1: 0 s-res: 1366x768 s-dpi: 96
  Monitor-1: LVDS-1 model: Seiko Epson 0x5441 res: 1366x768 dpi: 101
    diag: 395mm (15.5")
  OpenGL: renderer: Mesa Intel HD Graphics (ILK) v: 2.1 Mesa 22.1.4
    direct render: Yes
2

There is two packages for this

  • xorg-xbacklight - only works with intel
  • acpilight - requires the user to be member of group video
    sudo gpasswd -a $USER video
3

xorg-xbacklight didnt work for some reason and it kept telling me “No outputs have backlight property” and acpilight seemed a hassle to install because i’m new to Linux but i have found another method. Here’s my solution:

I used an alternative package called light. its like xbacklight

You need to have yay or any other aur helper installed. if you do not have it type to following:

sudo pacman -S yay

after that type

yay light-git

then select the one named aur/light-git then install it

after that you can easily change the brightness through the terminal

To increase use: light -A <brightness level>
To decrease use: light -U <brightness level>
use light -h for help

4

It is not a solution to link to a youtube video.

Please explain in textmode what you did to solve your issue.

5

Please share the complete inxi -Fazy

6

i have edited my reply

7 
System:
  Kernel: 5.15.57-2-MANJARO arch: x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 12.1.0
    parameters: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-5.15-x86_64
    root=UUID=d5f62ce4-c66c-4d67-b50e-44daba642345 rw
    i915.enable_dpcd_backlight=0 quiet
    resume=UUID=cb4185d1-f25c-458e-81e6-6d14df23566b udev.log_priority=3
  Desktop: KDE Plasma v: 5.24.6 tk: Qt v: 5.15.5 wm: kwin_x11 vt: 1 dm: SDDM
    Distro: Manjaro Linux base: Arch Linux
Machine:
  Type: Portable System: Dell product: Inspiron N5010 v: A02
    serial: <superuser required>
  Mobo: Dell model: 0WXY9J v: A02 serial: <superuser required>
    UEFI-[Legacy]: Dell v: A02 date: 04/09/2010
Battery:
  ID-1: BAT0 charge: 2.7 Wh (100.0%) condition: 2.7/48.8 Wh (5.5%) volts: 11.5
    min: 11.1 model: Samsung DELL 7XFJJ05 type: Li-ion serial: <filter>
    status: full
CPU:
  Info: model: Intel Core i3 M 350 bits: 64 type: MT MCP arch: Westmere
    gen: core 1 built: 2010-11 process: Intel 32nm family: 6 model-id: 0x25 (37)
    stepping: 2 microcode: 0x11
  Topology: cpus: 1x cores: 2 tpc: 2 threads: 4 smt: enabled cache:
    L1: 128 KiB desc: d-2x32 KiB; i-2x32 KiB L2: 512 KiB desc: 2x256 KiB
    L3: 3 MiB desc: 1x3 MiB
  Speed (MHz): avg: 1025 high: 1063 min/max: 931/2261 scaling:
    driver: acpi-cpufreq governor: schedutil cores: 1: 1040 2: 964 3: 1033
    4: 1063 bogomips: 18093
  Flags: ht lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx
  Vulnerabilities:
  Type: itlb_multihit status: KVM: VMX disabled
  Type: l1tf mitigation: PTE Inversion; VMX: conditional cache flushes, SMT
    vulnerable
  Type: mds status: Vulnerable: Clear CPU buffers attempted, no microcode;
    SMT vulnerable
  Type: meltdown mitigation: PTI
  Type: mmio_stale_data status: Not affected
  Type: retbleed status: Not affected
  Type: spec_store_bypass mitigation: Speculative Store Bypass disabled via
    prctl and seccomp
  Type: spectre_v1 mitigation: usercopy/swapgs barriers and __user pointer
    sanitization
  Type: spectre_v2 mitigation: Retpolines, IBPB: conditional, IBRS_FW,
    STIBP: conditional, RSB filling
  Type: srbds status: Not affected
  Type: tsx_async_abort status: Not affected
Graphics:
