Macbook Air 2015 web cam driver

[bingobango]

I have a 2015 macbook air i5 with 8gb of ram. I installed ubuntu linux and got everything working except for the webcam. I got a zipfile that contained the Isight camera drivers and am trying to get them installed.

When i simply open the laptop , my user name is displayed with the capital letters that i used. BinGo (as an example). My question is when being promted by the terminal to type in the path to the extracted file , do i simply type /home/BinGo/Downloads , or must i even include the actual name of the file it is looking for? or should it simply find the file it is looking for if i point it to the Downloads folder. Thanks for any help, I am new here and to linux. It just seems a shame to let this perfectly goot hardware go to waste, plus i would like to use it to learn more about linux. The webcam not working is not a deal breaker either way but it would be nice if i could get it working.

 

[atanere]

Why don't you use the file manager in Ubuntu to navigate your system instead of a terminal? You may have need/want to go to a terminal at times, but you don't have to start there. I think the file manager is Nautilus, but I'm not sure.

If you got a zipfile, you need to unzip it first. With the GUI file manager, you would just double click on it and follow the prompts. Once you have unzipped the folder, you have to see what you've got. There is often a README or INSTALL file for drivers with instructions for how to install them.

I hope you are sure you have the right drivers. I have zero experience with Macs, so I don't know what you may run into. Others will know more.

If you want to play... er, learn... more with the terminal, show us the output of this:

ls -l /home/BinGo/Downloads

That's LS -L but all lower case. The -l option shows a "long" listing that will tell us more about the files there... file size, file permissions, and file owner information. It can be very helpful for you to copy/paste commands to avoid typing mistakes, and you can also copy/paste the output back here, or just a portion of it to show what's needed.

 

[bingobango]

I guess i answered part of my own question here, as it is definatly lower case

bigj@bigj-MacBookAir:~$ ls -l /home/bigj/Downloads
total 299232
-rw-r--r-- 1 bigj bigj 87252 Aug 1 2009 AppleUSBVideoSupport
-rw-rw-r-- 1 bigj bigj 25629 Mar 21 15:35 AppleUSBVideoSupport.zip
-rw-rw-r-- 1 bigj bigj 92502582 Mar 21 17:38 discord-0.0.46.deb
-rw-rw-r-- 1 bigj bigj 106893292 Mar 20 05:18 'google-chrome-stable_current_amd64(1).deb'
-rw-rw-r-- 1 bigj bigj 106893292 Mar 20 04:35 google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb

 

[bingobango]

Installing Linux on an iMac

Many people may like the look and feel of Linux over other Desktop Operating Systems (OS). For this reason someone may want to install Linux on a Mac. There are many types of Apple Mac systems available. For this article I used an iMac 6.1 from late 2006. The specs on the iMac are as...

www.linux.org

I was attempting to follow the instructions at the link above , he lists the specs of his machine there , it looks to be an older imac he is working with when sharing the zip file at the end , it may not even be the file i need for this 2015 macbook air.

I found this forum at this link: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1430547/webcam-not-working-in-ubuntu-22-04-on-macbook-air

and so i tried this with this file , but i cannot get cheese or anything else to recognize the camera. So i purged it per the instructions here as i did not think i got it right or maybe it wasn't the file i needed.

 

[atanere]

What version of Ubuntu are you using? The link suggests 22.04 may work for you, but 22.10 created more problems. A new Ubuntu LTS, 24.04, will be coming out next month, and that may fix things for you.

Also, Jarret's article suggests you try the Deepin Linux distro... it may give more success than Ubuntu. That article is pretty old now, but Deepin is still around and surely better than it was then. (Don't get the beta version... look on their Download page for a stable release.)

So, you can continue to try to fight the battle with what you have, or you can try Deepin now, and maybe Ubuntu 24.04 later. Any direction you choose will be good for your Linux learning experience.

Your listing of the Downloads folder looks like you extracted the zip file okay. Did the command work that is shown below?

sudo apt install isight-firmware-tools

Or did you get an error? If you get an error, please copy/paste it here.

The path to your file is: /home/bigj/Downloads/AppleUSBVideoSupport
Those instructions say you need this path.

But I don't know anything about Apple hardware. You might try a couple of other commands to try to identify specifically your brand/model of webcam...

lsusb

(That's LSUSB, all lower case.... more LS commands below.)

lsusb only gives a few lines of output. Below is another command that will generate a lot of information about your iMac. You can copy and paste this big output inside a "spoiler" ... click the 3 vertical dots in the middle of your editor window when you are replying here, and run your mouse over each of the new options it shows... pick Spoiler, give it a Title, and then copy/paste the output in between the spoiler "tags". This is where you can choose Code tags too.

inxi -Fxxxz

Another spoiler you might include would show this:

sudo lshw

(Yes, LSHW, lower case.)

lsusb = List USB devices
lspci = List PCI devices
lscpu = List CPU info
lshw = List hardware

To give a couple more and help you see the pattern.

 

[bingobango]

thanks so much for all of the info , i will try this tonight and keep tinkering with it.

I did type the path in as you suggested , and it seemed to do what ever it was going to do with that file , i didn't get any errors , but i used some of the cammands above to purge , because cheese , and a couple of other cam programs didnt see the camera still after i did it , so i was thinking it was either not the right file or something. I will do it again , and paste the read out here , because i kinda know what i am looking at but i couldnt tell if it actually completed correctly or not..

there was another articel i found on some sort of git hub method , using commands like.. $ make .. and # make... it seemed sort of complicated to me at this level. They were talking about cloning repositories ?

It will be fun to learn some stuff and try and get it working , again i really appreciate all the info , i will report back asap.

 

[atanere]

I did type the path in as you suggested , and it seemed to do what ever it was going to do with that file , i didn't get any errors

You may not understand all the details here, I'm not sure.

1. You dowloaded and unzipped the driver file okay.

2. Next was to install a program: sudo apt install isight-firmware-tools. If you didn't get any errors... then keep going. If you get any errors, you need to fix them now.

3. What wasn't explicitly said was... the next step is you need to run that program you just installed. It may run simply by typing this in a terminal:

isight-firmware-tools    # Then hit Enter

Or it may have a GUI entry if you look in your Ubuntu apps. If there were any other files when you unzipped the original, they may better explain the details of using this driver.

4. When you run the program above, it will ask you for that path and you will need to enter it there and follow whatever prompts it gives you.

5. The tool will hopefully tell you it's done. You may need to reboot for the driver to be recognized. If Cheese still doesn't work, try installing guvcview, or other webcam tools.

 

[atanere]

there was another articel i found on some sort of git hub method , using commands like.. $ make .. and # make... it seemed sort of complicated to me at this level. They were talking about cloning repositories ?

That sounds a lot like compiling the driver from source code. That's really too much for most new Linux users, but it some cases it's the only way to get a driver that you need. I hope you can get by another way. This is rarely needed.

One easy solution would be to buy an external webcam that you know is compatible with Linux, and use it instead of the internal one. But no need to rush into that either. You're learning some good stuff about Linux here... if it doesn't scare you off.

And there are a lot of good teachers here... better than me. Especially when someone comes by who knows more about using Linux on Apple.