Laptop screen brightness fading in and out

[Leonard Chatagnier]

--- On Mon, 11/3/08, Dave M G <martin at autotelic.com> wrote:

> From: Dave M G <martin at autotelic.com>
> Subject: Laptop screen brightness fading in and out
> To: "Ubuntu user technical support, not for general discussions" <ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com>
> Date: Monday, November 3, 2008, 5:17 AM
> Ubuntu Users,
> 
> My laptop is running Xubuntu 8.10.
> 
> Since upgrading, when on battery power, the screen
> brightness fades in 
> and out. It goes from mildly dark to really dark and back
> again. The 
> change is slow, so that the gradual change is almost
> imperceptible. But 
> there's no question that at times the screen brightness
> is easy to read, 
> and sometimes very difficult.
> 
> The hardware brightness controls on my laptop model have
> never been 
> supported by Ubuntu, so I've never really bothered
> trying to find the 
> right brightness level. But now, the way it is, it's a
> little annoying. 
> I wouldn't mind so much it being as dark as it gets,
> because the battery 
> life is better with a darker screen. But the fading in and
> out is 
> distracting.
> 
> So far as I can tell, though, there are no settings for
> screen 
> brightness on battery power. Is that because ordinarily it
> is assumed to 
> be controlled by the hardware?
> 
> Is there anything I can do to at least stop the fading in
> and out, if 
> not gain more control over my brightness settings?
> 
> Any advice would be much appreciated.
> 
>
I have this same issue with my Hardy 64 bit running kde4.1 with nvidia-glx-new-envy driver as of late. It started when sending(forwarding) old retained mail on one of my MUA(TB) to my Yahoo web mail so I could leave a copy on the server. Thank Vista for causing that(windows mail). The brightness would almost go total darkness during the forwarding and also when opening the forwarded mail in Yahoo web mail. Can only see this as a load issue but don't understand why it affects monitor brightness(LG 22" lcd FLATRON Wide). This only happens when accessing that forwarded email with many attachments on it.  So I'll be following this thread with interest for a solution.

Leonard Chatagnier
lenc5570 at sbcglobal.net