Thanks for your additions!
Regarding your screen brightness problem, I'm almost out of ideas. However, I
found this on Arch user foorums (link:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Backlight#Backlight_utilities):
"All methods expose themselves to the user by /sys/class/brightness. And
xrandr/xbacklight could use this folder and choose one method to control
brightness. But it is still not very clear which one xbacklight prefers by
default. See FS#27677 for xbacklight, if you get "No outputs have backlight
property." There is a temporary fix if xrandr/xbacklight does not choose the
right directory in /sys/class/brightness: You can specify the one you want in
xorg.conf by setting the "Backlight" option of the Device section to the name
of that directory (see
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=651741 at the bottom of the
page for details). "
Would this help? Try changing this default folder for xbacklight and then
make keyboard short cuts for
xbacklight -inc X
xbacklight -dec X
where X is a percentage value so you can increase and decrease the
brightness.
