Screen dim when switching back to X from console

Apparently my screen becomes dim after coming back to the X desktop from the console. Restarting the X session fixes it but that is not a really good solution since I have to temporarily stop all of the applications that I'm currently using. Anybody know how to fix this? Currently, I am using Xfce on Slackware on my IBM TP 600E. This dim screen has been a problem on both my 2.4 and 2.6 kernels. I'm guessing it might be a frame buffer problem but I'm not really sure how to fix it. Any ideas?

phil

i can tell you why its happening .. but not how to fix it ... i been working on it myself ;) you told xfce to raise your brightness.... when you leave x to go to console ... it 'forgets' so when you come back it doesn't remember it was supposed to be brighter... if you can touch the slider with the mouse and your brightness will come back ... i am sure there is a better way ... but its what i have been doing (of course i so rarley go back and forth that it doesnt affect me much) post if you figure it out :)

I had tried to manually increasing the brightness back throught the desktop settings menus before, but that didn't bring the screen back to the original quality. If you have successfully done that for your linux box, however, you could prolly write a script to do it for you. I don't understand why Xfce 'forgets' it display settings, though. If I did, then perhaps I could fix it....

phil

yeah i don't get it either... sounds like you are definatley having a different problem ... but its one that is really 'silly' you say its an ibm think pad ... is there maybe a bios setting for screen brightness... or maybe a 'power' save setting. or maybe... is Ctrl-Alt-F1 or otherwise a hotkey for your laptops screen brightness? i dunno ... just shooting from the hip.

IBM Thinkpads have a Fn key which allows a user quick access to things like hibernation, sound volume, etc. My particular model, however, does not have a hot key for screen brightness. I hightly doubt its a problem with my BIOS settings, but it could perhaps be a problem with the APM implentation. APM seems to work fine, though, and I don't have any problems with the screen brightness after I put the machine to sleep and so forth. The problem is pretty much limited to when I switch between the console and X desktop. Apparently it seems that only a handful of ppl have had this same problem and nobody knows how to fix it....

phil

I had this problem on Slackware 10.2 after a default install on a Toshiba Tecra 8000. I resolved the problem by switching away from the 24 bit depth vesa configuration.

When switching to 16 bit vesa then it works.

When switching to 16 or 24 bit neomagic it works.

The neomagic card is said to not support 24 bits anyway, so I'll just stick with 16 bit neomagic.

To change your configuration.
Edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Device "vesa"
DefaultDepth 24