Launched back in 2021 was the Dell Latitude 7320 2-in-1 business laptop/tablet powered by the at-the-time impressive Intel 11th Gen Core "Tiger Lake" processors. Remaining elusive until now has been the web cameras actually working on Linux, but patches posted this weekend finally are cracking that mystery at least for the user-facing web cam.

The Dell Latitude 7320 laptop was one of the early users of the Intel IPU6 IP that took some time to sort out and for the Linux support to come about in a suitable way. Back in 2022 it led Linux's second-in-command Greg KH to recommend avoiding laptops with Intel IPU6. While since squared away, the web camera support for the Dell Latitude 7320 remained missing and was attributed to then in turn lack of OV5678 sensor specifications.

For years there have been Latitude 7320 Linux customers requesting support albeit it's never come until now. Independent Linux user Sahan Nissanka began cracking the mystery when discovering that the OV5678 is an OV5675 to which there is a Linux driver. After some other discoveries and a few kernel patches, this five year old Tiger Lake laptop can finally enjoy the user-facing web camera under Linux.

Nissanka explained today on the Linux kernel mailing list with the changes neeeded and patches for web cam support:

"This series enables the user-facing 5MP camera on the Dell Latitude 7320 Detachable, which has never worked on Linux. Two open reports ask for it: intel/ipu6-drivers issues #24 (2022) and #402 (2025), the latter blocked waiting for "OV5678 sensor specifications (clock rates, power requirements)".

Those specifications turned out not to be needed. ACPI describes the front sensor as OVTI5678 and no driver has ever claimed that id. The part reports chip id 0x005675 at register 0x300a, and the values ov5675.c is sensitive to were read from the machine's ACPI SSDB before the sensor was ever powered and both agree - 2 CSI-2 data lanes and a 19.2 MHz external clock. The advertised 5MP also matches the driver's native 2592x1944. So no new sensor driver and no new register tables are required to make it stream.

One caveat, set out in full in 2/3: this part is not a plain Bayer sensor. It carries a 4x4 RGB-IR colour filter array, one pixel in four being infrared. That is confirmed from Intel's own Windows IPU6 configuration for this exact module, from measurements on the sensor at full resolution, and from the module's tuning data, which agree with each other. The SGRBG10 that ov5675 declares is therefore inaccurate, and colour is wrong in a way white balance cannot correct.

That cannot be fixed in this series: the V4L2 ABI has no RGB-IR media bus code at all, and ox05b1s already carries the same inaccuracy for an RGB-IR sensor of the same class and resolution. I intend to propose RGB-IR media bus codes separately. Until such support exists, this series takes hardware that does not work at all to hardware that works with imperfect colour, which seemed worth having in the meantime. I am happy to hold 2/3 if maintainers would rather not add the id before the format can be described honestly.

That leaves three small pieces:

1/3 gives the TPS68470 PMIC board data, without which the sensors are not even enumerated - they declare an ACPI _DEP on the control logic, so no i2c client is created until it probes.
2/3 adds the OVTI5678 id to ov5675.
3/3 adds the ipu-bridge entry so a software node is created for it.

The patches touch two subsystems: 1/3 is platform-driver-x86, 2/3 and 3/3 are media. They are independent of each other in build terms, but none of them does anything useful alone, so they are sent together for context. Happy to split them if maintainers prefer."

The Dell Latitude 7320 also has a rear-facing web camera that isn't yet supported. That could be coming soon after this latest work but the reset/powerdown GPIO assignment is still being sorted out.

So if you've long had the Dell Latitude 7320 or have picked up this Tiger Lake laptop used more recently, there could finally be Linux web camera support soon. Refurbished the 7320 2-in-1s are currently retailing for around $260 USD.