[Solved] Skylake Intel HD graphics

[s.sh]

I recently installed the latest version of debian on my Asus laptop with corei7 skylake CPU. But unfortunately I can't change screen brightness which is really annoying.
I installed linux-firmware-nonfree, xserver-xorg-video-intel and some other related packages and even a skylake driver directly downloaded from intel ... but nothing. Still can't change the brightness and the '/sys/class/backlight' directory is empty. It seems that the OS doesn't recognize the graphics chipsets. My laptop has also an NVIDIA graphics card as well, but installing nvidia driver disabled the Xserver to start so I removed xorg.conf to be able to login to the system again.
This is the output of some commands to get more information about the hardware:

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lspci -nnk | grep -i vga -A 2
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation Device [8086:1916] (rev 07)
Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device [1043:1280]
00:04.0 Signal processing controller [1180]: Intel Corporation Device [8086:1903] (rev 08)

lshw -c video
*-display UNCLAIMED
description: VGA compatible controller
product: Intel Corporation
vendor: Intel Corporation
physical id: 2
bus info: pci@0000:00:02.0
version: 07
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: vga_controller bus_master cap_list
configuration: latency=0
resources: memory:dd000000-ddffffff memory:b0000000-bfffffff ioport:f000(size=64)
*-display
description: 3D controller
product: NVIDIA Corporation
vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:01:00.0
version: a2
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: bus_master cap_list rom
configuration: driver=nvidia latency=0
resources: irq:16 memory:de000000-deffffff memory:c0000000-cfffffff memory:d0000000-d1ffffff ioport:e000(size=128) memory:df000000-df07ffff


xbacklight
No outputs have backlight property

Any help?

[stevepusser]

Have you searched this forum for "skylake"?

Anyway, the solution for Skylake is here: https://forums.bunsenlabs.org/viewtopic.php?id=1185

and for your Optimus switchable graphics: (also install all the packages they mention from backports if possible) https://wiki.debian.org/Bumblebee

[s.sh]

Have you searched this forum for "skylake"?

Anyway, the solution for Skylake is here: https://forums.bunsenlabs.org/viewtopic.php?id=1185

and for your Optimus switchable graphics: (also install all the packages they mention from backports if possible) https://wiki.debian.org/Bumblebee

I have already read about packages from the back port repositories. But using them may lead to some issues respecting the stability of th OS. Is there not any other solution?

[s.sh]

the solution for Skylake is here: https://forums.bunsenlabs.org/viewtopic.php?id=1185

I installed all the packages mentioned in this page, but still video devices are not recognized by the system and I can't change screen brightness.

[smoki]

Just google "No outputs have backlight property" there are various solutions (there you might find some combo which works for you... currently) and bugs about this

Even Debian 9 modesetting has this problem:
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugrepo ... bug=833508

Where still there is no upstream solution:
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=96572

Intel's broken stuff, what to say

[stevepusser]

Since the stock Jessie packages date back to 2014, and Skylake hardware dates from 2016, there is no chance that vanilla Jessie will support it properly. The kernel developers are still working on improving power management for the platform as an ongoing project.

I haven't seen any complaints from Skylake users, including me , that are using the backported graphics support. We even shipped our Jessie-based MX 16 Linux 64-bit version with a backported 4.7 kernel and graphics stack to support Skylake out of the box, and haven't had any issues with it. The only issues you may encounter with backported packages is that they probably won't get any security upgrades, but so far we have only had to patch and rebuild the 4.7 kernel once for that kind of issue.

Your other option is to install Stretch (Debian testing) now that it's frozen and use that.

Older kernels also didn't support any sound for my laptop, but it just automagically worked after the upgrades. Have you tested your audio yet?

[s.sh]

To anybody who might come to this issue in future: The problem is the stable kernel does not support the hardware and also installing the drivers on the stable kernel did not solve the problem. So I installed the last version of kernel from backport repositories and the system now correctly recognizes the graphics devices.

[s.sh]

The only issues you may encounter with backported packages is that they probably won't get any security upgrades, but so far we have only had to patch and rebuild the 4.7 kernel once for that kind of issue.

Why so? I keep my packages up to date by using apt-get and installing new releases (both kernel itself and the installed packages) as soon as possible. Could you say what kind of security update will I miss?

[Head_on_a_Stick]

Could you say what kind of security update will I miss?

If just the kernel package itself is installed then that will not be updated and any new security fixes will be missed.

To avoid this, install the kernel metapackage instead — this will always depend on the latest available kernel version:

https://packages.debian.org/jessie-back ... mage-amd64

If you have followed the instructions in my linked guide then this should already be installed.

Debian testing/unstable is not as secure as the stable release and fixes are not applied as quickly, this also applies to jessie-backports.

[s.sh]

Could you say what kind of security update will I miss?

To avoid this, install the kernel metapackage instead — this will always depend on the latest available kernel version:

https://packages.debian.org/jessie-back ... mage-amd64

.

I did install through the metapackages:

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sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -t jessie-backports linux-image-amd64

Also this command results the same:
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade -t jessie-backports

So I didn't compile the kernel to just place the image in /boot. I actually upgraded the kernel through the apt tool (i.e installed metapackage). And every time I update the OS I do similar to do so. (apt-get dist-upgrade -t jessie-bakports). Is there any problem with my approach?