Screen Brightness Very Low On Acer Laptop

Ask Fedora
, ,
1

I recently installed Fedora 41 on my acer nitro 5 laptop and wiped out windows 11 from it.

A problem I am encountering is that the screen brightness is very low. Initially the brightness slider itself was missing and “brightnessctl” did not change the brightness even after the command ran successfully. Even the original keyboard shortcut for changing the brightness are not working.

The I installed the “Soft Brightness Plus” extension which did finally allow me to access the brightness slider on system menu. However the screen is still very dim even at maximum brightness. That was not the case when I was using windows, the screen was much brighter.

Please help me out as I have removed windows from the system so I only have access to Fedora but the screen is so dim right now that I can only use it in a dark room.

Since I am new to linux, I am not sure what all information needs to be provided for specific help. Please let me know if I need to add somethig in addition.


System:
  Kernel: 6.13.5-200.fc41.x86_64 arch: x86_64 bits: 64
  Desktop: GNOME v: 47.4 Distro: Fedora Linux 41 (Workstation Edition)
Machine:
  Type: Laptop System: Acer product: Nitro AN515-47 v: V1.12
    serial: <superuser required>
  Mobo: RB model: Jimny_RBH v: V1.12 serial: <superuser required>
    UEFI: Insyde v: 1.12 date: 06/15/2023
Battery:
  ID-1: BAT1 charge: 23.7 Wh (44.6%) condition: 53.1/58.8 Wh (90.5%)
    volts: 14.3 min: 15.4
CPU:
  Info: 8-core model: AMD Ryzen 7 7735HS with Radeon Graphics bits: 64
    type: MT MCP cache: L2: 4 MiB
  Speed (MHz): avg: 1103 min/max: 400/3201 cores: 1: 1103 2: 1103 3: 1103
    4: 1103 5: 1103 6: 1103 7: 1103 8: 1103 9: 1103 10: 1103 11: 1103 12: 1103
    13: 1103 14: 1103 15: 1103 16: 1103
Graphics:
  Device-1: NVIDIA GA107M [GeForce RTX 3050 Mobile] driver: nvidia
    v: 570.86.16
  Device-2: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] Rembrandt [Radeon 680M]
    driver: amdgpu v: kernel
  Device-3: Quanta ACER HD User Facing driver: uvcvideo type: USB
  Display: wayland server: X.Org v: 24.1.6 with: Xwayland v: 24.1.6
    compositor: gnome-shell driver: dri: radeonsi gpu: amdgpu
    resolution: 1920x1080~144Hz
  API: OpenGL v: 4.6 vendor: amd mesa v: 25.0.0 renderer: AMD Radeon 680M
    (radeonsi rembrandt LLVM 19.1.7 DRM 3.61 6.13.5-200.fc41.x86_64)
  API: EGL Message: EGL data requires eglinfo. Check --recommends.
  Info: Tools: api: glxinfo gpu: nvidia-settings x11: xdriinfo, xdpyinfo,
    xprop, xrandr
Audio:
  Device-1: NVIDIA GA107 High Definition Audio driver: snd_hda_intel
  Device-2: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] Rembrandt Radeon High
    Definition Audio driver: snd_hda_intel
  Device-3: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] ACP/ACP3X/ACP6x Audio Coprocessor
    driver: snd_pci_acp6x
  Device-4: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 17h/19h/1ah HD Audio
    driver: snd_hda_intel
  API: ALSA v: k6.13.5-200.fc41.x86_64 status: kernel-api
  Server-1: PipeWire v: 1.2.7 status: active
Network:
  Device-1: Realtek Killer E2600 GbE driver: r8169
  IF: enp3s0 state: down mac: <filter>
  Device-2: MEDIATEK MT7922 802.11ax PCI Express Wireless Network Adapter
    driver: mt7921e
  IF: wlp4s0 state: up mac: <filter>
Bluetooth:
  Device-1: Foxconn / Hon Hai Wireless_Device driver: btusb type: USB
  Report: btmgmt ID: hci0 rfk-id: 2 state: down bt-service: enabled,running
    rfk-block: hardware: no software: yes address: <filter> bt-v: 5.2
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 476.94 GiB used: 6.19 GiB (1.3%)
  ID-1: /dev/nvme0n1 vendor: Samsung model: MZVL2512HCJQ-00B07
    size: 476.94 GiB
Partition:
  ID-1: / size: 475.35 GiB used: 5.76 GiB (1.2%) fs: btrfs dev: /dev/nvme0n1p3
  ID-2: /boot size: 973.4 MiB used: 418.5 MiB (43.0%) fs: ext4
    dev: /dev/nvme0n1p2
  ID-3: /boot/efi size: 598.8 MiB used: 19.3 MiB (3.2%) fs: vfat
    dev: /dev/nvme0n1p1
  ID-4: /home size: 475.35 GiB used: 5.76 GiB (1.2%) fs: btrfs
    dev: /dev/nvme0n1p3
Swap:
  ID-1: swap-1 type: zram size: 8 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) dev: /dev/zram0
Sensors:
  System Temperatures: cpu: 34.4 C mobo: N/A gpu: amdgpu temp: 33.0 C
  Fan Speeds (rpm): N/A
Info:
  Memory: total: 16 GiB note: est. available: 14.8 GiB used: 3.79 GiB (25.6%)
  Processes: 514 Uptime: 4h 54m Shell: Bash inxi: 3.3.37

