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The camera doesn't work on the current XPS13 if you upgrade to a 6.X kernel (which, to be fair, means moving outside of Dell's packaging.) Technically this is I

The camera doesn't work on the current XPS13 if you upgrade to a 6.X kernel (which, to be fair, means moving outside of Dell's packaging.) Technically this is Intel's fault, as they haven't released firmware for it yet. Still, hopefully the Dell team avoid similar issues in future configs by ensuring better driver support. It's a nice laptop otherwise.

Darmody 3y ago
My cam doesn't work on my 5 year old Inspiron either. It's one of the reasons I'm not buying the Inspiron 16 plus in this moment.
- gerdesj 3y ago
  Whichever distro you use, there will be a selection of kernels to choose from. Even Arch has an elderly LTS option. Gentoo obviously offers all kernels since 0.97 (dig out egcs) including several that haven't been released and a couple that will never exist outside of a parallel reality! I've owned several Inspirons and have no issues but then I use Arch (actually). Have a look into what kernels are on offer and consider a different one. However you may have another issue because I seem to recall that cams are now all basically standards based. Try grabbing a couple of live "CDs" of other distros and boot them. See if your camera works. Try something like OpenSuSE "tumbleweed".
  - Darmody 3y ago
    I've been using different kernels since 4.x up to 6.5.4 and many distros. There are no drivers for the webcam.
jadbox 3y ago
Why did the new kernel break the drivers when every release is supposed to be (usually) non-backward's breaking?
- senkora 3y ago
  The Linux userland interface is stable but the Linux driver interface is unstable.
  - galangalalgol 3y ago
    The switch from one mutex back in the day broke so many drivers... we had one expensive pci card that was niche enough and old enough no one would be fixing it, but they had provided the source for the module and it wasn't that bad a fix.
- jauntywundrkind 3y ago
  The kernel promises not to break any drivers in the kernel. But right now there's just some hacky out of kernel drivers for the no-longer-even-recent Intel IPU6 camera controller, which is on a lot of laptops. Intel's been slowly working on this. Here's an update from May: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Intel-IPU6-Progressing https://www.phoronix.com/news/Intel-IPU6-Progressing . Fedora has this out of kernel tree in driver. But it's been like this for a long time. Here's a well known kernel maintainer warning people off last August: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Greg-KH-No-ADL-Webcam-Laptop https://www.phoronix.com/news/Greg-KH-No-ADL-Webcam-Laptop Honestly I'm shocked Intel has been this dodgy for this long. I feel like overall Intel today huegly gets it. They have enormous dedication to getting drivers out there & making systems work well, in a way very few companies compare against. But they are hit or miss across different divisions. I'm not sure what the IPU6 folks see as their path to getting upstreamed, or whether they intend to keep just floating along out of kernel for a bit. It does look like there is support for pretty modern kernels out-of-tree, & there is a repo with binary firmware, so I wouldn't be shocked to hear that XPS13s and most IPU6 systems work pretty ok.
  - phendrenad2 3y ago
    I don't get it. A webcam driver should be dead-simple. Why is it taking such a huge effort to get it upstreamed?
senkora 3y ago
Yeah, I think it’s best to keep them on the installed Ubuntu LTS and not upgrade, if you want the seamless OEM experience. Granted, I’ve still had some random issues with mine, even on the stock version. (The wifi card is glitchy and I have to systemctl restart NetworkManager sometimes, apparently this is a known hardware/firmware issue).
- nextos 3y ago
  This is a bit surprising for a Linux-oriented range such as XPS. I haven't had any broken devices due to an update in more than a decade, despite always using the latest kernel. But I try to avoid buying any machines that require drivers that have not been mainlined or are a bit unstable. In 2011, I got burnt by the infamous b43 Broadcom card / driver which, while supported, had disastrous performance. So never again. Aside, with NixOS, you can lock a particular kernel ABI or rollback if your update breaks. Aside, mainstream distros usually provide LTS kernels.
  - pjmlp 3y ago
    Nah, it is the usual Year of Desktop Linux experience. My Asus netbook was also sold with Linux (remember those days?), and if I want to have stable hardware video acceleration and OpenGL 4.1 support, I would have to keep using the original Ubuntu version that came with it in 2009. Because the AMD open source drivers downgraded the GL suppport to OpenGL 3.3, and hardware video acceleration is yet to work as smoothly as it used to.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
      > Nah, it is the usual Year of Desktop Linux experience. Which OS allows you to upgrade a major version and never break drivers? I guess Darwin does okay if you stay on the narrow happy path of first party hardware, but even then it's not exactly a feat of software engineering.
jauntywundrkind 3y ago
It to me like support landed August 29th, according to https://github.com/intel/ipu6-drivers/pull/174 https://github.com/intel/ipu6-drivers/pull/174
mattl 3y ago
I’ve had a couple of these. They’re fine. It’s also sad that this is basically the only Linux-preinstalled and supported hardware from a mainstream company. When I have a choice it’s between one of these or MacBook Air and I’d choose the Mac at this point and forgo Linux
- happymellon 3y ago
  What about Lenovo? They have desktops, although only one laptop with it pre installed at the moment. https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadx1/thinkpad-x1-carbon-gen-11-(14-inch-intel)/21hmcto1wwus6 https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadx1/t... They do however support Linux, and have the best upstreaming support that I've seen getting fingerprint readers, webcams, etc all with working kernel drivers. https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/faqs/operating-systems/how-to-install-linux https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/faqs/operating-systems/how-to-i... The XPS's I've tried in the past have always ended up with unsupported hardware after a while, so I've written them off.
AdmiralAsshat 3y ago
Huh. I wondered why there was an extra 20 second boot time after last restarting my XPS 13 for updates. Wonder if that has anything to do with it. [ 39.112819] Freezing user space processes [ 43.053644] usb 1-5: Found UVC 1.00 device Integrated_Webcam_HD (0bda:5682) [ 48.173464] usb 1-5: Failed to query (GET_INFO) UVC control 2 on unit 2: -110 (exp. 1). [ 53.293290] usb 1-5: Failed to query (GET_INFO) UVC control 3 on unit 2: -110 (exp. 1). [ 58.413471] usb 1-5: Failed to query (GET_INFO) UVC control 6 on unit 2: -110 (exp. 1). [ 59.114437] Freezing user space processes failed after 20.001 seconds (1 tasks refusing to freeze, wq_busy=0):

