Fedora 41 Aims For Out-Of-The-Box Webcam Support For Newer Intel Laptops
The open-source software pieces have come together where Fedora / Red Hat developers are hoping that for Fedora 41 there can be out-of-the-box support for the web cameras on newer Intel laptops.
It's been a long and tiring process for Linux to properly support Intel laptops with the web camera leveraging their IPU6 IP. Back in 2022 woes around the Intel IPU6 web camera on Linux led kernel developers to recommend avoiding Alder Lake laptops given that it would be a lengthy driver upstreaming process... Sure enough, two years later the upstream Linux support for these web cameras on Alder Lake laptops and newer is beginning to settle.
Earlier this year the IPU6 firmware was added to linux-firmware.git and then the IPU6 kernel driver upstreamed in Linux 6.10. Pairing that kernel driver with libcamera 0.3's software ISP support and PipeWire-based Firefox camera support can allow for a working Intel IPU6 webcam stack.
Red Hat's Hans de Goede who has done much work in this area and for the Linux desktop at large took to a change proposal for having Intel IPU6 camera support be one of the features for Fedora 41.
That change was approved this week by the Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee (FESCo) for allowing nice web camera support with Fedora 41 on newer Intel laptops. In turn this should also work for other Linux distributions too when moving to Linux 6.10+ and the latest libcamera software.
It's been a long and tiring process for Linux to properly support Intel laptops with the web camera leveraging their IPU6 IP. Back in 2022 woes around the Intel IPU6 web camera on Linux led kernel developers to recommend avoiding Alder Lake laptops given that it would be a lengthy driver upstreaming process... Sure enough, two years later the upstream Linux support for these web cameras on Alder Lake laptops and newer is beginning to settle.
Earlier this year the IPU6 firmware was added to linux-firmware.git and then the IPU6 kernel driver upstreamed in Linux 6.10. Pairing that kernel driver with libcamera 0.3's software ISP support and PipeWire-based Firefox camera support can allow for a working Intel IPU6 webcam stack.
Red Hat's Hans de Goede who has done much work in this area and for the Linux desktop at large took to a change proposal for having Intel IPU6 camera support be one of the features for Fedora 41.
"Currently IPU6 cameras do not work OOTB [out of the box] in Fedora, with the new libcamera software ISP stack these should work OOTB on laptops with supported camera sensors."
That change was approved this week by the Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee (FESCo) for allowing nice web camera support with Fedora 41 on newer Intel laptops. In turn this should also work for other Linux distributions too when moving to Linux 6.10+ and the latest libcamera software.