[SOLVED...sort of] Backlit keyboard -- MacBook Air, 2012

[d-l-b]

Is there a reason the backlit keyboard does not work on MATE vs Cinnamon (using the release candidate, Nadia)? With Cinnamon, there's a nice icon that pops up when I press the F5 and F6 keys to increase and decrease the brightness of the keyboard -- using MATE, there's nothing. I prefer MATE and would really like to be able use this feature. Thanks for any help.

UPDATE:
I've been trying out a bunch of distros and I'm currently using Kubuntu 12.10. I had the same issue where the F5 and F6 buttons were not mapped properly. Here's the hack-job I did to get it to work by using /etc/acpi/asus-keyboard-backlight.sh as a template.

Open up the ol' terminal and change the permissions of the "brightness" file so you don't have to be root

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sudo chmod 777 /sys/class/leds/smc::kbd_backlight/brightness

Then, I mapped the following script to the F5 key to reduce the brightness by a factor of 25 (max is 255)

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#!/bin/sh

KEYS_DIR=/sys/class/leds/smc::kbd_backlight

test -d $KEYS_DIR || exit 0

MIN=0
MAX=$(cat $KEYS_DIR/max_brightness)
VAL=$(cat $KEYS_DIR/brightness)

VAL=$((VAL-25))


if [ "$VAL" -lt $MIN ]; then
	VAL=$MIN
elif [ "$VAL" -gt $MAX ]; then
	VAL=$MAX
fi

echo $VAL > $KEYS_DIR/brightness

I then mapped the F6 key using the same script, but changing

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VAL=$((VAL-25))

to

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VAL=$((VAL+25))

Annnnnnd that seems to work! It's not the most elegant of solutions, but it works!

[remoulder]

Discussion of Mint 14 RC issues us requested at http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=2205

[jiii]

If you have Nvidia Graphics try a different driver - worked for me (MBP mid 2009)