Redshift not working (Update)

[gillsman]

In a previous post I was asking about redshift not working on mint 21.3 and if there is an alternative, I have found an alternative that may be of interest to anyone else that can't get redshift to work.

I installed sct from terminal (sudo apt install sct) then using the applets in system settings I added sct toggle, you will need to search for it in applets, download and add it, it will then appear in the taskbar and will give options to set colour levels defined by a four digit number, you can experiment to find the number that suits you, 3000 for example gives a red hue for night use 6000 for daylight, clicking each time on the icon toggles through all the settings that you have entered.

I hope this is of help to others as it has been to me.

Good old Linux, there's always a way round a problem.

 

[MikeWalsh]

@gillsman :-

Damn, now why didn't I think of that? I've been using it for years under 'Puppy', and have knocked together a couple of minimalist brightness/colour temp apps using it (with help from a few other Puppy users).

I didn't reply the other day, because most of what I was going to suggest were structured with Puppy-specific settings/locations in mind, so they wouldn't have worked for you under Mint. But 'sct' has been out there for years, and is as easy as pie to use under absolutely ANY distro you care to name. As you've found yourself, all that's needed is to invoke the name of the binary & supply that four-digit value.....and it just 'works'. Everywhere.

Somewhere - in the mess of packages, tarballs and scripts that I laughingly call my 'archives'! - I've got a wee app (with a YAD-powered GUI) that, with help from one of our devs, we put together with a brightness slider and a basic color temp adjuster using 'sct'. A few years ago, a bunch of us on the Puppy forums were playing around with stuff, and seeing what we could come up with as a simple alternative to Redshift (yet with the same sort of functionality).

You'd be welcome to try it, except for the fact that it's packaged in Puppy's .pet format. I don't think that would work in Mint, somehow.....and unfortunately, I don't have the first idea of how you go about putting a .deb together.

But well done you, for mentioning it!

Mike.

 

[gillsman]

@gillsman :-

Damn, now why didn't I think of that? I've been using it for years under 'Puppy', and have knocked together a couple of minimalist brightness/colour temp apps using it (with help from a few other Puppy users).

I didn't reply the other day, because most of what I was going to suggest were structured with Puppy-specific settings/locations in mind, so they wouldn't have worked for you under Mint. But 'sct' has been out there for years, and is as easy as pie to use under absolutely ANY distro you care to name. As you've found yourself, all that's needed is to invoke the name of the binary & supply that four-digit value.....and it just 'works'. Everywhere.

Somewhere - in the mess of packages, tarballs and scripts that I laughingly call my 'archives'! - I've got a wee app (with a YAD-powered GUI) that, with help from one of our devs, we put together with a brightness slider and a basic color temp adjuster using 'sct'. A few years ago, a bunch of us on the Puppy forums were playing around with stuff, and seeing what we could come up with as a simple alternative to Redshift (yet with the same sort of functionality).

You'd be welcome to try it, except for the fact that it's packaged in Puppy's .pet format. I don't think that would work in Mint, somehow.....and unfortunately, I don't have the first idea of how you go about putting a .deb together.

But well done you, for mentioning it!

Mike.

Thanks for your input Mike, I am really happy now I've found the sct solution, it works like a dream for me and it's so simple too, hopefully it could be a solution for others too struggling with redshift. I tried to get redshift working but couldn't find any workarounds so I have now removed it from my system and I'm happy with how it's worked out, however with that said you never know what's round the corner so the time may come when we need redshift back or something else so I would still be interested to know what the issue is, it's apparently something to do with not being able to connect to the server it gets longitude and latitude co-ordinates from but I confess I don't understand it fully.

 

[data_x33]

@gillsman

Do you have xbacklight working?

@ edit
Redshift isn't maintained anymore and doesn't support Wayland environments. You can use gammastep, a redshift fork, as an alternative.

Redshift

 

[kc1di]

I use redshift on Mint and it works fine. You have to manually set the Lat & Long because Geoclue which use to get them online no longer works in most distros that I have tried. In Mint Cinnamon it quite easy to set this by modifying the menu launch code.
redshift-gtk -l (Lat :Long) -t 6500:3300 (Temp setting) Replace (Lat:Long ) with yours without the brackets. And it works fine.
Of course most of the time I use KDE desktop and it has it's own built in night light settings , also believe gnome has it now.
In any event glad sct is working for you.

 

[gillsman]

I think even these days there is still a pre conceived idea that if you use Linux you must be well clued up on computers & I don't claim to be, so let me start with this ~ in answer to GFdeb12, I have a back lit keyboard which is working, is that what you are referring to or is xbacklight something completely different? and to kc1di I'm aware that you can set manual Long / Lat but I have no idea on how to achieve it, I do try to search online for answers but people in the know usually start with something like edit your config file or some such thing but I'm asking myself......How? I don't know where to start and there's rarely a simple step by step guide given because (and this takes me back to my first point) most people using Linux assume everyone else knows what they're talking about, and probably most of you do, unfortunately, I don't. I did try to find a way to input manual settings into redshift but I gave up.
Please don't think i'm criticising anyone personally because I am very grateful to everyone who freely gives their time to help others, so thanks to all

 

[kc1di]

In mint 21.3 you do it like this
Right click on menu icon,
select Configure When that screen comes up at the bottom there is a button that says Menu editor,
click on that, then you will go to Accessories look for redshift in the right hand side. highlight it and select properties
When that dialogue box comes up go to the command line and after the redshift-gtk entry make it look like this

redshift-gtk -l 43.74:-70.55 -t 6500:3300

replacing the Lat & Long #'s with your own.
Now when you launch redshift it will automatically enter the right stuff for you. Once launched you can right click on the redshift Icon and select info and it will tell you if it is all correct. then you can select auto start and your done. It will auto start when you boot up and work fine in Mint. Good luck. Seems complicated but it's really not bad and no messing with config files.

 

[gillsman]

That's exactly what I needed, thank you kc1di, I will give that a go and let you know if i'm successful.
Thank you.

 

[gillsman]

Oh wow, that that actually works, thank you

 

[kc1di]

Oh wow, that that actually works, thank you

Enjoy!

 

[MikeWalsh]

@gillsman :-

There ya go. Somebody willing to give a bit of their time to help out somebody else. Nice one, Dave!

That's the beauty of a community like this. You have such a variety of different people, running different distros, with different objectives & different use-cases, wanting to get so many different things working, that I would be very surprised indeed if somebody in the community couldn't help out in some way. And so often it's just one little bit of information OR a simple "pointer" in the right direction that's needed to complete the "puzzle".

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~​

As for us in Puppyland, well; whilst I understand those who want to do everything by the book, follow all the correct procedures, and stick to ONLY the in-house repositories and recommended ways of doing things (because doing such is reckoned to be safer and more secure), I've never thought you should limit yourself like that. There's a TON of stuff out there available for Linux IF you know where to look.....and I've found a lot of really good software freely available for the taking.

Admittedly, we have some in-built advantages that many don't. Despite running-as-root all the time - one of the Linux community's biggest, most sacreligious "no-nos"! - Puppy's operating model makes it safer than most by its very nature. And backups & restoration only require a simple cpoy/paste operation, restoration taking perhaps 5 minutes. Which gives us a bit more freedom to experiment with slightly unorthodox methods, without worrying overly much about the consequences...

As for most Linux users knowing what they're doing, don't you believe it. Many like to make out they do, so as to appear more knowledgeable in the eyes of their peers, but in many ways things are no different this side of the fence than they are over on the "dark side"! Linux is different, yes; it entails a learning curve because most new users come from Windows (which is all they've ever known).....but as to whether it's actually "better", well.... Of course WE all think it is; we're biased! We've been running it for long enough to have at least a vague idea of what we're doing by now....but none of US are really "experts". We're all of us still learning....and probably will be till the day we pop our clogs..!


Mike.

 

[gillsman]

I'm grateful to anyone that tries to help after all, they don't owe me anything, I say a big thanks to all that do, I just need a little hand holding at times & yes I agree some like to waffle in tech speak, perhaps they don't realise I haven't a clue what they're talking about but thanks to them as well as there might still be something in there that shows the way.