Hi guys!
So…I bought a Latitude 7350 detachable laptop, as a replacement for a Surface where the cams don’t work on Linux. This laptop seemed rather powerful and compatible, while still keeping the weight constrained (something the Minisforum V3 isn’t as successful in). Also, I prefer the rear being a stand thingy like on the Surface, and not some detachable flap you need to turn about 150 degrees to turn it into a mandatory stand (because when closed…it blocks the intake fans).
Anyway…Seems that while the camera module IPU6 is meant to be supported on Linux…I don’t seem to be able to get any image. Any ideas what I might be doing wrong? I installed KDE Neon (I’d prefer a KDE-based distro) and installed intel-ipu6-dkms and intel-usbio-dkms. But the camera doesn’t seem to work. Any ideas how could I troubleshoot this?
The important part is the hardware id of the camera, you have to search for this, drivers and kernel modules use this number to check if they are needed:
8086:7d19
I found a documented laptop with this camera: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Dell_XPS_16_(9640)#Webcam
They link to some patches there, it may work with that
As I see the date of the patch is this year March, I guess simply the laptop is too new. If you don’t want to fiddle, just switch to some rolling release distro, and the patches will be merged upstream soon. After a kernel update your camera will magically start working. This would be the easiest solution if you can live some more months without the camera.
Thanks…I’m afraid I don’t even know how to compile the original driver myself, much less apply a patch to it :(
Actually…I found some interesting info in this other thread’s response: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1532051/webcam-on-dell-latitude-7320-detachable-mipi-ipu6-tigerlake This unrelated dell shows the repo where to download the firmware for the cam. Mine is slightly different, but changing the address according to the filename worked, and got my firwmare downloaded. I’m now trying to add the Dell repo. But I’m…kinda stuck. THe one he mentions no longer seems to exist for Ubuntu Noble, and I actually have no idea which one to choose from this list: https://dell.archive.canonical.com/updates/dists
I reckon it might be noble-somerville-…something. But No idea and no clue on how to figure what each one means.