Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Hello, I'm new to Puppy linux, I looked around for something to revive my old laptop and it works like a charm! But I can't figure out how to change the brightness of my screen, not dim the color but actually control the backlight. Could someone please help me out?

PunchyMchurtyfist wrote: Sat Nov 12, 2022 8:52 am

Hello, I'm new to Puppy linux, I looked around for something to revive my old laptop and it works like a charm! But I can't figure out how to change the brightness of my screen, not dim the color but actually control the backlight. Could someone please help me out?

Don't have fossa on my system at the moment so can't check which, if any, brightness control apps it has. If it uses intel_backlight then xbacklight program would do the job, but I've heard that one is a bit unreliable on some machines. When no gui slider app is provided/installed on system, I use a commandline program simply called 'light' on mine (these commandline apps are in the upstream repos of my Arch-Linux-based distro, but also available for most distros from their repos).

http://haikarainen.github.io/light/

For intel_backlight you can also simply alter brightness via suitable command from an open terminal.
For example, you can check max_brightness allowed and brightness currently being used with commands:

cat /sys/class/backlight/intel_backlight/max_brightness
cat /sys/class/backlight/intel_backlight/brightness

You can then alter the 'brightness' lower or higher, depending what it currently is, by simply echo new value into that 'brightness' value like so:

echo some_new_brightness_value > /sys/class/backlight/intel_backlight/brightness

Some screens won't work with above (for example OLED screens) and it would be then that you'd use something like xrandr command to just dim the colours (which is not what you want so I'll say no more about that). https://terracoders.com/blog/bash-simpl ... ess-xrandr

But yes, 'light' program is probably the simplest commandline program around for this sort of thing, and can made simple brightness control scripts using that, though maybe Fossa has some gui arranged with a slider (?)

There is a command for this in Fossapup64. To try it open the terminal emulator (click the console icon on the desktop) and type in:

brightness-set 50

The number can be between 10 and 100, don't set it to 0 or you'll turn the backlight off.

If it works, you might want to add a script to the /root/Startup directory to set the brightness automatically after reboot.
To do so click the file icon on the desktop - the rox file manager will start (in /root). Open the Startup directory, right-click on the empty white space in the window and select New -> Script. Give the script a name and click Create. Right-click the created script icon and choose Open As Text. In the text editor add a line brightness-set 50 (or brightness-set restore) below #!/bin/sh and save the changes.

The command brightness-set restore will use the value from the /etc/brightness.conf file.

The JWMdesk program can be used to create hotkeys for the brightness-set up and brightness-set down commands.

wiak wrote: Sat Nov 12, 2022 9:30 am

http://haikarainen.github.io/light/

Thank you very much for this, it works very well for me, unlike brightnessctl

I have the attached pet installed in fossapup64.95, called dcontrol. It will show up in the applications menu. Just download and click on the .pet file in Rox, and it should install. It's a brightness/backlight/tint gui, and it works great for me.

Thank you all, I'm still new to Puppy and I really want to like it, but its infuriating to see not even basic functions like brightness control is already easily accessible but has to be asked for on a forum like this.

PunchyMchurtyfist wrote: Sat Nov 12, 2022 6:20 pm

Thank you all, I'm still new to Puppy and I really want to like it, but its infuriating to see not even basic functions like brightness control is already easily accessible but has to be asked for on a forum like this.

I understand your frustration. I consider a few factors in choosing an operating system. Backward compatibility, portability, syncability, customization, size, and speed.

I believe you said the puppy you're running revived an old laptop. That's backward compatibility. Almost all pups are effective in that area.

Puppy linux is innovative in portability, meaning there is effectively no reason to do what other OS's consider a full install. Puppy doesn't care if it's running from an internal harddrive, or external drives. The fact that the 'clean' base operating system is an sfs file system, means that a clean system can be booted at anytime without losing any of your personal modified OS. Which creates the environment for syncability.

