I recently bought a Lenovo G500, and had a rather entertaining time trying to get Ubuntu installed. Since it came with Windows 8 installed it turned out to be an unexpected challenge. For anyone with a Lenovo product you are likely to run into the same problem, essentially it refused to even see a new SSD drive I transplanted from another computer.
Thus began my little journey. Windows 8 machines utilize UEFI instead of BIOS and the kicker is that you can only get to it by going through Windows. This can be done by going to the lower right hand corner and hitting Settings. Then change settings, and then General. Scroll down to Advanced Options go into it and choose UEFI Settings.
Your machine will then boot into the UEFI/BIOS. You need to enable legacy, set legacy to first, make sure USB boot is enable, and enable BIOS flash back. Ubuntu 12.04 should install normally at this point however the screen will be at its dimmest level or possibly black. Hit the brightness control function key and it should become visible.
Now for my two questions:
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Brightness control has two settings really bright close to maximum and really dim close to black with nothing in between, is there a work around to allow finer adjustment? Any information I would need to provide to get an answer please let me know and let me know how to get. I am merely an apprentice when it comes to using Linux.
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Touchpad will not turn off, even though I set it to turn off in the settings, what terminal command do I need to add turn it off?
Thank you for any assistance.
Best Answer
Follow the steps detailed on this page:
Screen brightness reset to minimum after every reboot
The file /etc/rc.local add before line exit 0:
echo 5 > /sys/class/backlight/acpi_video0/brightness exit 0
Where 5 is the brightness level from 0 to 10
The max brightness is defined in /sys/class/backlight/acpi_video0/max_brightness. The default is 15 on my laptop. So if you want to set it to 50%, you should use echo 7. – amazingjxq Dec 3 '11 at 3:50
In my Lenovo G500, max brightness seemed to be 100, so I added that line with 'echo 500'. Rebooted and no problem.