On Tue, 03 Feb 2026, [email protected] wrote: > The problem is that what you're suggesting is basically a much > improved (using dma-buf is way better) v4l2-loopback driver and > v4l2-loopback has been blocked from getting merged into the kernel > because besides the mobile-phone camera use, the other main use-case > is to allow running proprietary camera stacks like Intel's proprietary > camerastack and then presenting that to userspace as a standard v4l2 > cam so that userspace apps will just work.
... > The community concensus is that the solution here is for apps to > access cameras through pipewire. Together with the shift of laptops > cameras from UVC to "raw" MIPI cameras there also is a shift to > running applications sandboxed as flatpacks because of the changing > "cyber" security landscape. This is why pipewire was chosen because > it also solves the accessing cameras from a sandbox issue. Why is v4l2-loopback problematic from the perspective of facilitating running proprietary camera stacks, but pipewire isn't? BR, Jani. -- Jani Nikula, Intel