By syncability, I mean that since all of your user installed applications and settings are stored in folder or file, your favorite configuration of the OS can be transferred from machine to machine, from older revived hardware, to the newest computer, in essence running the exact same system on all machines. If you spend 5 hours installing applications on one machine, simply copy your pupsave folder to another machine and boot into it. That's portability and syncability. A doubly powerful combination.

Customization comes from the number of puppies, among the other new community developments known as psuedo-full installs, or first-rib builds, which are effectively the root file system of popular linux distros built to use the 'frugal-like' install properties of puppy linux. Because pups are small and many, the tools included will vary, in your example, the screen brightness control.

I'm currently running the beta25 version of KLV-airedale, which is a first rib build of void linux, uses the Xfce desktop, and has screen brightness built in, but it's a different tool than the one I shared with you. The one I shared is actually more powerful, even more than what I've seen on windows machines, of which aren't any of mine! Just download and click on the dcontrol pet and you should be set to go. That being said, the puppy linux "brand" is on the cusp of more polished offerings like KLV-airedale, which is in fact a mainline distro with the puppy linux portability and syncability. I'm running KLV-airedale on 5 different laptops at the moment, and I can do a days work on all of them, and KLV isn't even out of beta stage yet. In fact on those 5 laptops I'm running KLV-airedale, fossapup, bionicpup, vanilladpup, and fatdog, 3 of which I consider daily drivers, but the others will probably arrive at a similar status. They all have different strengths. Regardless, one pup is enough once you learn how to use it.

Size and speed are obvious, fossapup runs on my Toshiba 1.2GhZ single core laptop with 2gb of ram. KLV does also.

So if you're the type of computer user who values those above mentioned strengths, than puppy linux will deliver, but in order to use it well, asking questions and giving feedback on the forum is a valuable resource. It's a forum for the development of the OS's and distros as much at is a 'support' forum. In other words, your participation will enhance the end result.

If that's not the kind of thing your looking for, no harm done. These puppy-linux community distros are the kind of tool that grows with you. I have developed my pupsaves over time, transfer them from machine to machine, break the OS experimenting, and reload yesterdays backup savefolder. And in that process, Puppy is the only I thing I use to do my work, which involves a lot of computer resource intesive applications, pro-audio, document production, and the usual business application. I am self employed and the ability to buy cheap older machines and have them up and running with the exact same up to date system that I'm using on the other machines in a time frame of 30min is outstanding. I don't know of any other OS that makes such a thing possible. But perhaps they're out there.

PunchyMchurtyfist wrote: Sat Nov 12, 2022 6:20 pm

Thank you all, I'm still new to Puppy and I really want to like it, but its infuriating to see not even basic functions like brightness control is already easily accessible but has to be asked for on a forum like this.

In Fossapup, there is a built-in program to control the brightness of the screen without the need to install additional software.

You can find it in the menu. I am not currently in Fossapup. I think it's in the "setup" or "desktop" section. It's called redshift GUI, if I'm not mistaken.
After clicking it in the menu, its icon appears on the bottom tray (on the right).
After clicking the icon, it will offer you 2 sliders. One is screen brightness and the other is for redshift control.
I think I had to symlink its binary to /root/startup to have it active after each boot.

Feek wrote: Sun Nov 13, 2022 3:25 pm

In Fossapup, there is a built-in program to control the brightness of the screen without the need to install additional software.

I had been using dcontrol for so long that I forgot about redshift. Redshift appears to also be what's built into KLV-airedale. AFIK redshift doesn't have a backlight control, but dcontrol does, also the dcontrol tint slider goes both directions from a redshift to a blue shift. So it's more adjustable than redshift. But yes you're right that there is indeed a built in brightness control in fossapup, at least it's in my menu.

geo_c wrote: Sun Nov 13, 2022 6:49 pm

Feek wrote: Sun Nov 13, 2022 3:25 pm

In Fossapup, there is a built-in program to control the brightness of the screen without the need to install additional software.

