Mint 17.2 MATE screen brightness fix for Asus Zenbook UX305

[kataclysm]

I just got my Asus Zenbook UX305 today and installed Linux Mint 17.2 MATE on it right away. The screen brightness was not controllable by the keys designated for it (function F5 and F6), and indeed I couldn't find a way to adjust it through software, either. Here is how I got the brightness be tied to keys. It involves editing one line in the grub file and downloading one third-party program.

In the terminal, type

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cd /etc/default

There you'll see a file called simply "grub" ...

Edit this with root permissions. What I did was type into the terminal

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sudo nano grub

to open this in a text editor.

Look for the line GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=""

Inside those quotes, type

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video.use_native_backlight=1

Save and exit.

Back in the terminal, type

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sudo update-grub

Reboot.

Now you have to get a program called xbacklight

In the terminal, type

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sudo apt-get install xbacklight

You should now be able to change the backlight using commands in the terminal. To test this, type

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xbacklight -set 80

to set the backlight to 80% brightness. It should immediately change the brightness of your screen.

You can tie these commands to keyboard shortcuts using the utility called "Keyboard Shortcuts" that is built in to Mint 17.2 MATE.

What you do is press the "Add" button at the bottom of the Keyboard Shortcuts window. Give it a name like "Brightness Up" and then in the command field, type

xbacklight -inc 20%

(I chose 20% arbitrarily; you can do 10% or whatever you want.)

Click "Apply."

Then click the item and press whatever key combo you want to press to change your screen brightness.

Now create another shortcut for Brightness Down with the command

xbacklight -dec 20%

and you're done.

I tied my brightness controls to Shfit-Left and Shift-Right. You could probably even tie them to the original Function-F5 and F6 keys, though I find the arrow keys to be more convenient.

Please let me know if I posted this in the wrong place or did something else offensive/cringeworthy. This is my first week of using Linux and my second day of being on these forums.

[jeremy21212121]

The keyboard shortcut utility won't let me use the Fn key to set shortcuts(im using 17.3)... Bummer. Apart from that, this works beautifully.

I tried a variety of other methods with no luck, so thank you very much I love my new zenbook. I installed tlp also, which nearly doubled my battery life.

[overkill22]

The keyboard shortcut utility won't let me use the Fn key to set shortcuts(im using 17.3)... Bummer. Apart from that, this works beautifully.

I tried a variety of other methods with no luck, so thank you very much I love my new zenbook. I installed tlp also, which nearly doubled my battery life.

did you find any difference, performance wise, with tlp? are you using the standard settings?
at the moment I had 7 hours total uptime (5 hours working + 2 hours sleep) of battery using just the browser with 5-10 tabs open.

[Sgthawker]

kataclysm, great idea you have here. I tried this on my Toshiba Satellite U845W, without the keyboard shortcuts, and it works great.

I will look into the shortcuts in the future.

Maximum brightness on my laptop was giving me a headache when using it with Linux Mint 17.3, but now it is much more fun to experiment with.

[overkill22]

kataclysm, great idea you have here. I tried this on my Toshiba Satellite U845W, without the keyboard shortcuts, and it works great.

I will look into the shortcuts in the future.

Maximum brightness on my laptop was giving me a headache when using it with Linux Mint 17.3, but now it is much more fun to experiment with.

what do you mean? I'm having brightness problem too with my asus...

[stefanokan]

Thank you very much for your post.
I lost two days trying to fix the brightness issue without success until i found your post.
I have an ASUS X554LA and Linux Mint XFCE 17.3

[Sgthawker]

what do you mean? I'm having brightness problem too with my asus...

overkill22
Just follow kataclysm's directions above and you can adjust the brightness level of your laptop. It is instructions for an Asus laptop, but they worked fine for my Toshiba!

[easyrider]

Asus N46JV

sudo nano /etc/default/grub
change line to:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash acpi_osi= "
sudo update-grub
REBOOT

keys should work after login - any other way didn't work

I am just giving back to community

[overkill22]

The keyboard shortcut utility won't let me use the Fn key to set shortcuts(im using 17.3)... Bummer. Apart from that, this works beautifully.

I tried a variety of other methods with no luck, so thank you very much I love my new zenbook. I installed tlp also, which nearly doubled my battery life.

the solution is still working on Mint 18.1, but still the shortcut won't recorgnise Fn key. Is there anyone that was able to tie Fn+f6 and Fn+f5 respectively for brightness up and down?