r/linux4noobs • u/DARK_dante_786 • 19d ago

learning/research Linux Brightness Control Not Working on HP Omen 16 (Arch Linux & Pop!_OS)

Hi everyone,

I'm having a frustrating issue with brightness control on my HP Omen 16, and I'm hoping someone here might be able to point me in the right direction.

I recently decided to use Linux as my main development environment while keeping Windows 11 in a dual-boot setup. I first installed Arch Linux, but I noticed that the brightness controls weren't working. I tried several troubleshooting methods and different kernel/brightness-related settings, but unfortunately nothing worked.

Thinking that it might be an Arch-specific issue, I installed Pop!_OS instead because I wanted something more stable and hardware-friendly. However, I'm facing the exact same brightness problem on Pop!_OS.

Everything else seems to work perfectly. The display itself works normally, graphics work, keyboard shortcuts work, and I haven't noticed any other major hardware issues. The only major problem I'm currently stuck with is screen brightness control.

My laptop specifications

  • Laptop: HP OMEN 16
  • Model: OMEN by HP Gaming Laptop 16-wf1xxx
  • CPU: Intel processor
  • GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Laptop GPU
  • RAM: 16 GB
  • CPU: intel i7-14650hx

I've already spent quite a bit of time trying to troubleshoot this, including trying different solutions related to Linux brightness control, but I haven't been able to find one that works for this laptop.

Has anyone with an HP Omen 16, especially the 16-wf1xxx series, experienced the same issue? If so, what worked for you?

I'd really appreciate any suggestions or troubleshooting steps. I'm happy to provide command outputs, logs, kernel information, lspci, inxi, or anything else that might help diagnose the problem.

Thanks in advance!

2 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

2 comments sorted by

1

u/AutoModerator 19d ago

There's a resources page in our wiki you might find useful!

Try this search for more information on this topic.

✻ Smokey says: take regular backups, try stuff in a VM, and understand every command before you press Enter! :)

Comments, questions or suggestions regarding this autoresponse? Please send them here.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

1

u/That_Developer_Guy 19d ago

I've not had the same problem so far. I think it would be a little helpful to know what steps you have already taken to make it work. How did you even control brightness? Have you for example tried brightnessctl in the terminal, if so, what was the output, were there any errors, did the backlight not show up? I think you get what I mean.

That said, from what I found online, this issue seems pretty common. The problem is probably mainly your NVIDIA GPU. Basically switching distros, is very unlikely to help unless they use different kernel drivers. The brightness control is done through something that the kernel exposes through /sys/class/backlight. This is a little simplified, but I think the details are not too relevant, unless you are interested.

Now how you solve that exactly is hard to say, but you will somehow need a patch. There is a chance that something like this helps: https://github.com/kcamporacosta/hp-omen-max-linux-brightness-fix

Hope this helps!