Dear Steve, Thanks for the link, and it worked. Now I am happy to have native driver..
Since you use debian, following these instructions might work for you: http://wiki.debian.org/wl
For cli, my guess would be, play with /proc/acpi/video/*/*/brightness ...or some such. For me, this worked:
It works, and the function keys also works, I think acpi module in kernel is playing with brightness, will black list acpi and then check.
Warm Regards, Mukund Deshmukh, Beta Computronics Pvt Ltd, 10/1 IT Park, Parsodi, Nagpur -440022.