It's 2024 and we're suprised by a webcam working. It makes me a bit sad somehow.
New-ish laptops with intel tiger lake procesors use MIPI cameras with ipu6 and don't work out of the box or only on specific kernel/distro combos.
There are efforts to mainline the driver and it is better than 2 years ago but still a big step backwards[1]
This was a super shitty experience though. It really felt unplanned & chaotic. Hopefully some of the kernel architecture carved out for ipu6 is good & useful for running other video pipelines.
Most webcammers don't knowingly think heavily on color science, but ideally our devices can.
The lack of device drivers for iOS means that manufacturers had to start getting serious about ensuring their devices follow USB class specifications, because otherwise they will not work on an iPad.
Linux (which has USB class drivers) has only benefitted from this.
This is getting better/fixed with pipewire though.
That hasn't been the case for a long time now. I can't remember the last time I plugged something in that didn't work. My home setup is a minipc with wireless kb and mouse on a unified USB receiver, hdmi to a large monitor, bluetooth speaker, wireless printer, and USB webcam with mic.
I didn't have to do a single thing. It all just works. And it has for years, through various distro hopping.