change LCD brightness

If you cannot change your LCD brightness under openSUSE 10.3, this might be due to a "feature" in the new xorg which prevents the module video.ko from being loaded. The following steps will help you regain control over your LCD brightness again. Yaaaaaay for battery life!

sudo vi /etc/modprobe.d/xorg-x11-driver-video

Comment out the line "install video /bin/true"

sudo modprobe video

If the module loaded correctly, you should now have a file called /proc/acpi/video/VGA/LCD/brightness.

Now open kpowersave. You should be able to enable scheme specific brightness settings. Play around with the slider until you find your preferred brightness. At least on my computer (Toshiba Satellite A100-01L), the percentages do not correspond to the actual brightness levels, so you might have to fiddle around a bit until you get your settings sorted out.

I can set my brightness to 8 different levels, which correspond to the following percentages on the slider: 100 - 90 - 75 - 60 - 50 - 35 - 25 - 24

To load the module at boot time, go to

YaST --> System --> /etc/sysconfig editor --> system/kernel/MODULES_LOADED_ON_BOOT

and add "video" (without the quotes).

Source.

Edit: It seems that you need to repeat the commenting out part after each update of xorg-x11-driver-video. Fortunately though, those don't seem to happen too often - otherwise I would've noticed that much sooner.