Clevo Keyboard Backlight Control For Linux

Guide to enable and set RGB keyboard colour for any Clevo laptop with any GNU/Linux distro! Finally.

There is no doubt, that not having control over your keyboard backlight is quite frustrating. The blue keyboard light is simply quite annoying. Even if you did not purchase your laptop at NovaCustom, you can still use this guide to get your backlight working, in contrast to other vendors, such as System76. By the way, this guide should work for any new Clevo based brand, such as Sager, Schenker, XMG, Bestware, BTO, XNB and so on.

But I have already tried tuxedo’s clevo-xsm-wmi application and it didn’t work.

– If you follow this guide exactly, the keyboard illumination software will work. Read it with attention! 😉

Awesome! Tell me what to do 🙂

Okay, here we go. I found this link after hours of searching, and it did almost work for me. I have changed the instructions a bit so that anyone should be able to install this software.

Requirements

Please be sure that you have updated your system entirely.

Instructions NEW version

*As soon as the RGB keyboard application is active, you can change the keyboard illumination by holding the Fn key and use the keyboard control keys on the right side of your keyboard.*

Open a terminal window (CTRL+ALT+T) and execute the following lines one-by-one.

sudo apt install -y git dkms build-essential linux-headers-$(uname -r)
git clone https://github.com/tuxedocomputers/tuxedo-keyboard
cd tuxedo-keyboard/
make clean
sudo su
make dkmsinstall
echo tuxedo_keyboard >> /etc/modules
modprobe tuxedo_keyboard
echo "options tuxedo_keyboard mode=0 brightness=25 color_left=0xFFFFFF color_center=0xFFFFFF color_right=0xFFFFFF" > /etc/modprobe.d/tuxedo_keyboard.conf
exit

Now, reboot your laptop. The application should work now.

Instructions OLD version

After the installation of the clevo-xsm-wmi application, you can change the keyboard illumination with these function keys.

Changing the identity might be required in order to use the clevo-xsm-wmi application.

Select a nice start-up colour:

Select the keyboard brightness:

Download the clevo-xsm-wmi repository from TUXEDO Computers (thank you guys).

To the Repository

Once the repository finished downloading, extract the package, rename the package to ‘rgbcontrol‘ (without quotes) and go into the folder rgbcontrol/module. There is a file listed here, it’s called ‘clevo-xsm-wmi.c‘. Open it with a text editor and find;

– Your laptop model. If you don’t know your laptop model, open a Terminal window (CTRL+ALT+T) and execute:

sudo dmidecode | grep "Product Name"

Scroll all the way up and your laptop model (product name) is mentioned there.

Is your laptop model not in the list? Then replace one by your laptop model! Replace:

– ‘Clevo P95_HP’, if you have RGB keyboard only without bar light at the front of the laptop.
– ‘Clevo P870DM’, if you have RGB keyboard with bar light at the front of the laptop.

, by your laptop model product name.

Open a Terminal window again (CTRL+ALT+T), execute the following code.

cd Downloads
cd rgbcontrol
cd module
sudo apt install gcc make
make && sudo make install
sudo insmod clevo-xsm-wmi.ko
sudo install -m644 clevo-xsm-wmi.ko /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/extra
sudo depmod
sudo tee /etc/modules-load.d/clevo-xsm-wmi.conf <<< clevo-xsm-wmi
sudo update-initramfs -uk all

Ignore the errors after "make && sudo make install".

The clevo-xsm-wmi application is installed now. Let's set a default colour! This default colour is set on startup. You can choose 'white white white', for example. Other colours you can set: green, red, blue, yellow, magenta, cyan. You can also set the keyboard brightness. Just select your preference on the left side of this page and copy-paste the code below!

sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/clevo-xsm-wmi.conf <<< 'options clevo-xsm-wmi kb_color=white,white,white, kb_brightness=1'

That’s it!