[H-GEN] Download Ubuntu

[Russell Stuart]

On Mon, 2010-11-08 at 11:16 +1000, Florent Angly wrote:
> The Skype version that is available for GNU/Linux is a beta version, has 
> been for a long time and lags behind the version available for other 
> operating systems. It works but I frequently get disconnected and had 
> trouble to get the webcam images be displayed in the right orientation 
> (other software like cheese managed the webcam properly).

The orientation thing has been a problem for me too.  However I am loath
to blame Skype for it.  The root cause of the problem is the Linux
drivers deliver the raw video data in the wrong orientation.
Distributions often work around this using a LD_PRELOAD hack, which is
to say they use a trick to force the application (cheese in your) to put
a software library between it and the driver to fix the orientation.

This works fine with applications the applications the distribution has
had the foresight to make special arrangements for.  But that will not
be the case for Skype, and worse Skype will often use its own libraries
rather than those that come with the distribution.  This which makes the
LD_PRELOAD kludge well neigh impossible.

Going back one step further, the web cam's that have this problem are
usually near identical to those that don't (ie they use the same
chipset, sensors and so on).  The differences usually amount to nothing
more than the colour/shape of the plastic that surrounds the
electronics, the badge, the USB id's the device reports - and the
physical orientation of the camera sensor.  As the board the sensor on
is symmetric and the  sensor itself will work perfectly well in either
orientation, you can be pretty sure half the commercial designs based on
a reference design will have it up one way, and half the reverse.

Thus after the manufacturers reference design is released you will see a
stream of camera's based on it released for a year or so.  During that
time the Linux drivers won't keep up with the stream of USB device ID's
that pop up on the market, and you will get this problem.  A year or two
after the release of the reference design everything just works of
course, but by then the market has moved onto some new fangled reference
design that is $0.05 cheaper.