So, with 5.20 brightness is meant to transition smoothly. Problem is that not all laptops will do it in a smooth manner, for example my T430 flickers a lot. It only adds unnecessary delay and makes my laptop seem like it's lagging. Maybe it looks nice on some "modern" laptops, who knows. Also it is smoothed out even after idle period, which really makes my laptop feel like it's a laggy pile of crap. And it's not. I would go as far as suggest that there should be epilepsy warning while logging in to plasma!
How many brightness steps does your laptop support? Please provide the output of $ qdbus org.kde.Solid.PowerManagement /org/kde/Solid/PowerManagement/Actions/BrightnessControl org.kde.Solid.PowerManagement.Actions.BrightnessControl.brightnessMax
Can you add a screen recording showing what it looks like for you? Either way the correct solution would be to fix the flickering, not revert the feature entirely.
Marking as needs info
@Kai Uwe Broulik 15
Dear Bug Submitter, This bug has been in NEEDSINFO status with no change for at least 15 days. Please provide the requested information as soon as possible and set the bug status as REPORTED. Due to regular bug tracker maintenance, if the bug is still in NEEDSINFO status with no change in 30 days the bug will be closed as RESOLVED > WORKSFORME due to lack of needed information. For more information about our bug triaging procedures please read the wiki located here: https://community.kde.org/Guidelines_and_HOWTOs/Bug_triaging If you have already provided the requested information, please mark the bug as REPORTED so that the KDE team knows that the bug is ready to be confirmed. Thank you for helping us make KDE software even better for everyone!
I was pretty sure it would not animate for less than a certain amount of steps.
A possibly relevant merge request was started @ https://invent.kde.org/plasma/powerdevil/-/merge_requests/26
Git commit 6fd6179b63d17548ae2dc144afa96d86cda5957e by Kai Uwe Broulik. Committed on 08/10/2020 at 19:55. Pushed by ngraham into branch 'master'. Honor animation brightness threshold also for sysfs helper We should only animate the screen brightness if there are enough steps available to make for a smooth transition. This check was forgotten for the new sysfs brightness animation. FIXED-IN: 5.20.0 M +6 -0 daemon/backends/upower/backlighthelper.cpp M +3 -1 daemon/backends/upower/powerdevilupowerbackend.cpp https://invent.kde.org/plasma/powerdevil/commit/6fd6179b63d17548ae2dc144afa96d86cda5957e
Git commit 053f92ccd69d851b843bf8d043875fc9b9821379 by Nate Graham, on behalf of Kai Uwe Broulik. Committed on 09/10/2020 at 02:52. Pushed by ngraham into branch 'Plasma/5.20'. Honor animation brightness threshold also for sysfs helper We should only animate the screen brightness if there are enough steps available to make for a smooth transition. This check was forgotten for the new sysfs brightness animation. FIXED-IN: 5.20.0 (cherry picked from commit 6fd6179b63d17548ae2dc144afa96d86cda5957e) M +6 -0 daemon/backends/upower/backlighthelper.cpp M +3 -1 daemon/backends/upower/powerdevilupowerbackend.cpp https://invent.kde.org/plasma/powerdevil/commit/053f92ccd69d851b843bf8d043875fc9b9821379