I had been using dcontrol for so long that I forgot about redshift. Redshift appears to also be what's built into KLV-airedale. AFIK redshift doesn't have a backlight control, but dcontrol does, also the tint control goes both directions from a redshift to a blue shift. So it's more adjustable than redshift. But yes you're right that there is indeed a built in brightness control in fossapup, at least it's in my menu.

yes it works automatically Redshift

geo_c wrote: Sun Nov 13, 2022 2:49 am

PunchyMchurtyfist wrote: Sat Nov 12, 2022 6:20 pm

Thank you all, I'm still new to Puppy and I really want to like it, but its infuriating to see not even basic functions like brightness control is already easily accessible but has to be asked for on a forum like this.

I understand your frustration. I consider a few factors in choosing an operating system. Backward compatibility, portability, syncability, customization, size, and speed.

Yeah, I'm new to Puppy like I said and before that I have only used Ubuntu based distros so I'm pretty new to this kind of thing, I always assumed certain functions like brightness and audio controls were just a given, but Puppy's been a learning experience to say the least. I understand speed and trimming the fat out of a normal OS is what Puppy is going for while also being just as versatile and powerful, however its far from user friendly. Having said all that, I'm enjoying it and all the little challenges its bringing, the laptop I'm using it on has never been faster while still letting me do the things I want to like writing and watching media, youtube, MPV, etc., its honestly very impressive what they have made here and I feel like if I could just figure it out I would grow to love Puppy but I'm still in the frustration stage of learning.

PunchyMchurtyfist wrote: Sun Nov 13, 2022 8:39 pm

...I feel like if I could just figure it out I would grow to love Puppy but I'm still in the frustration stage of learning.

That's the great aspect of using a system like this. When I came to puppy linux I had only tried a couple of other linux distros, Ubuntu being one of them. At the time, around 2007 or 2008, I wasn't impressed with Ubuntu. Dual boot was difficult if not impossible and it seemed very bloated and not particularly fast, like Windows without the polished functionality.

Puppy gave me my computers back. I instantly felt like I had control of them again.

Being born in 1965 and having a dad in the software business, I had experience with msdos since he bought the very first pcxt on the market, but in 2007 I had absolutely zero experience with anything unix like. The puppy-linux forum has taught me a lot, and puppy makes some common unix tasks much easier, things like symlinking, etc. But in the time I have used puppy and asked questions on the forum, I've been able to learn basic scripting (very basic) and boot methods, etc. So being that the system can be backed up (my 1.5gb pupsaves backup to my ssd hard drive in literally 10 seconds) It's easy to experiment. Fun to learn.

In my opinion to really get milage out of this kind of OS approach, you have to be a bit of a tinkerer, which I am. So it's a fit.

Once manipulating and duplicating a puppy OS becomes easier, then it's also easy to set it up for the 'general user.' My wife's laptop died, she's not at all technical, and she doesn't like spending money on things like computers. So she got an old dual core hand-me-down from her mother and I set up fossapup for her to use. The computer runs 5x faster than it did with the Windows 7 that came on it. She's happy. I put a few of @mikewalsh's portable browsers and LibreOffice on it, set up the built in Claws mail, and she's got everything she needs.

The low audio might be an annoyance if you're using a laptop. I do pro-audio and only use the laptop speakers minimally. Like someone mentioned on your other post, pulse audio seems to have the ability to boost and compress audio. I'm going to look into that a little more. The KLV-airedale I've been running is built with pulse audio, and it will run so hot that the audio distorts. Pulse has it's advantages and disadvantages.

