I cannot even remember the last time I plugged in a web cam and it didn't work on Linux. Just yesterday I borrowed a USB inspection camera from a friend in order to help me run a new ethernet line to my shop. The kit came with a "WIFI dongle" that you are supposed to use with your phone and some random app, but instead I just plugged it into my laptop, fired up Cheese and it came up immediately.

External webcams are no problem, agreed.

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]

[1]https://github.com/intel/ipu6-drivers

To Intel's credit ipu6 packs a ton a ton a ton of super advanced capabilities in. Having a good video pipeline is a huge edge. That it took a while for upstreaming to get really into gear on Linux does not super astound me. This feels like a place where we need to expect the open source world to have to find its purchase first before traction forward can really start.

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.

We owe Apple here.

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.

While true, cameras in Linux are a bit of a hassle. Trying to get one webcam in two applications at the same time, cropping or rotating the camera in one app but not another, etc.

This is getting better/fixed with pipewire though.

Yeah, 20ish years ago I remember having to compile alsa drivers, network drivers, cups drivers, etc. I can honestly see why some left and never came back.

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.