When my laptop boots using 14.04 Ubuntu, the screen is always at maximum brightness and bluetooth is on.

I would prefer if the screen was at 50% brightness and bluetooth off. I hardly ever use bluetooth. I tried today to send a photo from my phone to the laptop, but, although they were 'paired', nothing came over. I can do without bluetooth.

I was advised on ubuntuforums:

sudo gedit /etc/udev/rules.d/10-local.rules

ACTION=="add", KERNEL=="hci0", RUN+="/usr/sbin/hciconfig hci0 down"

reboot

This had no effect whatsoever. I presume hci0 is bluetooth, so it is never going to affect the brightness.

Anyone have another tip?

Try the advice given here

http://catlingmindswipe.blogspot.co....n-startup.html

Specifically, edit /etc/bluetooth/main.conf to include the following
and edit /etc/default/bluetooth so that it contains
On the next boot, bluetooth should remain disabled. See how that goes.

FWIW, another approach is to use rfkill at boot as described here

http://itsfoss.com/turn-off-bluetoot...-ubuntu-14-04/