Intel IPU6 Web Camera Support Still Poses A Challenge For Linux Laptops

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  • phoronix
    Administrator
    • Jan 2007
    • 67377

    Intel IPU6 Web Camera Support Still Poses A Challenge For Linux Laptops

    Phoronix: Intel IPU6 Web Camera Support Still Poses A Challenge For Linux Laptops

    Back in 2022 there were Linux kernel developers like Linux's second-in-command Greg Kroah-Hartman recommending that Intel Alder Lake laptops be avoided. This was due to the Intel web camera support in those new-at-the-time laptops yet to be properly upstreamed and relying on binary bits. Over time that Intel IPU6 MIPI camera support has seen portions of the code upstreamed into the mainline Linux kernel and distributions like Fedora taking extra steps to make them work but still in 2025 those with newer Intel laptops boasting the latest web camera technology are often facing a challenging experience...

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  • Quackdoc
    Senior Member
    • Oct 2020
    • 5089

    #2
    Does anyone have a list of benefits of ipu6 over uvc that would lead manufactures to lean this way when implementing their camera?

    Comment

    • Chugworth
      Senior Member
      • Feb 2019
      • 390

      #3
      Originally posted by Quackdoc View Post
      Does anyone have a list of benefits of ipu6 over uvc that would lead manufactures to lean this way when implementing their camera?
      Yeah I wonder why that was really necessary. To this day, many high-end laptops have webcams that look like complete trash, but it seems like improvements could have been made while still using USB internally.

      Comment

      • Quackdoc
        Senior Member
        • Oct 2020
        • 5089

        #4
        I presume it would be cheaper, but I also wonder if uvc has some limitations on what it can reliably expose, for instance having direct accsess to mipi I suppose could lead to cameras not needing to implement mjpeg or h264 for video support which can lower quality.

        Comment

        • V1tol
          Senior Member
          • May 2016
          • 608

          #5
          Typical Intel. Inventing something unneeded and then failing to support that.

          Comment

          • cen1
            Senior Member
            • Aug 2016
            • 379

            #6
            If Hans struggles to make it work then it must be a real clusterf*.

            Comment

            • colo
              Senior Member
              • Jun 2006
              • 127

              #7
              I have an ASUS Vivobook Slare 13 OLED (passively cooled x86 tablet with crappy CPU but awesome FHD display) which, afaict, has two MIPI cameras inside: https://www.asus.com/laptops/for-hom...te-oled-t3300/

              I run Fedora on it right now, but the system/v4l cannot detect any cameras. Is there anything I could do to help that receive support by your patches, Hans? (I am pretty convinced he will read this thread, which is why I am asking in here )

              Comment

              • Quackdoc
                Senior Member
                • Oct 2020
                • 5089

                #8
                Originally posted by V1tol View Post
                Typical Intel. Inventing something unneeded and then failing to support that.
                upon thinking more on it, I can see potential benefits, as I said early not needing to transcode to h264 or mjpeg could mean better latencies and quality, I presume it could also help things like the facial recognition login stuff as well

                Originally posted by colo View Post
                I have an ASUS Vivobook Slare 13 OLED (passively cooled x86 tablet with crappy CPU but awesome FHD display) which, afaict, has two MIPI cameras inside: https://www.asus.com/laptops/for-hom...te-oled-t3300/

                I run Fedora on it right now, but the system/v4l cannot detect any cameras. Is there anything I could do to help that receive support by your patches, Hans? (I am pretty convinced he will read this thread, which is why I am asking in here )
                as an interm step, you could try pipewire I guess, pipewire has libcamera support assuming pipewire is compiled with libcamera anyways, the below command should show the camera if pipewire recognizes it

                Code:
                pw-dump | jq '.[] | select(.info.props["media.class"] == "Video/Source") | .info.props."node.name" + " | " + .info.props."node.description" + " | " + (.id|tostring)'

                Comment

                • hansdegoede
                  Phoronix Member
                  • Feb 2008
                  • 65

                  #9
                  Originally posted by colo View Post
                  I have an ASUS Vivobook Slare 13 OLED (passively cooled x86 tablet with crappy CPU but awesome FHD display) which, afaict, has two MIPI cameras inside: https://www.asus.com/laptops/for-hom...te-oled-t3300/

                  I run Fedora on it right now, but the system/v4l cannot detect any cameras. Is there anything I could do to help that receive support by your patches, Hans? (I am pretty convinced he will read this thread, which is why I am asking in here )
                  Please see the "If things do not work please file a bug:" part of: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Chang...nt#How_To_Test note that AFAIK ASUS does not work with the Intel Linux camera team to get their models enabled. And things rely on Intel's out of tree work.

                  Sensors typically can only be supported by cleaning up some out of tree driver from either Intel or some Android kernel source dump. E.g. the driver submitted upstream for the sensor on the new(ish) Dell XPS 9x40 models with ov02c10 is a cleaned up version of: https://github.com/intel/ipu6-driver.../i2c/ov02c10.c .

                  If you file a bug as described in the Fedora 42 change page I can take a look. But if Asus is using a sensor type which is not supported by the out of tree drivers then you are pretty much out of luck.

                  Comment

                  • r1348
                    Senior Member
                    • Jul 2007
                    • 636

                    #10
                    Fuck this shit, get an AMD laptop.

                    Comment

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