Ubuntu Karmic is out and many updates have lead to great improvements in compatibility with this laptop. Karmic runs perfectly out of the box except for one thing – screen brightness adjustment doesn’t work. The fix for this is quite simple though.
1. Open up /etc/default/grub in your preferred text editor as root (For a nice GUI interface, press Alt+F2 then enter the command “gksu gedit /etc/default/grub” and press enter.)
2. Once you have the file open, add “nomodeset acpi_backlight=vendor” to the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT entry, save, and exit.
3. Now run (in a terminal – Applications menu > Accessories > Terminal) “sudo grub-update” and reboot your computer. Once started up you should be able to adjust the screen brightness!
Not using Karmic yet? Try the Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope (9.04) Tutorial for getting this laptop working in Jaunty (9.04).
I’ve been looking around the web for an answer to this problem and this solution worked perfectly. Thank you for the information!
Glad I could help.