[Guide] [Fedora 23] How to setup your machine to auto-adjust screen brightness depending on time of day

Operating Systems & Open Source Linux
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Welcome to my guide for Fedora 23 and F.lux.

F.lux auto changes your screen brightness according to the time of day to reduce your eye strain. It can be set via Lat/Long or zip code.
Fedora 23 does not have the GTK application so we use the CLI version and set it up to autostart on login.

To start with, both the 32 bit and 64 bit version use the same instructions. The only difference is the wget line.

The first wget is the 32 bit. The second is the 64 bit. Use the one according to your OS version.

32-bit

$wget -c https://secure.herf.org/flux/xflux.tgz
$tar -xvzf xflux.tgz
$rm -rf xflux.tgz

64-bit

$wget -c https://justgetflux.com/linux/xflux64.tgz
$tar -xvzf xflux64.tgz
$rm -rf xflux64.tgz

continuing....... all commands from here down are universal.

$sudo cp xflux /usr/bin/
$sudo chmod 755 /usr/bin/xflux 

$sudo touch ~/.config/autostart/xflux.desktop
$sudo gedit ~/.config/autostart/xflux.desktop

In Gedit copy and paste this and save.

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Version=1.0
Name=xflux
Comment=Adapts screen color temperature according to time of day
Exec=/bin/xflux -z zipcode
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Name[en_US]=xflux

And that is it. you can $cat the file to check to make sure it is there. When you restart your machine you can check your System Monitor to see if xflux is running.

The options for xflux are: -z zipcode or -l latitude -g longitude

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tips fedora
Well as a Fedora user I have to thank you for this :)

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Why are you installing software that's not in your repos?

xflux is proprietary, by the way. Have you read their EULA? Some snippets:

And what customer information do they gather, you might ask? Well, something like this:


Add geolocation data and IP address too:

There's an open source package that does the exact same thing, it's called redshift, it's in the repos (or it should be, it's GPL licensed) and you are not required to supply your location to make it work. You don't even need an internet connection to make it work.

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FYI, Flux does not require a network to work either. It uses either the Lat/Long or Zip code to determine the time zones.

What are you, an RMS fanatic wanting to burn down any software company producing proprietary software? Redshift does not work as well as FLUX. Also, Fedora (RHEL beta), is full of proprietary binary blobs. I have an Intel chipset...binary, proprietary blob. My BIOS, sound, network, wireless, ALL the hardware in my machine use proprietary, binary blobs.

Get off your high horse and let people install and use whatever the hell they want. FYI, any website you visit records your information. IP address, geolocation (if you have a device with GPS), etc.

Flux accesses the internet once. and only once. When you download it from the website. Try it sometime if you dare. Download the software, disconnect from the web and install it. See if it prevents you from using the software.

You ask why I install software on my machine that is not in the stock repos?

Because I fucking want to! You have an issue with the software I run on MY fucking hardware that i paid for?

And your reasoning about why i should use Redshift over xFlux is wrong. Read the author's own words: http://jonls.dk/2009/12/flux-for-linux/

When I learned that there is a version for linux (xflux) I had to get
that for my Ubuntu laptop. I was quite disappointed, however, when I
discovered that not only does it not feature a sleek GUI like the
windows version, it also simply does not work at all on my laptop. f.lux
throws this message at me: “Sorry, we only support 24/32-bit displays
right now” which must be a bug because I am running in 24-bit mode with
the open source radeon driver.

He wrote the Redshift program because xflux did not work on his hardware at the time. NOT because of privacy issues like you spout about. Redshift also still uses 3rd party geo-location sources for the information it needs. that means that you would have to track down the information on the privacy of those sources since every time you connect to them, you are giving them your location and IP address.....

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Wow, I hit a nerve.

I'm not a RMS/privacy fanatic, I was pointing out that there is an alternative that you can find in the repos (usually, of course) and doesn't have a few pages worth of privacy-related information.

I don't have an issue with what you install on your hardware, lol.

About the other stuff: sure, you're right.

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wouldn't be easier to just cron this up?

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yeah, but why not use the systemd services/?

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Fedora unlike most Linux distros doesn't include very many apps/programs in the distribution you install, in fact to get basic applications like Chrome or VLC player you need to install the RPM fusion repositories for both licensed and non licensed software, or manually DL and install the programs from their sites or 3rd party sites, basic programs that most of us use are not included with a Fedora distro install.

BTW...thanks for the guide.

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As a Fedora User, Thanks for the guide.

When I read the title, I thought of this as well :)

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Honestly just use Redshift, it's open source and achieves pretty much the same thing without all the closed source crap