Brightness buttons on Macbook Pro 7.1

Solution 1:

You need to run the nvidia-settings application. There will be a tab called 'X server display configuration' which allows you to "save to X configuration file".

Once this is done you can access the file with sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

There will be a section called Section "Monitor". Under that add the following lines:

Identifier     "Monitor0"
VendorName     "Apple"
Option         "DPMS"
Option         "RegistryDwords" "EnableBrightnessControl=1"

Reboot, and you should have working brightness controls on your macbook.

Solution 2:

Editing /etc/X11/xorg.conf with the following configuration worked for MackbookPro7,1 (with NVIDIA 340.108 proprietary drivers installed):

Identifier     "Monitor0"
VendorName     "Apple"
Option         "DPMS"
Option         "RegistryDwords" "EnableBrightnessControl=1"

Note: If /etc/X11/xorg.conf is not available, you'll need to create one - by exporting from the nvidia-xserver application.