This is a short appreciation/user experience story. Tl;Dr I’m enjoying my time on linux

I have been using Linux for a while (gnome for a year with an Intel UHD gpu, and KDE for a couple of months on a recent AMD gpu), and till now there was no brightness slider. Moreover, I have used the same display with windows for several years and there was no slider as well.

As far as I know (I looked up online some years ago, but this info is sometimes hard to find) my display supports DDC/CI but doesn’t expose brightness (haven’t actually tried).

For some reason, about a week ago a brightness slider appeared on KDE but it didn’t do anything. Yesterday while updating some unrelated stuff I noticed the slider again and moved it for shit and giggles, and the brightness actually changed…

I have several questions… and I don’t even know which piece of software is responsible for this… but thanks

I have been using Linux on and off for several years, often alongside windows, but I have entirely switched to it (almost, I still have a windows PC that I use once in a while) about 16 months ago. I have to say that Linux does take a lot more effort in getting some things to work, but when everything goes smoothly it’s sooo good, and improves every month.

In the span of a year my desktop experience has only got better. But the shock was when I booted up an Ubuntu 16.04 cd I had lying around to fix grub on a dual boot machine and it was barely usable. Now instead it’s almost “plug and play”. Plus Nvidia cards are getting more and more usable with every update, explicit sync is almost merged, and prime works fine already.

There won’t be a year of the Linux desktop anytime soon (there’s still too much that needs improvement), but the next years will definitely be exciting.

P.s.: does any of you know why display brightness works now?

  • Markaos@lemmy.one
    5·
    10 months ago

    It’s a very common feature for monitors, at least in my experience - both of my cheap AOC monitors support it, as well as all the other monitors I’ve ever connected my laptop to (a few HP and Samsung monitors iirc).

    But it also feels kinda janky due to how long the display takes to change the brightness, so maybe that’s why Microsoft decided not to support it?

      • Markaos@lemmy.one
        1·
        10 months ago

        Maybe. To be clear the delay isn’t that large (my very rough guesstimate is somewhere between 100 and 300 ms, probably more towards the lower end), and if I just click somewhere on the slider, it feels fine.

        It only feels janky when I drag the slider and the screen brightness updates in very noticeable steps. But that is how I naturally interact with sliders, so it’s hard not to notice it for me.