Support for Webcam and Fingerprint

Ask Fedora
, ,
1

Hey there :wave: ;
I’ve been using Fedora Linux for a few months now and, I’m enjoying using it so much. But I’ve run into a some problem, i.e webcam and fingerprint support.
I’m having trouble with my webcam and fingerprint support. Windows 11 came by preinstalled and it detected and supported webcam and fingerprint. However when I started using Fedora Linux, fingerprint and webcam are not detected. I hope someone helps in figuring out the reason, and hopefully gets this issue resolved.
The device upon which fedora 39 is installed is ‘Acer Swift SF314-512’.
I’ve included the output from my LSUSB and LSPCI terminal commands in case that helps.

  1. LSUSB
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 003 Device 002: ID 1ea7:0066 SHARKOON Technologies GmbH [Mediatrack Edge Mini Keyboard]
Bus 003 Device 003: ID 04f3:0c7f Elan Microelectronics Corp. [unknown]
Bus 003 Device 004: ID 8087:0033 Intel Corp. AX211 Bluetooth
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
  1. LSPCI:
<0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Device 4621 (rev 02)
0000:00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Alder Lake-P GT2 [Iris Xe Graphics] (rev 0c)
0000:00:04.0 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Alder Lake Innovation Platform Framework Processor Participant (rev 02)
0000:00:05.0 Multimedia controller: Intel Corporation Alder Lake Imaging Signal Processor (rev 02)
0000:00:06.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 12th Gen Core Processor PCI Express x4 Controller #0 (rev 02)
0000:00:07.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Alder Lake-P Thunderbolt 4 PCI Express Root Port #0 (rev 02)
0000:00:07.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Alder Lake-P Thunderbolt 4 PCI Express Root Port #2 (rev 02)
0000:00:08.0 System peripheral: Intel Corporation 12th Gen Core Processor Gaussian & Neural Accelerator (rev 02)
0000:00:0d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Alder Lake-P Thunderbolt 4 USB Controller (rev 02)
0000:00:0d.2 USB controller: Intel Corporation Alder Lake-P Thunderbolt 4 NHI #0 (rev 02)
0000:00:0d.3 USB controller: Intel Corporation Alder Lake-P Thunderbolt 4 NHI #1 (rev 02)
0000:00:0e.0 RAID bus controller: Intel Corporation Volume Management Device NVMe RAID Controller
0000:00:14.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Alder Lake PCH USB 3.2 xHCI Host Controller (rev 01)
0000:00:14.2 RAM memory: Intel Corporation Alder Lake PCH Shared SRAM (rev 01)
0000:00:14.3 Network controller: Intel Corporation Alder Lake-P PCH CNVi WiFi (rev 01)
0000:00:15.0 Serial bus controller: Intel Corporation Alder Lake PCH Serial IO I2C Controller #0 (rev 01)
0000:00:15.1 Serial bus controller: Intel Corporation Alder Lake PCH Serial IO I2C Controller #1 (rev 01)
0000:00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation Alder Lake PCH HECI Controller (rev 01)
0000:00:19.0 Serial bus controller: Intel Corporation Alder Lake-P Serial IO I2C Controller #0 (rev 01)
0000:00:19.1 Serial bus controller: Intel Corporation Alder Lake-P Serial IO I2C Controller #1 (rev 01)
0000:00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Alder Lake PCH eSPI Controller (rev 01)
0000:00:1f.3 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation Alder Lake PCH-P High Definition Audio Controller (rev 01)
0000:00:1f.4 SMBus: Intel Corporation Alder Lake PCH-P SMBus Host Controller (rev 01)
0000:00:1f.5 Serial bus controller: Intel Corporation Alder Lake-P PCH SPI Controller (rev 01)
10000:e0:06.0 System peripheral: Intel Corporation RST VMD Managed Controller
10000:e0:06.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 12th Gen Core Processor PCI Express x4 Controller #2 (rev 02)
10000:e1:00.0 Non-Volatile memory controller: Micron Technology Inc 2450 NVMe SSD [HendrixV] (DRAM-less) (rev 01)
  1. inxi -Fzxx
System:
