How do I adjust display contrast and brightness in Ubuntu?

Solution 1:

It would really help to know what sort of laptop you have, which video card, which monitor and whether you are on Gnome/KDE.

If you are using Gnome, the Gnome Color Manager could be a solution (not available with all gnome versions).

If you are using KDE with LCD, the luminosity applet KLcdDimmer might be a solution.

The gamma level may be adjustable with the xgamma command (not available with all video cards).

If you are using nvidia, you could edit ~/.nvidia-settings-rc, and call nvidia-settings --load-config-only.

For sony vaio the brightness and volume function keys may exist with installing fsfn.

You can search for a better video driver for your card on X.Org. Some of them have a bundled utility to adjust gamma/contrast/brightness.

Is it an LCD monitor? You can try this from the command line:

$sudo echo -n 100 > /proc/acpi/video/VGA/LCD/brightness

If it's too bright use a lower number. If you have GLX instead of VGA the file is /proc/acpi/video/GLX0/LCD/brightness.

Use

sudo setpci -s 00:02.0 F4.B=xx

Where xx is the desired brightness in hexadecimal ranging from 00 (brightest) to FF (no brightness at all).