Greg KH Recommends Avoiding Alder Lake Laptops - Intel Webcam Linux Driver Long Ways Out

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Greg KH Recommends Avoiding Alder Lake Laptops - Intel Webcam Linux Driver Long Ways Out

Greg Kroah-Hartman as the kernel's stable maintainer and effectively Linus Torvalds' second-in-command has suggested avoiding Intel Alder Lake laptops since these newer laptops with Intel's latest web-camera tech are not currently supported by the mainline kernel and require proprietary software for use. Some platforms like Ubuntu and ChromeOS are picking up these blobs for now while a proper open-source, upstream solution is likely months -- or likely about one year -- away...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Greg-KH-No-ADL-Webcam-Laptop

[kylew77]

Intel loses some market share and numbers take a hit and they get much slower at upstreaming stuff to Linux it seems. I've noticed a lot of their stuff is like just now getting upstreamed. Arc Alchemists for one, Raptor Lake stuff just getting done when it launches presumably in September. Given that it takes 6 months+ for changes to filter back into the latest LTS Linux and even longer than that to filter to the assorted *BSDs that is troubling.

[kbios]

Sigh

Using a UVC camera like every other manufacturer was too easy right?

[kpedersen]

I must have misunderstood the article. Avoiding a laptop, just for the crap webcam support? Seems a little too trivial and I am sure for many people is the least important part of a laptop.

Plus, just plug in a USB UVC compatible one and carry on.

[Slartifartblast]

I must have misunderstood the article. Avoiding a laptop, just for the crap webcam support? Seems a little too trivial and I am sure for many people is the least important part of a laptop.

Plus, just plug in a USB UVC compatible one and carry on.

In true Apple owners style, buy your way out of the situation due to the shortcomings of the hardware.

[CochainComplex]

Plus, just plug in a USB UVC compatible one and carry on.

Well, what next? eGPU in an external case? Monitor? Soundsystem? ...mh this is going to end up in a desktop system.

Bottom line - yes you are right. But it somewhat questions the purpose of owning (building) a mobile pc in the first place.

Seems a little too trivial and I am sure for many people is the least important part of a laptop

Thought the same ...and then COVID came

[skeevy420]

I must have misunderstood the article. Avoiding a laptop, just for the crap webcam support? Seems a little too trivial and I am sure for many people is the least important part of a laptop.

Plus, just plug in a USB UVC compatible one and carry on.

It's like the webcam equivalent of buying an NVIDIA GPU. Currently it needs an out of tree driver and some closed source bits to make it work (and distributions without uptight non-free policies are doing enough to get that stuff included).

For some people I'm sure the non-working webcam is a feature, not a bug.

[CochainComplex]

In true Apple owners style, buy your way out of the situation due to the shortcomings of the hardware.

At least this is how you got all the unused ports filled up in your USB hub.

[r1348]

Is this crap Intel-only? Or will it become a "standard" and OEMs will start building them into AMD laptops as well?
Because so far the solution seems pretty simple: buy AMD laptops.

[MadCatX]

I understand when annoyances like this happen with some additional power management features, brand new chipsets and stuff that needs a driver extension here and there. But this is a crappy webcam that we've had in laptops for about decade and a half. What could these IPU6 cams can possibly be doing that it requires a new API a driver that needs to bake out-of-tree? And here I was thinking that companies realized that Linux HW support is not that hard ever in consumer products...