Dual booting with Windows, laptop keyboard backlight timeout

General system Newbie
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I’ve got two laptops that dual boot with Window 11, a Samsung Galaxy Book Pro (NP950) and a Honor Magicbook 15. Both have EOS and no problems, though they both also have manufactures software in Windows to control keyboard backlight settings.

For example the Magicbook has Honor PC Manager, this is where you can set the keyboard backlight timeout, from 15 seconds in stages up to no timeout at all. So you set this in Windows and that setting also carries over to EOS.

So when you then boot to EOS those timeouts also apply, there isn’t a way that I know of in EOS to change those. The Fn keys to turn kbd backlight on or off, (and also brightness low or high), work in EOS, so that’s good, but the timeout is what was set in Windows.

So it seems I need to keep the Windows partition on both laptops, just in case I want to alter those timeouts, (Windows is never used in daily use), but the other question is, if I wiped the Windows partition, or formatted the drive completely to install only EOS, what would happen to the backlight timeout settings?

On a laptop keyboard backlight is an important feature, and I want to keep control of it. How is it that a setting made in Windows carries over to Linux, what is the common factor?

2

I honestly know nothing about the software you use for Windows however I can say that the software for most of the light stuff is Windows only.

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That’s right, Manufacturers each have their own software that installs drivers, updates the BIOS and tweaks some of the brightness settings and controls other Fn options. Laptops have proprietary software for all that stuff that’s only needed in…laptops!

EOS has matured a lot in this respect, (is it mostly down to kernel updates?). Screen Brightness and Volume Fn keys work. I found a script that installs an applet and can change the battery charge and discharge limits (battery saver), that’s also one of the things usually only set from inside Windows that also carries across a reboot to Linux. That’s good to have.

There’s no adjustment for kbd backlight in the UEFI BIOS, does Windows write to a ‘hidden’ setting in the BIOS or is it stored in one of the boot partitions? I suspect it’s the former but haven’t been able find out for sure.