I just bought an Alienware 15 R3. It's got a lot of LEDs. Will they work when I make this a Linux machine?

[James_Smith]

I haven't received it yet, but I know a lot about it. It has a lot of LEDs for aesthetic reasons. Of course, I'm going to convert it to a Linux Mint computer as soon as I get it. I am pretty sure I know the answer to this, but I thought I'd ask it anyway.

All of these LEDs are customizable (i.e., you can change the colors of them individually) with the stock Windows 10 OS, but I seriously doubt if they will work with LM.

Or am I wrong?

[Moem]

Honestly, I haven't the foggiest. But you should be able to find out by running Mint from a USB stick or DVD.

[James_Smith]

Honestly, I haven't the foggiest. But you should be able to find out by running Mint from a USB stick or DVD.

I'm immediately going to install LM18.1 when I get it. It's not a deal breaker for me. I don't really care if the LEDs are configurable or not, but it would be nice if they worked.

[trapperjohn]

On my Alienware 17 the leds are on by default. They are blue. Never thought they could change color... never tried.

It came with a Win 7 native install, so I promptly removed the drive, put it in a put it in a drawer somewhere around here, and installed Linux (Arch in this case) to a fresh drive. Now that you brought this up I'll probably stuff the old drive in bay 2, create a duel boot, boot windows, and see if I can tweak the lights.

[Citizen229]

They should power on by default. And if they are RGB rotating colors it should work as well. Fairly certain RGB is controlled by the MB and not the OS.

[phd21]

Hi "James_Smith",

Would this help at all?

Alienware-KBL, a software to control the lights of alienware computers under GNU-Linux systems. click the link in this regarding the "functional stable branch" and read that too...
https://github.com/rsm-gh/alienware-kbl

Control AlienFX lighting on Alienware Aurora computers running Linux
https://github.com/erlkonig/alienfx

Simple Qt program for changing the colors on Alienware 17
https://github.com/acyed/qtFx

Read this - Alienware 13
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Alienware_13
Alienware 15
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Alienware_15
...

[shx]

Hello,

I have an Alienware 17 R3, and it is possible to control the leds although the interface is less friendly than W$.
Have a look at viewtopic.php?f=42&t=225433 for how I did it.

I supposed it should be the same on the 15 but no promise.

Enjoy your machine

[James_Smith]

Hello,

I have an Alienware 17 R3, and it is possible to control the leds although the interface is less friendly than W$.
Have a look at viewtopic.php?f=42&t=225433 for how I did it.

I supposed it should be the same on the 15 but no promise.

Enjoy your machine

Thank you very much. I followed one of the links above your post and got into a situation in which I was 'building' an app (something of which I am totally ignorant) and I gave up. I was going to give it a try again later when I got the notification that you posted here.

I'll try your solution later on today and let you know how it went.