Puppy's come in lots of variants. And some look more polished, use different desktops and window managers, audio configurations, video capabilities, etc. Also, the cut down size of genrally 'official' puppies means that every conceivable hardware module is not necessarily included, meaning some machines will have problems with wifi, or audio cards. Those issues can usually be corrected by asking, and there are people here who will package a driver for your particular model. Another way to solve those issues is to swap in what they call a 'huge' kernel that I believe contain a comprehensive set of driver modules. In those situations there are also inexpensive hardware solutions, like a wifi usb dongle, or audio jack. Being I'm in the music/audio business I always have a lot of those little tools available. Like I said I'm running 5 laptops with puppies at various locations that I work, but I have 8 laptops. Puppy makes that not only possible but relatively painless, because once I learned all the install techniques, I became able to set up a system to my current customizations in less than an hour. It only takes me that long because I have about 60gb of integrated data. But that's another topic.

@PunchyMchurtyfist :-

Take a look at my ScreenControl app. It's built using YAD for its GUI, and employs the wee 'sct' tint binary. It gives you a brightness slider, and a button on this will also bring up a 'Colour temp' slider if it's wanted.

Just like this post from the old forum shows:-

https://oldforum.puppylinux.com/viewtop ... 6#p1004796

If interested, you can find the current version of this here:-

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing

--------------------------------------

Or, there's a further development of all this by Fredx181, which combined all this together with a minimal CLI version of the better-known RedShift, geo-location, and manual/automatic operation. The whole thing is packaged as a self-extracting script, and runs from an icon in the 'tray'. You can find the original thread here:-

https://oldforum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=114353

.....and if Fred's links are no longer active, I've long since mirrored them here:-

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing

---------------------------------------------------

There's even an ultra-basic version; just a brightness slider, and a pair of 'tint' buttons.....one preset to the usual day-time value of 6500, and the other preset to an 'average' night-time value of 3500. Which can be found here:-

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing

And there's plenty more stuff kicking around the forums, if ya wanna dig for it.

--------------------------------------------------

Me, I use Fred's Redshift-'lite', as described above. Because once you've set it up to your liking, you can forget about it; it runs completely automatically in the background, gradually tinting to red as the sun sets, and gradually brightening to a day-time hue at dawn.....along with whatever brightness level you've selected.

(If required, you CAN run it in 'Manual' mode, too...and adjust it as & when you want to.)

Mike.

@geo_c :

The sct_dcontrol_64bit.pet from your post does not install dcontrol.

All it contains is a tiny sct command line utility. No gui:

root# tree sct_dcontrol_64bit/
sct_dcontrol_64bit/
├── pet.specs
└── usr
    └── bin
        └── sct

2 directories, 2 files

sct as well as redshift cannot control the backlight. Here is an explanation from the http://jonls.dk/redshift:

Redshift has a brightness adjustment setting, but it does not work the way most people might expect. In fact it is a fake brightness adjustment obtained by manipulating the gamma ramps, which means that it does not reduce the backlight of the screen. Preferable only use it if your normal backlight adjustment is too coarse-grained.

But dcontrol uses the brightness-set script for the task. It also puts a script into the /root/Startup directory that runs the brightness-set NN command. For me, brightness-set restore is better as I'm using the hotkeys to control the brightness.

The dcontrol gui, sct, and even the already available in Fossapup64 brightness-set are all included in the recent version of @radky's JWMdesk pet.

Burunduk wrote: Mon Nov 14, 2022 4:18 am

@geo_c :

The sct_dcontrol_64bit.pet from your post does not install dcontrol.

All it contains is a tiny sct command line utility. No gui:
But dcontrol uses the brightness-set script for the task. It also puts a script into the /root/Startup directory that runs the brightness-set NN command.

The dcontrol gui, sct, and even the already available in Fossapup64 brightness-set are all included in the recent version of @radky's JWMdesk pet.

Interesting, I installed dcontrol years ago when first using fossapup, and I thought it was from that pet. Honestly I don't remember at this point. But I have had dcontrol on my system for so long I just view it as built in at this point. It does the job quite well for adjusting foreground brightness, backlight, and tint.

