Brightness controls not working on a Sony Vaio VPCY2
1) Open a terminal
2) type this: gksudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf
3) Enter your password; a text editor will appear, find the following lines:
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Device0"
Monitor "Monitor0"
DefaultDepth 24
Option "RegistryDwords" "EnableBrightnessControl=1"
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
EndSubSection
EndSection
4) make this line look like this or add it if it dosen't exist:
Option "RegistryDwords" "EnableBrightnessControl=1"
5) close & save changes (Be careful before saving you can take down your system, if you're not sure that you didn't do anything wrong choose "don't save"!!
6) Restart computer.