10.10 with applet
Who have problems with brightness fn keys in 10.10 ubuntu, please check if gnome brightness applet works for you (right click on gnome panel, add to panel, search brightness).
I see people still having problems with fw4x,fw5x models. I’m not much help here, because for me it just works now.
Upgraded to 10.10
Upgraded today. Fglrx mixup with nvidia drivers again after upgrade, to fix I deleted nvidia-current package.
Brighness keys works great even with dual monitor setup. S1/AV Mode keyas are recognized. AV Mode runs player by default.
I guess sony broke again something in newer than mine models.
Plans for 10.10
Hello guys. I’m still on 10.04 where brightness works fine (except dual monitor setup). I see you say that in 10.10 they are broke keys again. I’ve not tried it yet just added in plans. Keep watching.
Brightness bug with dual display mode
So I moved to Lucid. It was a pain to make fglrx work after upgrade. It somehow messed up with nvidia drivers and while Xorg was loading fglrx it was loading glx and dri extensions fron nvidia package. I fixed symlinks and installed fglrx 10.7.
Brighness control works ok while I’m on laptop without external display. But when I’m in dual display mode brightness control works only from power managmer. While using fn keys brightness popup doesn’t move.
Well, it’s time to fix a new bug.
Brightness solution for Lucid from Vanio
As previous solution was not universal as I thought, many people confirm that solution from Vanio works for them. Try it.
While I’m finally moving to 10.04 I will test both solutions later.
Brightness fix for Lucid from Joe L
As I have not moved to Lucid yet, not much played with brightness.
Then thanks to Joe L, I guess he found a universal brightness fix for Ati and radeon/hd drivers in Lucid. Read it, try it and report back how it works 
Lucid brightness control progress
I have spend some time on figuring out what’s broken in Lucid for brightness. It actually works through HAL and I can control it with python or shell scripts manually hooked to acpi events for Fn keys. But it’s a dirty hack.
So then I finally figured out that gnome-power-manager is responsible for osd notification of brightness control and for handling Fn brightness keys, and it is broken. It’s broken somehow partially because you can control brightness through power preferences (which is gnome-power-manager itself).
While I’m hacking a power manager the easiest way to control brightness is to add Brightness Applet on the gnome panel and control it with mouse scroll wheel.
P.S. I guess there is a way to add AV Mode key support without patching sony-laptop module.
What’s about latest Ubuntu 10.04 beta?
I want to gather all problems for the latest beta in the one post. If someone have any problems with FW models in latest Ubuntu 10.04 beta, leave comments here then.
ATI Catalyst 10.2 (fglrx) warning
With dual monitor setup you have invisible mouse cursor on laptop screen
AV Mode media key patch for 9.10 (Karmic Koala)
I have made a patch for latest sony-laptop module in 2.6.31 kernel to fix broken AV Mode key handling.
If you want to apply this patch please follow fourth step in Finally a brightness How To post but apply this new patch instead of old one.
From: Anton Veretenenko <anton@veretenenko.ru>
Subject: [PATCH] UBUNTU: sony-laptop: Sony Vaio FW series media keys: AV Mode key support broken
Bug: #502751
AV Mode media key support broken on sony-laptop kernel module.
Signed-off-by: Anton Veretenenko <anton@veretenenko.ru>
---
drivers/platform/x86/sony-laptop.c | 2 ++
1 file changed, 2 insertions(+)
--- /usr/src/linux-2.6.31/drivers/platform/x86/sony-laptop.c 2010-01-03 23:21:05.000000000 +0500
+++ drivers/platform/x86/sony-laptop.c 2010-01-04 03:32:20.000000000 +0500
@@ -868,6 +868,8 @@ static struct sony_nc_event sony_100_eve
{ 0x10, SONYPI_EVENT_ANYBUTTON_RELEASED },
{ 0x91, SONYPI_EVENT_PKEY_P2 },
{ 0x11, SONYPI_EVENT_ANYBUTTON_RELEASED },
+ { 0xA1, SONYPI_EVENT_PKEY_P3 },
+ { 0x21, SONYPI_EVENT_ANYBUTTON_RELEASED },
{ 0x81, SONYPI_EVENT_FNKEY_F1 },
{ 0x01, SONYPI_EVENT_FNKEY_RELEASED },
{ 0x82, SONYPI_EVENT_FNKEY_F2 },