  Kernel: 6.6.6-200.fc39.x86_64 arch: x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc
    v: 2.40-13.fc39 Desktop: GNOME v: 45.2 tk: GTK v: 3.24.38 wm: gnome-shell
    dm: GDM Distro: Fedora release 39 (Thirty Nine)
Machine:
  Type: Laptop System: Acer product: Swift SF314-512 v: V1.06
    serial: <superuser required>
  Mobo: ADL model: Shark_ADP v: V1.06 serial: <superuser required>
    UEFI: Insyde v: 1.06 date: 06/16/2022
Battery:
  ID-1: BAT1 charge: 44.1 Wh (96.9%) condition: 45.5/56.0 Wh (81.3%)
    volts: 16.5 min: 15.4 model: SMP AP18C7M serial: <filter>
    status: discharging
CPU:
  Info: 12-core (4-mt/8-st) model: 12th Gen Intel Core i5-1240P bits: 64
    type: MST AMCP arch: Alder Lake rev: 3 cache: L1: 1.1 MiB L2: 9 MiB
    L3: 12 MiB
  Speed (MHz): avg: 477 high: 1228 min/max: 400/4400:3300 cores: 1: 400
    2: 400 3: 815 4: 400 5: 400 6: 1228 7: 400 8: 400 9: 400 10: 400 11: 400
    12: 400 13: 400 14: 400 15: 400 16: 400 bogomips: 67584
  Flags: avx avx2 ht lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx
Graphics:
  Device-1: Intel Alder Lake-P GT2 [Iris Xe Graphics]
    vendor: Acer Incorporated ALI driver: i915 v: kernel arch: Gen-12.2 ports:
    active: eDP-1 empty: DP-1, DP-2, DP-3, DP-4, HDMI-A-1 bus-ID: 0000:00:02.0
    chip-ID: 8086:46a6
  Display: wayland server: X.org v: 1.20.14 with: Xwayland v: 23.2.2
    compositor: gnome-shell driver: gpu: i915 display-ID: 0
  Monitor-1: eDP-1 model: AU Optronics 0x0ba2 res: 2560x1440 dpi: 210
    diag: 355mm (14")
  API: OpenGL v: 4.6 vendor: intel mesa v: 23.3.0 glx-v: 1.4 es-v: 3.2
    direct-render: yes renderer: Mesa Intel Graphics (ADL GT2)
    device-ID: 8086:46a6 display-ID: :0.0
  API: EGL Message: EGL data requires eglinfo. Check --recommends.
Audio:
  Device-1: Intel Alder Lake Imaging Signal Processor
    vendor: Acer Incorporated ALI driver: N/A bus-ID: 0000:00:05.0
    chip-ID: 8086:465d
  Device-2: Intel Alder Lake PCH-P High Definition Audio
    vendor: Acer Incorporated ALI driver: sof-audio-pci-intel-tgl
    bus-ID: 0000:00:1f.3 chip-ID: 8086:51c8
  API: ALSA v: k6.6.6-200.fc39.x86_64 status: kernel-api
  Server-1: JACK v: 1.9.22 status: off
  Server-2: PipeWire v: 1.0.0 status: active with: 1: pipewire-pulse
    status: active 2: wireplumber status: active 3: pipewire-alsa type: plugin
Network:
  Device-1: Intel Alder Lake-P PCH CNVi WiFi vendor: Rivet Networks
    driver: iwlwifi v: kernel bus-ID: 0000:00:14.3 chip-ID: 8086:51f0
  IF: wlp0s20f3 state: up mac: <filter>
Bluetooth:
  Device-1: Intel AX211 Bluetooth driver: btusb v: 0.8 type: USB rev: 2.0
    speed: 12 Mb/s lanes: 1 bus-ID: 3-10:5 chip-ID: 8087:0033
  Report: btmgmt ID: hci0 rfk-id: 2 state: up address: <filter> bt-v: 5.3
    lmp-v: 12
RAID:
  Hardware-1: Intel Volume Management Device NVMe RAID Controller driver: vmd
    v: 0.6 bus-ID: 0000:00:0e.0 chip-ID: 8086:467f
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 476.94 GiB used: 6.69 GiB (1.4%)
  ID-1: /dev/nvme0n1 vendor: Micron model: 2450 MTFDKBA512TFK
    size: 476.94 GiB speed: 63.2 Gb/s lanes: 4 serial: <filter> temp: 28.9 C
Partition:
  ID-1: / size: 475.35 GiB used: 6.44 GiB (1.4%) fs: btrfs dev: /dev/nvme0n1p3
  ID-2: /boot size: 973.4 MiB used: 246.5 MiB (25.3%) fs: ext4
    dev: /dev/nvme0n1p2
  ID-3: /boot/efi size: 598.8 MiB used: 17.4 MiB (2.9%) fs: vfat
    dev: /dev/nvme0n1p1
  ID-4: /home size: 475.35 GiB used: 6.44 GiB (1.4%) fs: btrfs
    dev: /dev/nvme0n1p3
Swap:
  ID-1: swap-1 type: zram size: 8 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) priority: 100
    dev: /dev/zram0
Sensors:
  Src: /sys System Temperatures: cpu: 36.0 C mobo: N/A
  Fan Speeds (rpm): N/A
Info:
  Processes: 739 Uptime: 8m Memory: total: 16 GiB note: est.
  available: 15.33 GiB used: 2.98 GiB (19.4%) Init: systemd v: 254
  target: graphical (5) default: graphical Compilers: N/A Packages: pm: rpm
  pkgs: N/A note: see --rpm pm: flatpak pkgs: 11 Shell: Bash v: 5.2.21
  running-in: gnome-terminal inxi: 3.3.31

