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?
Reboot than read dmesg. Start a camera app than read dmesg, journalctl. Reload the camera module with modprobe
Which camera app would you suggest for troubleshooting?
I use
cheese.Kamoso seems like the default one in KDE: https://apps.kde.org/kamoso/
So…dmesg got me an interesting entry:
intel-ipu6 0000:00:05.0: Direct firmware load for intel/ipu6epmtl_fw.bin failed with error -2This has led me here, but after installing a bunch of modules from the additional repo…I’m still getting not much at all. https://github.com/intel/ipu6-drivers/issues/223
The gh thread is about the same laptop I linked in my other comment, on the arch wiki they link to some patches, maybe they work
Might be that that failure is caused by not having the firmware file on your system? I have seen that happen before with a GPU. Probably not the case, but at least it’s easy to check for.
It looks like a bunch of unhappy Windows users have also been having trouble with that particular laptop and camera, from a quick search, so I don’t know how solid the driver work is for that particular camera:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Dell/comments/1fw1icj/latitude_7350_webcams_dont_work/
Could be that the development is underfunded or other problems are going on. Intel had a huge number of layoffs recently.
I don’t have familiarity with that camera, but I will suggest a fallback plan if you don’t get it ironed out: grab yourself a clip-on USB webcam. More to lug around, but you’ll also be able to get better image quality, so…shrugs
Yeah…I really hope I don’t have to do that. This is a detachable laptop. Plenty of storage, CPU and RAM…and absolutely barebones on everything else. That means, no USB-A for example. So if I were to get a camera, I’d need to connect it to a damn dongle, too. I’d need a whole bag of cables to lug around. I’m pissed because I got this laptop thinking being all intel, with an intel chipset, and being a Dell, it would have stellar Linux support. I might have to consider reselling it.
Regarding the reddit thread, I think that’s related to a bungled CU release from MS from earlier this year? I think that’s…unrelated to Linux, and fixed by now. But yeah…A bit frustrating how the camera modules are meant to be open in this case…but they don’t work. I think the firings might have had something to do with this indeed.