Robert Mader

Mostly #wayland stuff around #gnomeshell, #gstreamer, #Firefox, #Pipewire, #libcamera, #linuxmobile - Collabora (npub1hpq…n5tk)

Generally thing that make the Linux desktop use graphics hardware features. And sometimes random boosts.

Member of the German green party.

Gnome Gitlab: https://gitlab.gnome.org/rmader
FDO Gitlab: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/rmader
Github: https://github.com/rmader
Gitlab: https://gitlab.com/rmader

Public Key

npub1fx9ntmxdrn3j6m40dcz6e8zycfnyg822vzaaxdlvpakrpyyf098ql0z4hg

NIP-05 Address

rmader_at_mastodon.social@momostr.pink

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsynze4anx3ecedd6hkupdvn3zvyejyr49xpw7nxlkq7mpsjzyhjnspz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dsupn4l5

Publishing to

nostr.mom

nos.lol

relay.damus.io

Author Public Key

npub1fx9ntmxdrn3j6m40dcz6e8zycfnyg822vzaaxdlvpakrpyyf098ql0z4hg

Show more details

Last Notes

2025-09-08 14:44:51 UTC

- reply

Sounds like it's getting time for a mobile camera calibration hackfest :) (the support is already it the shipping version of @npub1tvt…4jjw - just the tooling needs a bit of tweaks, with patches pending)

2025-05-17 14:04:18 UTC

- reply

Are you running pmOS edge? Because the camera should work OOTB there :/

2025-04-11 19:10:20 UTC

- reply

Uh, interesting! In that case you should only need to add the properties
api.libcamera.location = back
or
api.libcamera.location = front
respectively and things should work as expected (i.e. mirrored front, non-mirrored back).
(see SPA_KEY_API_LIBCAMERA_LOCATION)

2025-04-11 18:49:02 UTC

- reply

> if its desirable for front facing cameras then perhaps disabling it for back facing camera is an acceptable compromise
That's already the case. The problem is that Snapshot/Aperture needs to know whether a camera is front or back facing. As said above that works for libcamera devices - i.e. on most other mobilelinux devices that already have camera support - but not yet for V4L2 ones.
Therefore my question about how you expose your cameras :)

2025-04-11 17:22:18 UTC

- reply

> forcing a known wrong assumption by default sounds a bit odd to me
Problem is that in most common cases it's right. The mirroring effect is generally desirable whenever you have a front-facing camera - i.e. almost always on laptops/desktops - and on mobile devices in 50% of cases.
> a simple gsettings key
The "just add another setting" solution is strongly discouraged in the Gnome HIG / ecosystem :) (and indeed kamoso has such a setting).

2025-04-11 10:00:13 UTC

- reply

Nice, welcome :D
The flipped preview happens because Aperture defaults to flipped when it doesn't know better (hard choice because it's wrong for some users either way) - and right now we can only detect the orientation for #libcamera devices with appropriate entries in the DT (which covers most #linuxmobile devices).
Your camera is exposed as simple v4l2 camera right? Trying to think about a good way to set the orientation there.

2025-03-13 12:36:54 UTC

First try to create #libcamera swISP tuning files for the OnePlus6 with #ideasonboard folks at #embeddedworld. Unfortunately we hit an issue that we couldn't fix on-side - got a few todos to make sure things work out next time!
#postmarketos #linuxmobile
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/114/155/123/450/044/821/original/3310162dd8c81580.jpg

2025-02-23 12:25:48 UTC

For video/multimedia/graphics on #linux people: I made a PoC for gstreamer using udmabuf to allocate YCbCr buffers for sw-decoded video that can be imported by GPU drivers.
The basic idea is to allow to reuse the highly optimized hw-decoding dmabuf import paths in drivers/toolkits/apps for sw-decoding, so they can cover arbitrary new codecs and less usual formats - e.g. AV1 and H266 on hardware that doesn't have HW support or 422/444 subsampling.
#gstreamer #ffmpeg #wayland #mesa

