FC8 (32-bit) screen dimming

[Marc Schwartz]

David Timms <dtimms at iinet.net.au> writes:

> Phillip wrote:
>> On upgrading from FC6 to FC8 on my laptop, the screen dims almost
>> immediately at the beginning of the boot up sequence. The screen is
>> bright for any length of time until the messages shows that the
>> kernel is booting. Then the screen dims so that text and graphics
>> are barely discernible. This is true in text as well as graphics
>> modes (runlevels 3 and 5).
>>
>> Does anyone know what setup file may be causing this?
> Could be to do with the screen saver - it fades the X gui out before
> it starts the screen saver ?
>
> Could be that it's sensing low battery power and trying to save power ?
>
> Could be that during boot up ntpd resets the time forward, and the
> screen saver noitices there has been no activity for X minutes and
> starts the fade out.
>
> DaveT.

I can't speak directly to the console mode issues, as I have not noted
this behavior there, but when running in X, there is a setting in:

  System -> Preferences -> System -> Power Management

where there is a check box labelled: "Dim display when idle".

I believe that this is checked by default.

Uncheck it and you should be back to normal behavior.  

The one thing that I have noted is that when running in TwinView on my
laptop, with an external LCD display connected, only the internal LCD panel
is affected by the setting. Perhaps this is expected or a bug in the
nVidia driver. Either way, I have disabled the behavior for "On AC
Power" and have it enabled for "On Batter Power".

HTH,

Marc Schwartz