Ubuntu

hi,
I have a netbook with duo boot (win7 starter + ubuntu 12.04).
I tested it only in ubuntu and I could not set illumination by pressing "function+right arrow" or "function+left arrow" buttons.
Has anybody ever faced similar problem?

Thanks in advance
Boris

There are two ways for the manufacturer to make these kind of model-specific buttons: Embed them in the BIOS so that generic ACPI code can handle them, or, go their own way and force everyone to accomodate their nonstandard custom hardware with a custom device driver.

Guess which method your manufacturer chose.

This is a frequent problem with laptops, and the kernel configuration is littered with hundreds of custom fixes for different models of laptops and computers throughout the years. Hopefully there'll be tweaks for yours too, soon.

Problematic *nix hardware support on consumer laptops? I, for one, have never heard of such a thing.

All kidding aside, step #1 to possibly receiving helpful advice is to identify your netbook as precisely as possible.

If you haven't already done so, check with the Ubuntu forums. It's not uncommon for Linux to require tweaks on laptops to get those special keys working (display brightness, volume/mute, wifi radio, suspend/resume, etc).

Regards,
Alister

About illumination key problem, I found a code in a forum and saved it into rc.local as described. After reboot, the screen turned to dark. No idea how to get all my settings back in ubuntu.
Moral of this post: Do not swim in deep waters

What code did you find where?

You may be able to boot a livecd and remove whatever changes you did.

I am sorry. "I suppose" I found it in this board. I will edit my last post. Just a code written into rc.local. That is a netbook, so there is no cd drive.
Anyway, I will re-install everything from scratch.


Regards
Boris

Reinstalling from scratch to remove a line from rc.local is ridiculous. You can probably use whatever you installed with to boot to a minimal environment and edit that file again.

It's also a good lesson to never blindly copy code you're given without understanding it. You could have just run that line from a terminal to see if it would work. If it turned your screen off, all you'd need is a reboot to fix it.

If your netbook has no CD drive, you really ought to get an external drive and keep it with it, or you'll just keep getting caught in catch-22 situations. You'll also need one to burn recovery media for the Windows OS it likely came with.