2025-02-21 22:29:29 UTC

For those running #postmarketos with #systemd: you may want to run `systemctl preset-all` from time atm. until the MR below lands. Right now most updates adding more service files don't apply presets and thus don't enable the services by default - they only get enabled in new image builds.
https://gitlab.postmarketos.org/postmarketOS/pmaports/-/merge_requests/6120
#mobilelinux

2025-02-10 22:08:10 UTC

Just played around with audiobooks on my #oneplus6 with #postmarketos. There doesn't seem to be a nice Audible client atm., even though it might be possible to make one. Then I learned about https://librivox.org/ which has several thousands Public Domain audiobooks - awesome!
So first I tried Cozy - pretty nice app but it requires downloading things first. Then I figured that the page also has RSS feeds - just like most podcasts. So I tried the Podcasts app:
#linuxmobile #gnome
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/981/859/203/848/501/original/36add761df6528a4.jpeg

2025-02-07 17:09:47 UTC

- reply

It's the job of the ISP to do so. We can't use the hardware-ISP on QCom devices, thus using the libcamera software ISP, which is still missing the relevant features. The biggest one - color correction - is close to landing though: https://patchwork.libcamera.org/cover/22762/
Edit: CCM will allow us to get rid of the green tint visible on the images - and should bring things much closer to what you get on Android.

2025-01-16 12:12:41 UTC

I'm very happy with the initial results I get from #postmarketos switching to #systemd and think it will help a lot improving the platform going forward. My current favorites after playing around a bit over the last days:
1. Much better logging. Running `journalctl -e` is so much more informative and powerful than what we previously had.
2. Stacktraces of crashes via coredumpctl by default.
3. More reliable and less racy user services (hello Gnome camera indicator).

2024-11-25 21:14:02 UTC

The #mesa 24.3 release is, as usual, pretty neat. Some random personal highlights:
1. #Rusticl for freedreno. While not enabled by default yet, this finally brings OpenCL support to QC devices. How useful that is remains to be seen, given that Vulkan also slowly evolves as compute platform - it could come in pretty handy for image related tasks, though, especially on #linuxmobile devices.
1/3

2024-11-22 14:59:35 UTC

For #linuxmobile #postmarketos #mobian folks interested in cameras: there's a first version of patches for #libcamera softwareISP color correction matrix (CCM) support now: https://patchwork.libcamera.org/cover/22041/
Together with autofocus (AF) this probably the main missing feature to get a somewhat reasonable image quality on devices like the #pixel3a or #fairphone5 with open drivers / close to #mainlinelinux.

2024-10-28 11:13:31 UTC

For #linuxmobile / #postmarketos / #mobian etc. folks: there's a rather beginner friendly task to improve battery life for qcom devices like the #oneplus6, #pixel3a etc. by making sure sensors are idle when not needed.
If you have some spare cycles, motivation, basic C literacy (or want to learn it) and know how to build and deploy/test a package with pmbootstrap (or want to learn it) - this one could be for you.
The details are here: https://gitlab.postmarketos.org/postmarketOS/pmaports/-/issues/2455#note_453587

2024-10-22 20:53:37 UTC

The new #pipewire 1.0.9 release backports a bunch of fixes for cameras - if your distro ships 1.0, I strongly recommend to pick up that update :)

2024-10-17 16:54:30 UTC

#postmarketos just landed an update for the #pixel3a enabling the rear camera \o/
That, AFAIK, makes it the first #exandroid (close to mainline kernel) device were both cameras work OOTB.
To set expectations right here: there's still a lot of work in various components in the stack before the camera experience comes even close to what you get on the same devices running Android (kernels).
Short comparison with my Pixel 6a running #lineageos - the rear cameras on both devices use the IMX363:
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/323/792/520/482/574/original/8a3808b7368b2ca5.jpeg
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/323/792/910/165/762/original/c8e13dc42e3ce56a.jpeg
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/323/793/607/399/596/original/1847f0697a5c5622.jpg
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/323/794/135/722/460/original/ba45406d045c7624.jpg