Darmody 3y ago

My cam doesn't work on my 5 year old Inspiron either. It's one of the reasons I'm not buying the Inspiron 16 plus in this moment.

gerdesj 3y ago
Whichever distro you use, there will be a selection of kernels to choose from. Even Arch has an elderly LTS option. Gentoo obviously offers all kernels since 0.97 (dig out egcs) including several that haven't been released and a couple that will never exist outside of a parallel reality! I've owned several Inspirons and have no issues but then I use Arch (actually). Have a look into what kernels are on offer and consider a different one. However you may have another issue because I seem to recall that cams are now all basically standards based. Try grabbing a couple of live "CDs" of other distros and boot them. See if your camera works. Try something like OpenSuSE "tumbleweed".
- Darmody 3y ago
  I've been using different kernels since 4.x up to 6.5.4 and many distros. There are no drivers for the webcam.

jadbox 3y ago

Why did the new kernel break the drivers when every release is supposed to be (usually) non-backward's breaking?

senkora 3y ago
The Linux userland interface is stable but the Linux driver interface is unstable.
- galangalalgol 3y ago
  The switch from one mutex back in the day broke so many drivers... we had one expensive pci card that was niche enough and old enough no one would be fixing it, but they had provided the source for the module and it wasn't that bad a fix.
jauntywundrkind 3y ago
The kernel promises not to break any drivers in the kernel. But right now there's just some hacky out of kernel drivers for the no-longer-even-recent Intel IPU6 camera controller, which is on a lot of laptops. Intel's been slowly working on this. Here's an update from May: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Intel-IPU6-Progressing https://www.phoronix.com/news/Intel-IPU6-Progressing . Fedora has this out of kernel tree in driver. But it's been like this for a long time. Here's a well known kernel maintainer warning people off last August: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Greg-KH-No-ADL-Webcam-Laptop https://www.phoronix.com/news/Greg-KH-No-ADL-Webcam-Laptop Honestly I'm shocked Intel has been this dodgy for this long. I feel like overall Intel today huegly gets it. They have enormous dedication to getting drivers out there & making systems work well, in a way very few companies compare against. But they are hit or miss across different divisions. I'm not sure what the IPU6 folks see as their path to getting upstreamed, or whether they intend to keep just floating along out of kernel for a bit. It does look like there is support for pretty modern kernels out-of-tree, & there is a repo with binary firmware, so I wouldn't be shocked to hear that XPS13s and most IPU6 systems work pretty ok.
- phendrenad2 3y ago
  I don't get it. A webcam driver should be dead-simple. Why is it taking such a huge effort to get it upstreamed?

