Librem 5 camera software

They could…but they are not going to.

1 Like

Nobody was going to develop Linux some 30 years ago.

3 Likes

Apples and oranges.

Sofware and software.

2 Likes

One phone’s one component and kernel for Unix.

Why are you lying ;)? Or have you seen the future?

It’s interesting to see where the open source model does better than proprietary software and where it does worse. I would would say that when it comes to software like kernels, command line terminals, programming languages, databases, compilers, web servers, web browsers, command line utilities and plain text editors, FOSS is generally better than proprietary software, but there is other types of software where proprietary software has generally done better, such as gaming, office suites, financial tools, video editors, OCR, text to speech, AI assistants, CAD, etc.

When the software requires the user to have a lot of technical knowledge, I think that FOSS often does better because the users are encouraged to contribute to the code to scratch their own itches. The open source model also works well to bring together and coordinate the labor of a large number of people and companies, and it doesn’t require contracts, legal negotiations and the other problems that slow down collaboration in the proprietary world. FOSS also works better when a project can be divided up into small pieces, so people can contribute without understanding all the code or coordinating with a large number of people. For example, someone can write drivers for one type of hardware, without knowing anything about how the Linux kernel handles time scheduling and someone can contribute to the GNU Tools by only looking at the code for that particular tool, such as the ‘ls’ command.

Where I think proprietary software does better is when there is a corporation with a lot of resources to dedicate to the software, which is the case with the camera software of Huawei, Samsung, Google and Apple. They know that good camera software is essential to mobile phones sales, so they have strong incentives to dedicate a lot of resources to the problem, and good camera software is not the kind of project that can developed in a distributed fashion–it requires a coordinated team that is working closely together, which is easier to accomplish inside a corporation than a loose association of volunteers and companies in the internet.

It is worth noting that when FOSS gets a lot of dedicated resources from a company, it often ends up doing better than proprietary competitors. For example, Opera and Microsoft ended up abandoning their proprietary web engines and adopted Google’s Chromium+Blink+V8.

4 Likes

Another way to think about where each development model shines is the software stack. Common infrastructure that can be developed on a cost-sharing basis is often done so nowadays, while unique value-added components that sit on top of that basic infrastructure, is kept proprietary. Not saying, it is better this way. But that is the logic companies often follow.

2 Likes

I have not seen the future but it is generally known that people don’t want to work for free.

To be fair Opera used to be much better with its own engine. Once they switched to blink, it was dead to me.

1 Like

That’s, like, your opinion, man.

4 Likes

libcamera v0.0.1
First public release. Librem 5 is the first free software mobile using libcamera. dcz.

6 Likes

What are the TODOs for the regular user?
Should we just wait until an apt update apt upgrade does the job or is there something the user needs to do?
Is there a performance regression compared to not using libcamera? Or performance improvement?

1 Like

We don’t use libcamera in full capacity yet, just to configure the resolution in Millipixels. But work is in progress to use more.

The average user doesn’t need to do anything because I don’t plan on upgrading libcamera in the PureOS repos until there’s something new that is relevant to the L5.

7 Likes

Discussion on Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33245414

Just to add that libcamera has plans to support OpenCL Accelerator, so Librem 5 may benefits for.
I imagine the L5 taking good photos with faster processing, less heat. less energy.

I don’t know anything about OpenCL, but the Librem 5 does not support it anyway. I’m working on accelerating some transformations using OpenGL right now. Whether it helps, we’ll see.

4 Likes

L5 is capable for OpenCL 1.2, the free gpu driver may not yet support opencl. May Collabora help on this to L5.

Thank you.

By the way, that is a 404 link. Riddle me this. The device has a camera Icon. Taking a image with it, I need to steady the device because it takes 13 seconds before the dizzy-circle stops spinning - why it does is anyone’s guess. At some point, after it stops, a thumbnail of a black screen is in Pictures folder, and I am supposed only use it outdoors???

What is the ETA on the device camera actually working. Puri avoiding it does not fix it. It’s supposed to be a camera - a selling feature. It didn’t say. someday - maybe, maybe not - check back and read FAQs - a 145 FAQ questions to read though to see if one is my issue.

How can I find out when this device was put together and stuff installed? Is it 1 month, 6, 12, 24 or 36 months old? That will give me a idea of how soon I should break and buy a stalker device.

1 Like

You don’t. It grabs the photo instantly; it only takes that time to develop it into a JPEG file.

It already works perfectly fine, but until a new version of the app is deployed you still have to adjust gain, exposure, focus and white balance manually with sliders in the camera app UI.