Brightness slider does not exist on ZorisOS Core 18.1

General Help
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Hello! Just installed Zorin a day or two ago and I'm loving it, but right now I'm using it after sunset and have no way of adjusting the brightness. There is no control in the quick menu at the bottom right, I don't see anything about it in the settings, and doing a search for "brightness" returns nothing.

I have absolutely NO idea what's going on. How can there just... not be a brightness slider?

So far the things I've tried, based on other forum posts (some of them within the last year, some of them from 2022):

  • Ran sudo apt install --reinstall brightness-controller. No luck. This was from a 2022 post, not surprised it didn't work.
  • Tried a bunch of random command-line applications from a guide (xrandr, xdotool, xgamma, xbacklight, brightnessctl, redshift). None of them worked (likely because I was using them on Wayland? I think somebody said they all needed X11 to work). But this feels like a ridiculous workaround solution anyways for what should just be a slider.
  • Tried Fn keys on external keyboard. Nothing.
  • Ran sudo nano /etc/default/grub
    Changed GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT to equal quiet splash acpi_backlight=native, OR quiet splash acpi_backlight=vendor, OR quiet splash i915.enable_dpcd_backlight=0.
    sudo update-grub and a system reboot was performed each time after changing the line value. None of them did anything to fix the problem.
  • Tried changing from Wayland to X11. Didn't help.
  • Downloaded a Flatpak application called Luminance. Partially worked... Unfortunately, it can only control my primary monitor, presumably because it's the only monitor modern enough to have DDC/CI.
  • Rebooted with only my primary monitor plugged into the graphics card.

I'm not really sure what else to do. This feels like it should be the most basic of issues, but not only can I not figure out how to solve it, I don't see anyone else with the same problem.
Here's some specs/extra information just in case it's helpful.

  • Current environment: Wayland
  • Primary monitor: Dell G2724D (running DisplayPort)
  • Secondary monitors: HP 22bw (One using DP, one using HDMI)
  • GPU: AMD Radeon RX 6800
  • CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600x
  • Windows has been gone from my system for months.
  • CSM, Fast boot, and Secure boot are all disabled in the UEFI

Output of uname -a:
Linux jarren-zorin 7.0.0-31-generic #31~24.04.1-Ubuntu SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Mon Aug 10 09:38:02 UTC 2 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
Output of sudo lshw -C video:

*-display                 
       description: VGA compatible controller
       product: Navi 21 [Radeon RX 6800/6800 XT / 6900 XT]
       vendor: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI]
       physical id: 0
       bus info: pci@0000:08:00.0
       logical name: /dev/fb0
       version: c3
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: pm pciexpress msi vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom fb
       configuration: depth=32 driver=amdgpu latency=0 mode=2560x1440 resolution=2560,1440 visual=truecolor xres=2560 yres=1440
       resources: irq:85 memory:d0000000-dfffffff memory:e0000000-e01fffff ioport:e000(size=256) memory:fc900000-fc9fffff memory:fca00000-fca1ffff```
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I'm wondering if a downgrade of the firmware package could help here, but I'm not sure. I haven't read about problems with the brightness slider, just other things like half screens, black screens...You have one of the AMD graphics cards which have problems with the current firmware.

If it doesn't help, test it with an older 6.17 kernel if it is still installed on your system or another older kernel. At grub menu, which is displayed during boot, select "Advanced options for Zorin", then you can select an older kernel for the next boot (don't select a recovery kernel). If you don't see the grub menu, press continuosly the esc key during boot to show it.

2 Likes
3

downgrading the kernel will not work for this kind of bug, the regression will follow the kernel, the problem is really linux-firmware :wink: