DDC/CI Linux Driver Continues To Be Worked On For Managing Monitors

A Linux driver for the DDC/CI control protocol for modern displays (well, even many of those going back to ~2005) has been available out-of-tree while finally there has been recent work on getting this driver upstreamed into the kernel.

This driver is about supporting the Display Data Channel Command Interface (DDC/CI) standardized protocol between the GPU and monitor for being able to adjust parameters such as the brightness and contrast from the operating system itself rather than relying on the physical controls of the monitor for adjusting such settings.

DDC/CI support is common among modern monitors albeit the protocol is not widely used on the software side, even under Windows. There has been this out-of-tree Linux driver with a cleaned up version now up to its tenth round of review for likely inclusion into a future upstream kernel release.

Beyond the core DDC/CI support, there is a DDC/CI backlight driver for controlling the monitor backlight using this interface. DDC/CI properties are to be exposed via sysfs under /sys/bus/ddcci/.

Those wanting to learn more about this in-progress DDC/CI Linux driver can do so via this patch series as it works its way toward the mainline kernel.