Since I got my Gen 7 X1 Yoga I was following the IPU6 driver development pretty closely - how we moved from multiple patches, to DKMS, and now to "it just works". So many of us (and probably countless users in the future) owe so much to the work done by Hans de Goede. Kudos! Intel, on the other hand, could have done a much better job it seems.
This implies Microsoft Surface pro 7+, 8 & 9 support for webcams too.
https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface/wiki/Camera-S...
IPU6 for image sensors feels so much like GDI print drivers from the 90s
> Currently the IPU6 integrated in the following CPU models works if the sensor + glue hw/sw is also supported
I know I'm a little out of the loop, but why on Earth is the camera integrated to the CPU!?
My understanding is that it's not the camera that's integrated, but the ISP - image signal processor.
Isn’t driver support tied to a kernel version? Why would it be tied only to a fedora version?
Edit: the whole chain is kernel → libcamera → pipewire | pipewire-camera-consuming-app, from the article. So other distros will be getting it too
Nobody is saying other distros won't. This is just talking about it in Fedora and what it took to make it happen.
Are there benefits to moving away from USB UVC and handling the image processing on the CPU?
USB cameras are interfaced over USB 2.0 because USB 3.0 is extremely difficult to make work from an EMI perspective running through a laptop’s hinges and lid. USB 2.0 means heavy compression to get 1080p60, and on pretty mediocre ISPs in those low cost camera controllers.
MIPI is easier from an EMI perspective and lets you use a much better ISP on the processor.
Cheaper camera hardware, more advanced software with computational photography?
Doing the image processing in software would use too much energy. The IPU6 is a PCI device that does complete image processing, handing fully baked frames to the system. If you wanted to do what the IPU does but on the CPU, you'd need to use the vector units and they use a lot of power.
Which kernel version has the latest fixes?
If you lack ideological purity these have been working in ChromeOS for 4 years and Ubuntu for 2 years.