  Device-1: Intel Core Processor Integrated Graphics vendor: Dell driver: i915
    v: kernel arch: Gen-5.75 process: Intel 45nm built: 2010 ports:
    active: LVDS-1 empty: DP-1,HDMI-A-1,VGA-1 bus-ID: 00:02.0
    chip-ID: 8086:0046 class-ID: 0300
  Device-2: Microdia Laptop_Integrated_Webcam_1.3M type: USB
    driver: uvcvideo bus-ID: 1-1.6:4 chip-ID: 0c45:6461 class-ID: 0e02
  Display: x11 server: X.Org v: 21.1.4 compositor: kwin_x11 driver: X:
    loaded: modesetting alternate: fbdev,vesa gpu: i915 display-ID: :0
    screens: 1
  Screen-1: 0 s-res: 1366x768 s-dpi: 96 s-size: 361x203mm (14.21x7.99")
    s-diag: 414mm (16.31")
  Monitor-1: LVDS-1 model: Seiko Epson 0x5441 built: 2009 res: 1366x768
    hz: 60 dpi: 101 gamma: 1.2 size: 344x194mm (13.54x7.64") diag: 395mm (15.5")
    ratio: 16:9 modes: 1366x768
  OpenGL: renderer: Mesa Intel HD Graphics (ILK) v: 2.1 Mesa 22.1.4
    direct render: Yes
Audio:
  Device-1: Intel 5 Series/3400 Series High Definition Audio vendor: Dell
    driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus-ID: 00:1b.0 chip-ID: 8086:3b56
    class-ID: 0403
  Sound Server-1: ALSA v: k5.15.57-2-MANJARO running: yes
  Sound Server-2: JACK v: 1.9.21 running: no
  Sound Server-3: PulseAudio v: 16.1 running: yes
  Sound Server-4: PipeWire v: 0.3.56 running: yes
Network:
  Device-1: Broadcom BCM4313 802.11bgn Wireless Network Adapter vendor: Dell
    Inspiron M5010 / XPS 8300 driver: bcma-pci-bridge v: N/A modules: bcma
    pcie: gen: 1 speed: 2.5 GT/s lanes: 1 bus-ID: 12:00.0 chip-ID: 14e4:4727
    class-ID: 0280
  Device-2: Realtek RTL810xE PCI Express Fast Ethernet vendor: Dell
    driver: r8169 v: kernel pcie: gen: 1 speed: 2.5 GT/s lanes: 1 port: e000
    bus-ID: 13:00.0 chip-ID: 10ec:8136 class-ID: 0200
  IF: enp19s0 state: down mac: <filter>
  IF-ID-1: wlp18s0b1 state: up mac: <filter>
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 298.09 GiB used: 127.81 GiB (42.9%)
  SMART Message: Unable to run smartctl. Root privileges required.
  ID-1: /dev/sda maj-min: 8:0 vendor: Samsung model: HN-M320MBB
    size: 298.09 GiB block-size: physical: 512 B logical: 512 B speed: 3.0 Gb/s
    type: HDD rpm: 5400 serial: <filter> rev: 0001 scheme: MBR
Partition:
  ID-1: / raw-size: 48.57 GiB size: 47.5 GiB (97.81%) used: 14.38 GiB (30.3%)
    fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda5 maj-min: 8:5
Swap:
  Kernel: swappiness: 60 (default) cache-pressure: 100 (default)
  ID-1: swap-1 type: file size: 512 MiB used: 511.6 MiB (99.9%) priority: -2
    file: /swapfile
  ID-2: swap-2 type: partition size: 4 GiB used: 1.22 GiB (30.5%)
    priority: -3 dev: /dev/sda8 maj-min: 8:8
Sensors:
  System Temperatures: cpu: 58.0 C mobo: N/A
  Fan Speeds (RPM): fan-1: 3320
Info:
  Processes: 258 Uptime: 7h 13m wakeups: 1 Memory: 3.64 GiB used: 2.93 GiB
  (80.6%) Init: systemd v: 251 default: graphical tool: systemctl Compilers:
  gcc: 12.1.0 clang: 14.0.6 Packages: pacman: 1270 lib: 346 flatpak: 0
  Shell: Zsh v: 5.9 default: Bash v: 5.1.16 running-in: konsole inxi: 3.3.20
8

Well, you already marked the solution, so posting the hardware specifications now seems … late.
Anyway. There is this https://askubuntu.com/questions/15169/dell-inspiron-n5010-brightness-issue
And updating the BIOS was the fix there, and since your laptop has

and there is a BIOS from 2011, might consider updating it too. It should help and even be able to use the Fn key combination to change the brightness under any linux distribution.
Cheers!