@PunchyMchurtyfist, you need to install the latest JWMdesk. It has all the necessary desktop settings: JWMdesk

geo_c wrote: Sun Nov 13, 2022 10:59 pm

PunchyMchurtyfist wrote: Sun Nov 13, 2022 8:39 pm

...I feel like if I could just figure it out I would grow to love Puppy but I'm still in the frustration stage of learning.

That's the great aspect of using a system like this. When I came to puppy linux I had only tried a couple of other linux distros, Ubuntu being one of them. At the time, around 2007 or 2008, I wasn't impressed with Ubuntu. Dual boot was difficult if not impossible and it seemed very bloated and not particularly fast, like Windows without the polished functionality.

Puppy gave me my computers back. I instantly felt like I had control of them again.

I finally got both my problems under control, I just use the brightness-set in the terminal to change brightness and the steps I originally followed to increase volume DID actually work but didn't take effect until two reboots for whatever reason. Actually I've noticed several things don't take effects until one or two reboots, its I guess another strange quirk of Puppy but now that I know that behavior I'll be a little more patient and try to see if solutions people have posted really do work, but only after a few reboots. lol

Now if only I could hide the titlebar in Firefox without going fullscreen, Puppy would be perfect and I could see myself using it on my every day desktop too, not just this old laptop.

To hide the menu bar I would normally use the "view" option (is this what you mean?)

@PunchyMchurtyfist

I don't usually hide my menu bars, so I don't know about that one. But I encourage you to download and install JWMdesk3.6 as it has one of the best brightness, backlight, and tint controls built in, along with other tools to customize the desktop, JWMdesk was built into fossapup I'm pretty sure, so it's worth updating, it's quick and painless, just click on the pet file, and it's done.

Fossapup is compatible with the Ubuntu Focal repos, and those are only supported until 2025. Which means that after 2025 the packages available for download will begin to become out of date. But there are newer and better puppies in the works, and other puppy-like builds here coming along nicely, including a rebuild of Fossapup64.9.5, which will be Fossapup64.9.6 if I've got that straight. I plan to download the test builds soon and play with them.

So as I said previously, the better you get with this puppy, the easier it will be to choose another that may be more to your liking later. Although I can attest that Fossapup is rock solid. I've been using it as a daily driver since early 2020. It's got a lot going for it.

Guys i made some Cleaning / changes in to dcontrol and made it 100% portable hope it helps

http://patinsemlinhaslalom.altervista.o ... rol.tar.gz

@AntonioPt :-

Well, for ME it won't download. And after copy/pasting the URL into a fresh tab - and getting it that way - it then refuses to extract....

Needs a bit of work, methinks!

Mike.

AntonioPt wrote: Sat Mar 18, 2023 1:26 am

Guys i made some Cleaning / changes in to dcontrol and made it 100% portable hope it helps

@AntonioPt

If you fork the Display Control module (dcontrol) of JWMdesk, please inform all users of your effort and please release under a different name, so there will be no confusion.

radky wrote: Sat Mar 18, 2023 2:58 am

AntonioPt wrote: Sat Mar 18, 2023 1:26 am

Guys i made some Cleaning / changes in to dcontrol and made it 100% portable hope it helps

@AntonioPt

If you fork the Display Control module (dcontrol) of JWMdesk, please inform all users of your effort and please release under a different name, so there will be no confusion.

Hi @radky i just clean the code and made it more 100% portable biside that i didnt do nuthing else i just didnt know where to tell to everyone

mikewalsh wrote: Sat Mar 18, 2023 1:34 am

@AntonioPt :-

Well, for ME it won't download. And after copy/pasting the URL into a fresh tab - and getting it that way - it then refuses to extract....

Needs a bit of work, methinks!

Mike.

od its my website maybe i paste it wrong any way here all my stuff but keep in mine some are wrong,....
http://patinsemlinhaslalom.altervista.org/puppy/