Asus M50VM Laptop and Linux Screen Brighness

If your screen is too dark when using a Ubuntu Linux distribution on your Asus M50VM series laptop, your light sensor is to blame. Try this:

Open a terminal via >Applications>Accessories>Terminal

Once in the terminal, type (or just copy the next line):

sudo gedit /sys/devices/platform/asus_laptop/ls_switch

It will ask for your root password. Enter it.

Within the gedit window that pops up, change the "1" to a "0"

Save.

Reboot the computer if the screen doesn't go full bright immediately.

This disables the light sensor, re-enabling your screen brightness control.

This technique may work with other versions of Linux, but I don't have the patience to figure out all the different root command equivalents of "sudo" for all the different distros.

Good luck!