2024-10-03 18:15:04 UTC

To follow up on a recent post of mine (https://mastodon.social/@rmader/113234428076202804): if you want to see working cameras on more devices using a #mobilelinux distro of you choice, consider helping with sensor driver upstreaming. Apparently it a bunch of cases this really isn't all to difficult and the main work you need to do is combine an existing driver with data from downstream kernels, test that it works - et voilà, a big part of the work is done!
#postmarketos #mobian

2024-10-01 22:04:12 UTC

- reply

no winning in trying to mention everyone who contributed to something involving so many components, but I'd like to take the opportunity to thank [@joelselvaraj](https://fosstodon.org/@joelselvaraj ) who wrote the driver for the imx363 - the sensor of the rear camera used here.
And for everyone who wants to see working cameras on more devices: please give writing kernel drivers a try - it might be easier than you think ;)
I.e. it might come down to copying an existing one and adjusting a few things.

2024-10-01 20:23:01 UTC

- reply

maybe we need to coin a new term here - #exAndroid ?

2024-09-26 15:24:12 UTC

- reply

There were various things like adding support for the new gtk dmabuf import APIs for zero-copy playback, however most relevant for mobile was IMO the rotation support.
As mobile cameras produce rotated content we need to rotate somewhere in the pipeline. Previously we did that with the gst videoflip element - an extra copy, in software. Now that step is essentially free.
https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/gstreamer/gst-plugins-rs/-/merge_requests/1590

2024-09-26 12:43:09 UTC

For those running #postmarketos edge on a device with working camera - the number of which is raising fast enough to make me lose track - and you want to play around with the great new #gnomecamera / #gnomesnapshot #gnome47 release: you'll need to install gst-plugins-rs manually until some build issues are fixed.
The release features *heavily* improved rendering performance, mainly thanks to improvements in #gtk4 and the #gstreamer gtk4paintablesink (also for apps using the aperture library)

2024-09-03 10:15:30 UTC

I'm increasingly excited about what #opencl support coming together across the board in #mesa could mean for multimedia in the free ecosystem.
Just some thoughts about what I *think* is on the table:
- fluent/efficient AV1[1] playback across the board, *maybe* even on hardware like the Raspberry Pi4
- real-time AV1 encoding in reasonable quality for video chat, screencasting and camera recording
- a GPU ISP, allowing reasonable image quality with any camera sensor
1: or any other format?

2024-08-26 09:51:31 UTC

- reply

regarding the pixel 3a: there are patches in the pipe to make the second camera work as well - but there are still a bunch of issues to get ironed out. If anyone wants to play around, just install the following MRs with mrtest:
https://gitlab.com/postmarketOS/pmaports/-/merge_requests/5520
https://gitlab.com/postmarketOS/pmaports/-/merge_requests/5531
For a video see https://seafoam.space/objects/4d7c9ea7-d2fc-42d4-a7f0-8e953055a9d7

2024-08-16 17:58:25 UTC

- reply

And there they are, the official #postmarketos builds for the #pixel3a https://postmarketos.org/install/

2024-08-15 15:00:43 UTC

- reply

Important for me: the front camera should already work and for the back one there are WIP patches that work, meaning this device will probably be the first Android device with both cameras being supported (and most other thing as well!).
Sure, we're still very far away from what even a super outdated Android can offer. I for one am super eager and motivated to see if we can make #linuxmobile (upstream!) a somewhat reasonably alternative though - and make #postmarketos live up to its name :)

2024-08-15 14:53:45 UTC

Just got me a #pixel3a - used, cheap and in surprisingly good condition. The updater of the stock rom tells me that the device is EOL - and indeed, according to https://endoflife.date/pixel it was EOLed over two years ago, despite being released only some 5/6 years ago. The kernel version starts with 4.x.
Well, tomorrow pre-build #postmarketos images should appear on https://postmarketos.org/install/, the next weekly should have it promoted from "testing" to "community" and the kernel is at 6.10.x.

2024-08-14 18:40:36 UTC

- reply

So cool that one can subscribe to the podcast (e.g. with Gnome Podcasts) using the rss feed (https://cast.postmarketos.org/feed.rss). So I can listen using a #postmarketos #linuxmobile device :)