Any laptop that has a webcam connected to the intel chipset (the IPU) instead of USB UVC is basically unsupported under Linux. Most consumer laptops use the IPU

Any laptop that has a webcam connected to the intel chipset (the IPU) instead of USB UVC is basically unsupported under Linux. Most consumer laptops use the IPU (e.g. IdeaPads, Miix, HP Elites, Surfaces, all Chromebooks, etc. ), while most business lines use much more standarized USB UVC webcams. The reason is cost, as usual. USB UVC is basically a separate device; IPU webcam is much cheaper (processing is done on the intel chipset, you can use a MIPI sensor like on a phone, you don't even have real hw-controlled privacy LED but a software facsimile, etc.). The IPU3 (Kaby Lake era!) is the only one generation that has been upstreamed, and as of today it only supports 2 types of sensors that were used in a couple Lenovo Miix models. Nothing else! There are some patches floating around for the Surface devices of the era [1], but nothing upstreamed. And of course any newer IPU is out of the question (Intel is now at IPU6). And it happens that all of these IPU3 webcams that work with upstream kernel are mostly because of the effort of just ONE guy, who is not employed by Intel, and who did not even know C a couple years ago (if you happen to be reading this, kudos to you!). [1] https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface/blob/master/patches/5.16/0010-cameras.patch https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface/blob/master/p...