You are comparing proprietary hardware that was made to specifically work
with Windows with a post installation OS that is made to work with generic
hardware. I am not saying that it can't be made to work, just that we need
to be careful when making such comparisons.

I don't own a laptop so can't help you specifically, but somebody here
likely has a similar setup and can advise you.

I wasn't comparing anything, all I did was prove the hardware was functional by
trying it under Windoze. Ubuntu is intercepting the key controls correctly,
just that the setting isn't making it to hardware. Guessing that could be a
pretty simple fix. First thing that came to mind is that perhaps a proprietary
driver was required but being just a stoopid user I don't know where I would
even look for a driver to install it.

In any event, if this is the worst incompatibility I'll encounter, I won't
complain too much about it. I really like Unity over Gnome. It's a fairly new
laptop model, so maybe the backlight control issue will get resolved with a
future update. I may try a few other live CD distributions and see if there's
any difference.

In any event, if this is the worst incompatibility I'll encounter, I won't
complain too much about it. I really like Unity over Gnome. It's a fairly
new laptop model, so maybe the backlight control issue will get resolved
with a future update. I may try a few other live CD distributions and see
if there's any difference.

May I suggest you try Linux Mint 12 in live Mode.

Which desktop environment? It comes with several. It all depends on the
user and their preferences. Personally I hate Cinnamon worse than Unity or
GNOME Shell. My order would be Unity, GS and Cinnamon, but someone else
might really like Cinnamon. It all comes down to what you expect and how
much s delivered. Going into 11.04 there were high expectations that were
dashed (no pun intended) and it has had a hard time gaining traction, but
Unity has more promise than either GS or Cinnamon and it is really making
gains and inroads. I have been using it for several days now (for like the
20th time) and it is working well and I am a KDE guy. I have it customised
to my liking and it is performing fine. I will go back to KDE, but see no
problem with Unity.

I don't have much to help you, except I can tell you that the screen
brightness is a separate system from the video. An LCD panel is a
passive device, so there is an actual light bulb, either a fluorescent
lamp or a series of LED's. along the bottom edge. There is a separate
control line that goes into the laptop lid to control the brightness.

In Ubuntu 11.10, you can run System Settings, Screen and then there should be a
slider to set the brightness. At least, there is on my laptop, which has Radeon
HD 4200 graphics and uses the AMD proprietary FGLRX graphics driver.

On my desktop, Ubuntu 10.10 with Nvidia graphics, I can run Nvidia X Server
Settings, and under the "X Server Color Correction" tab, there is a brightness
slider.

The setting slider is there and I can move it around, but it has no effect.

I haven't found (so far) any other settings pages specific to my hardware.