Changing contrast/brightness with linux drivers

[Dehumanizer]

Hi,

Is there any option/utility/whatever to change contrast and brightness as it is in the windows version of the driver? I know about xgamma, but this does not solve my problem, gamma is just one thing, contrast and brightness are two others (actually, in windows driver there a also all 3 options, gamma, contrast and brightness)
Any ideas...?
Thanks.

[Petersen]

Originally posted by Dehumanizer
Hi,

Is there any option/utility/whatever to change contrast and brightness as it is in the windows version of the driver? I know about xgamma, but this does not solve my problem, gamma is just one thing, contrast and brightness are two others (actually, in windows driver there a also all 3 options, gamma, contrast and brightness)
Any ideas...?
Thanks.


Excellent question!
I have the same problem. Moreover, there is the usual problem of people misunderstanding the issue! When in the past I talked about reducing brightness under X, people came up with xgamma! But xgamma, while useful in many cases, does NOT reduce the overall brightness of the screen!?

What I found, however, is a slight shimmer of hope: xbrightness
I even had to upgrade xfree from 4.0.2 to 4.3.0 in order to use this new small program: It allows for changing the overall brightness of the screen.

But there are still issues:
- Reducing the overall brightness makes the screen look "milky"; so you would need a util to change gamma PLUS a util to change contrast
- xbrightness, unfortunately, does boycott xgamma, which means that either one resets the other!

What does this mean:
We still need good tools to change overall brightness (not only gamma!), and to change contrast under xfree! I couldn't find anything at all.

Whereas under windows the driver settings provide for independently changing gamma, brightness, contrast.
You wouldn't even need a tool like "powerstrip" therefore, though powerstrip makes life even easier, by allowing for changes on the fly via keyboard shortcuts, even from inside games - very helpful!

So, under linux/X, there is neither a substitute for powerstrip nor at least some util to change contrast and brightness and gamma independently.

I don't want to whine about it, but this is sad. If someone knows some kind of a work-around or solution, please, tell me.

The problem is that my tft screen is very, very bright - I almost can't work under linux/X due to this eye-stressing brightness and the lack of contrast regulation via software. Always using the monitor knobs is not very good, nor sufficient; moreover, the tft starts to make a hissing sound when reducing the brightness via the monitor controls (NOT via software, like powerstrip).

Ideas anyone?


Thanks for reading this lengthy article
Petersen

[Dehumanizer]

yea, exactly, I have the same problem that my TFT is pretty bright and the contrast/brightness controls on the LCD itself don't help much... Thanks for the xbrightness idea, I didn't know about it. It looks like this one is quite usefull for me, however if we had all 3 controls in one like in windows it would be cool. It shouldn't be a big problem for guys at nVidia at least to include an option for XF86Config for gamma/contrast/brightness setting and/or to code a small application to do stuff like this. If it works in windows I can't see why it should be a problem in the linux driver.

Jan

[Dehumanizer]

Well, after two years of successfull usage of xbrightness, I upgraded my MX440 to 6200 and begun to have issues with the xbrightness... if I set it even to as low as 5000 or so, it does not darken some colors (blue and white are still fully visible), like this:

http://johny.sk/webcam032.jpg
(sorry for the quality of the image but I just have a webcam here now)

Also in the meantime, nVidia did a good job providing a good GUI control panel binary for nvidia driver similar to the nVidia settings in windows (nvidia-settings) which also allows to change the brightness, contrast and gamma, but with this tool, results are the same.
In Windows, everything works as expected, so the card is OK... I suppose there is some bug in the driver code for 6200 card which was added at driver release 7664 because with old MX440 it works perfectly.

Any ideas anyone...?
Thanks

[Dehumanizer]

Nobody...?

Ok, is there any way how to contact nVidia directly and discuss this with them? Because I strongly feel that this is a bug. There is no direct email contact at their website...