</>
2

First off, and this is not directly related to the brightness.
Please post using copy&paste then use the </> button to add preformatted text tags.
Images cannot be searched nor easily read by most users.
Your screen would require at least 3 images to display all the text from inxi, as the 2nd image cuts off the tail of that information.

4

Hello Jeff,

Thank you for pointing that out. I have added the system information through inxi in text format now.

5

I use ‘light’ for brightness control on my laptops. Works for some people, not for others but easy to try

sudo dnf install light
man light

6

The following sysfs directory will tell which backlight controls are available, e.g.:

$ ls /sys/class/backlight/

amdgpu_bl1

Since you have two gpu’s, in your case there may be two directories visible, you can test both.

Inside the directory there will be a few different parameters that you can read and/or write to:

/sys/class/backlight/amdgpu_bl1

-r--r--r-- 1 root root 4096  3 mrt 11:12 actual_brightness
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4096  3 mrt 11:12 bl_power
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4096  1 mrt 17:21 brightness
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root    0  2 mrt 21:56 device -> ../../card1-eDP-1
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 4096  1 mrt 17:21 max_brightness
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root    0  3 mrt 11:12 power
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 4096  3 mrt 11:12 scale
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root    0  1 mrt 17:21 subsystem -> ../../../../../../../../class/backlight
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 4096  1 mrt 17:21 type
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4096  1 mrt 17:21 uevent

To see if your display backlight is currently at it’s max brightness, and whether you can change the values from the command line:

$ cat max_brightness
255

$ cat actual_brightness
85

$ echo 100 > brightness 
$ cat actual_brightness
100
7

Thank you for the guidance. When I run the command:

ls /sys/class/backlight/

There is no output, not even an error. What should I do in this case?

8

Thank you. When trying to use light, I encounter this issue. Which one should I choose as the target device here to set the brightness? And what subsequent commands should I run?

sudo light -L
 
No backlight controller was found, so we could not decide an automatic target. The current command will have no effect. Please use -L to find a target and then specify it with -s.

Listing device targets:
	sysfs/leds/enp3s0-1::lan
	sysfs/leds/enp3s0-0::lan
	sysfs/leds/input3::numlock
	sysfs/leds/input3::capslock
	sysfs/leds/input3::scrolllock
	sysfs/leds/enp3s0-2::lan
	util/test/dryrun
9

This might help you in that case:

[edit] the steps described will be slightly different on Fedora:

  1. Edit /etc/default/grub (as root/sudo), change the line:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="rhgb quiet"

to

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="rhgb quiet acpi_backlight=native"
  1. Regenerate grub:
$  sudo grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg

Reboot.

10

This worked. Thank you very much!

1 Like
11

You can mark Oliver’s post as ‘solution’ to help others later and let people know the case is closed.

1 Like