Brightness slider and Fn keys fail in Hybrid mode on Acer Nitro (RTX 4050) - Incorrectly targeting nvidia_0 interface

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Assessment

Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Newbie friendliness
48/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Active
Tech stack
c, linux

Research direction

The issue names cinnamon-settings-daemon but no source file or test; start by locating its brightness handling and tracing how the slider and Fn keys select /sys/class/backlight interfaces. Reproduce on the specified Hybrid Acer Nitro setup, compare nvidia_0 with intel_backlight, and verify that both controls adjust the physical display without breaking the NVIDIA PRIME bridge.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

Distribution
Mint 22.2 Zara (Cinnamon Edition)

Package version
Cinnamon 6.4.8 / cinnamon-settings-daemon

Graphics hardware in use
Intel Alder Lake-P UHD Graphics & NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 Laptop GPU (Optimus/Hybrid Mode)

Frequency
Always

Bug description
In Hybrid (Optimus) mode, the Cinnamon brightness slider and keyboard Fn keys fail to adjust the physical screen brightness. The system erroneously targets the nvidia_0 backlight interface, which is a "dead end" on this hardware configuration.

While the UI slider moves and updates the numerical value in /sys/class/backlight/nvidia_0/brightness, the physical screen remains at 100% brightness because the hardware is actually wired to the /sys/class/backlight/intel_backlight/ controller.

Standard kernel workarounds like acpi_backlight=native, vendor, or video do not resolve the issue on this model (Acer Nitro AN515-58) and kernel version (6.14). Manual hardware control via sudo brightnessctl --device=intel_backlight set 50% works perfectly, confirming that the hardware is functional but the Cinnamon UI is linked to the wrong interface.

Steps to reproduce

1. Use an Acer Nitro AN515-58 laptop with NVIDIA proprietary drivers (v580+).

2. Ensure the system is in Hybrid/Optimus mode (Integrated graphics driving the display).

3. Attempt to adjust brightness using the Cinnamon taskbar slider or laptop Fn keys.

Expected behavior
The Cinnamon brightness applet should detect and prioritize the functional intel_backlight interface over the non-functional nvidia_0 interface when the iGPU is the primary display controller.

Additional information
Hard-coding the backlight to Intel via X11 configuration (20-intel.conf) causes a critical crash of the Display Manager (LightDM) because it breaks the NVIDIA PRIME bridge. The issue appears to be a lack of proper backlight arbitration in the Cinnamon settings daemon for newer RTX 40-series mobile hardware.

Kernel version: 6.14.0-37-generic
Nvidia Driver: 580.95.05

Dominant language
C
Stars
71
Forks
75
PR merge metrics
No merged PRs in 30d

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