Brightness controls not working on Gigabyte Aero 4k OLED display

[nerdo]

Distribution (run cat /etc/os-release):
NAME="Pop!_OS"
VERSION="19.10"
ID=ubuntu
ID_LIKE=debian
PRETTY_NAME="Pop!_OS 19.10"
VERSION_ID="19.10"
HOME_URL="https://system76.com/pop"
SUPPORT_URL="http://support.system76.com"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://github.com/pop-os/pop/issues"
PRIVACY_POLICY_URL="https://system76.com/privacy"
VERSION_CODENAME=eoan
UBUNTU_CODENAME=eoan
LOGO=distributor-logo-pop-os

Related Application and/or Package Version (run apt policy $PACKAGE NAME):

Issue/Bug Description:
I have a Gigabyte Aero with the 4k OLED panel and brightness controls do not work. I hoped that they would work since System76 released a laptop with a 4k OLED panel and I'm presuming (probably incorrectly) that it's the same Samsung 4k OLED panel that is found in most laptops with that description.

I'm able to get it working with a xrandr workaround. I went as far as creating a utility to manage it (https://github.com/nerdo/xrandr-brightness) but that comes with its own issues like it not being a true brightness adjustment and some weird flickering going on.

Steps to reproduce (if you know):

Expected behavior:

Other Notes:

[brs17]

@nerdo, I moved this issue to the appropriate repository (system76-oled).

The oled brightness control was specifically written for the Adder Workstation as can be seen here. Some work may need to be done to add support for other laptops with OLED displays. PRs welcome!

[kchawla-pi]

OLED displays are only getting more common on laptops. It would be great if the Pop_OS team would proactively address this soon.

[jackpot51]

There is no way to detect OLED displays other than matching each model exhaustively. Please submit a PR adding matching for your laptop.

[kchawla-pi]

Thanks! Are there any good resources where I can start? I develop in Python, and am new to Linux tinkering.

[derde]

I wrote some crummy code that adjusts it with xrandr - depending on whether the file is named brighter or darker - and then I bound it to some soft keys. The xrandr setting does not survive suspend though.

#! /usr/bin/python

import os,sys,time

delta=0.0
if sys.argv[0].find('brighter')>0:
    delta=0.05
elif sys.argv[0].find('darker')>0:
    delta=-0.05

default=0.4
minimum=0.05
maximum=1.5

brightfile=os.environ['HOME']+'/.bright'
try:
    brightness=float(open(brightfile,'r').read().strip())
except:
    brightness=0.5

brightness=max(min(brightness+delta,maximum),minimum)

cmd='xrandr --output eDP-1  --brightness %0.2f' % brightness
os.system(cmd)
if time.time()-os.stat(brightfile).st_mtime > 1.2:
    notify='''notify-send  -u low -a xrandr --icon=video-display 'OLED brightness' '%s' ''' % cmd
    os.system(notify)
open(brightfile,'w').write('%0.2f\n' % brightness)

[metaer]

Linux Kernel 5.12-rc6 supports OLED display's brightness control: torvalds/linux@2227816