alt.hn

5/1/2026 at 2:39:42 PM

Automatic Brightness in Plasma

 https://zamundaaa.github.io/wayland,display/2026/04/24/automatic-brightness.html

by speckx

5/4/2026 at 11:42:27 AM

Living in a place with frequent changes between sunny / cloudy weather I've always wanted something like that for my Plasma setup.

Wluma sort of answers that question but I have my cameras always covered for privacy so I couldn't really use it. Tried to experiment with an external (Zigbee-connected) luminance sensor but never managed to get it well.

Ended up writing a Plasma tray applet for quickly switching between "sun mode" and "clouds mode" with a single click (and adjusting both built-in and external display at once). Sometimes this is a saner option than "UX uncanny valley" automation.

by odiroot

5/3/2026 at 10:52:51 PM

Interesting. I've always wondered how other platforms do this. The only one I have studied is ChromeOS. Believe it or not, ChromeOS uses an online learning model to learn the user's preferred transfer function from ambient light to display brightness.

https://chromium-review.googlesource.com/c/chromium/src/+/12...

by jeffbee

5/3/2026 at 11:01:14 PM

Anything has to be better than Android, man. Samsung's "adaptive" brightness being full loss of control, only using the one map that's builtin is infuriating. It should also be capable of adapting to what I want, somewhat, too, at the same time.

Adaptive meaning "you have no control" is so typical of computing, so bad.

Especially on phones, where yes we need mass market acceptability but where these kinds of fixedness really hamper people so much. The more constrained platforms are the ones where it's most important of all that we have adaptability & extensions, freedom to use our options well.

On the ALS (ambient light sensor ) front: anybody else out there with a ColorHug ALS (or two) they have barely used at all? Would be lovely to make use of this more, even a decade and change down the road!! https://blogs.gnome.org/hughsie/2015/03/17/introducing-color...

by jauntywundrkind

5/3/2026 at 11:30:07 PM

Reminds me of the libinput mouse acceleration situation. Even now that they support more configuration for mouse acceleration, a lot of desktop settings UIs abstract it all away to the point where the actual effect of a setting change is impossible to discern from the UI.

It's do-it-like-Apple disease. Apple gets away with it because they hire the best designers and do serious UX/HCI research. And even then the Apple experience is a blend of sublime wonderment and intense frustration.

By contrast, the level of care for the user and open configurability and KDE makes it the best desktop environment on Linux.

by gwerbin

5/3/2026 at 11:50:03 PM

There's usually a large gap between Android and Samsung. If you've tried Samsung, it's not necessarily going to be the same, even if they started from AOSP.

by tux3