senkora 3y ago

Yeah, I think it’s best to keep them on the installed Ubuntu LTS and not upgrade, if you want the seamless OEM experience. Granted, I’ve still had some random issues with mine, even on the stock version. (The wifi card is glitchy and I have to systemctl restart NetworkManager sometimes, apparently this is a known hardware/firmware issue).

nextos 3y ago
This is a bit surprising for a Linux-oriented range such as XPS. I haven't had any broken devices due to an update in more than a decade, despite always using the latest kernel. But I try to avoid buying any machines that require drivers that have not been mainlined or are a bit unstable. In 2011, I got burnt by the infamous b43 Broadcom card / driver which, while supported, had disastrous performance. So never again. Aside, with NixOS, you can lock a particular kernel ABI or rollback if your update breaks. Aside, mainstream distros usually provide LTS kernels.
- pjmlp 3y ago
  Nah, it is the usual Year of Desktop Linux experience. My Asus netbook was also sold with Linux (remember those days?), and if I want to have stable hardware video acceleration and OpenGL 4.1 support, I would have to keep using the original Ubuntu version that came with it in 2009. Because the AMD open source drivers downgraded the GL suppport to OpenGL 3.3, and hardware video acceleration is yet to work as smoothly as it used to.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
    > Nah, it is the usual Year of Desktop Linux experience. Which OS allows you to upgrade a major version and never break drivers? I guess Darwin does okay if you stay on the narrow happy path of first party hardware, but even then it's not exactly a feat of software engineering.

jauntywundrkind 3y ago

It to me like support landed August 29th, according to https://github.com/intel/ipu6-drivers/pull/174 https://github.com/intel/ipu6-drivers/pull/174

mattl 3y ago

I’ve had a couple of these. They’re fine. It’s also sad that this is basically the only Linux-preinstalled and supported hardware from a mainstream company. When I have a choice it’s between one of these or MacBook Air and I’d choose the Mac at this point and forgo Linux

happymellon 3y ago
What about Lenovo? They have desktops, although only one laptop with it pre installed at the moment. https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadx1/thinkpad-x1-carbon-gen-11-(14-inch-intel)/21hmcto1wwus6 https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadx1/t... They do however support Linux, and have the best upstreaming support that I've seen getting fingerprint readers, webcams, etc all with working kernel drivers. https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/faqs/operating-systems/how-to-install-linux https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/faqs/operating-systems/how-to-i... The XPS's I've tried in the past have always ended up with unsupported hardware after a while, so I've written them off.

AdmiralAsshat 3y ago

Huh. I wondered why there was an extra 20 second boot time after last restarting my XPS 13 for updates. Wonder if that has anything to do with it. [ 39.112819] Freezing user space processes [ 43.053644] usb 1-5: Found UVC 1.00 device Integrated_Webcam_HD (0bda:5682) [ 48.173464] usb 1-5: Failed to query (GET_INFO) UVC control 2 on unit 2: -110 (exp. 1). [ 53.293290] usb 1-5: Failed to query (GET_INFO) UVC control 3 on unit 2: -110 (exp. 1). [ 58.413471] usb 1-5: Failed to query (GET_INFO) UVC control 6 on unit 2: -110 (exp. 1). [ 59.114437] Freezing user space processes failed after 20.001 seconds (1 tasks refusing to freeze, wq_busy=0):