2.6.26 kernel in hardy?

[Thomas Kaiser]

H.S. wrote:
> Matthew Flaschen wrote:
>> H.S. wrote:
>>> Okay. I understand this in Hardy, which is LTS. But it looks like
>>> Intrepid had only 2.6.27 kernel. Did Ubuntu skip 2.6.26 altogether?
>> Yes, and most people would consider this a good thing.  2.6.27 is
>> supposed to be better than 2.6.26 and 2.6.26 obviously can't be
>> supported indefinitely.  As for your webcam, I assume you filed a bug,
>> and it should be fixed in due course in an update to Intrepid's 2.6.27.
> 
> 
> The bug is already there:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/280657
> 
> For now, I am having to use 2.6.24 kernel to make the webcam work.
> 2.6.27 does not detect the webcam properly. So in this case at least, it
> looks like a regression in kernel version.

The webcam drivers are not a good point do speak about broken Kernels. 
"In Kernel" webcam driver were rare in the past. Most webcams worked 
with the "out of kernel" gspca driver. The gspca driver worked for more 
than 240 webcams and did all the video processing in kernel space, which 
is not allowed for a "in Kernel" driver. gspca was shipped with Ubuntu 
-> most webcams worked out of the box.

Gspca got re-written for v4l2, because of this, gspcaV1 is not shipped 
anymore with Ubuntu and therefore all the fancy video processing was 
dropped from kernel space. Thus, a lot of webcam stopped working.

While moving from gspca "out of kernel" to gspca "in Kernel" a new user 
space library was introduced to do the "fancy video processing".

Not all webcam applications are ready now to use this new library. But 
they will in the future, we hope ;-)

Anyway, you can still compile gspcaV1 ("out of Kernel") driver with your 
current Kernel and you get all webcams back with the V4l1 interface.

Thomas