Any advice or guidance would be greatly appreciated!
Best regards;
VeritsET

2

When posting text that you copy&paste from your screen please use the preformatted text tags with the </> button on the toolbar or by bracketing the text within triple backquotes [ ``` ] on the lines preceding and following the text. Block quotes do not retain the on screen formatting.
You can see the difference with this snippet I copied from your post above.

0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Device 4621 (rev 02)
0000:00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Alder Lake-P GT2 [Iris Xe Graphics] (rev 0c)
0000:00:04.0 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Alder Lake Innovation Platform Framework Processor Participant (rev 02)
0000:00:05.0 Multimedia controller: Intel Corporation Alder Lake Imaging Signal Processor (rev 02)

I cannot tell from what I see that the fingerprint reader is even seen.

Please also run inxi -Fzxx so we have more info. You may need to install inxi first.

3

According to our friends over at Arch Linux, camera and fingerprint reader may be problematic. (The camera type is notorious in that regard.)

4

Hey, I’ve edited the above commands with preformatted text tags, and added the inxi -Fzxx.

5

Sounds not good, can you elaborate on what do you mean by ‘problamatic’?

6

Flaws in Fingerprint Sensors (Nov. 2023) would qualify as problematic in my book. Webcam also needs careful implementation so potentially problematic.

7

That’s unfortunate!
What do you recommend buying another webcam or waiting for updates from fedora team?
Thanks

8

USB webcams are inexpensive and most are supported by fedora. I have 3 different ones that I purchased on amazon for ~$20 and all work with no extra effort.

The issue with the built in web cam is drivers, and since hardware changes frequently having a manufacturer that does not provide the drivers is a problem. Since things change so rapidly and there are a lot of web cams that are actually supported I doubt that waiting for an open source driver would be of much value.

In fact, the only suspect I see in what you posted above is under the lsusb output, bus 3 device 3 elan microelectronics.

9

Understood! What about fingerprint, can it function well later?

10

With a USB webcam you can unplug it when you want to be sure no images or sounds are being captured.

You can get one that will give better images than most built-ins (and also sound) than whatt with most laptops provide for well under US$100, e.g., Best Webcams for Vidoconferencing. Avoid vendors that don’t have a way to report problems and check the LHDB for compatibility with linux. Look for UVC video support as that is a well-established standard supported by the linux kernel.

11

Agree over the advantages of an external USB webcam, but doesn’t it add unnecessary load especially when we connect it to a laptop(which is bought over for portability)?
I will look onto the factors consideration when I purchase a new webcam!

Best regards

12

Of course. This is why it is important that the user verify before purchasing a laptop that is 100% Linux compatible and all the built in devices are supported so they should not need external devices when traveling.

A portable webcam is relatively small and light, as you can see with this picture, but it is one more thing to carry when looking for portability. The brown case beside the black camera is a case for my Raspberry Pi. I used an almost identical camera to take the picture.

image
image773×471 101 KB

As far as the fingerprint reader, if it is important they are also available as a usb dongle to add on. Select for one that is supported before purchase.

13

My bad, as I’m not aware of Linux when I purchased the laptop.

Seems portable, soon I’ll look onto that. Thank you

14

Why not use you Cell phone’s camera over IP? I’ve done this in the past ( not very recently but. . . )

edit: Recent Android developments. . .

15

Cell phone’s camera is fine for general photos and videos. For meetings and video conferences, it’s better to use the webcam!