

Reverse-engineered Linux driver for the Broadcom 1570 PCIe webcam - ai_ja_nai
https://github.com/patjak/bcwc_pcie

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userbinator
I doubt the actual name of the product is a "Broadcom 1570"; 1570 is just the
PCI device ID. Compared to other webcams this does seem a rather hairy beast -
looking through the source, it appears to have its own DDR controller that
needs to be calibrated, and requires firmware loaded upon initialisation for
it to work. Very different from the USB UVC webcams that are "set and forget"
from the perspective of the host.

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NaNaN
The project owner also considers the Retina driver. Nice. (See the issue
tracker.) But is it illegal?

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scrollaway
Why would it not be legal?

(Come on HN, downvoted for asking questions?)

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breul99
Apple has rather draconian anti-reverse engineering fine prints in most of
their eula.

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scrollaway
An EULA is a license agreement - a contract of sorts. Breaking a contract you
agreed on is punishable in court under the right circumstances, but it's not
"illegal" (otherwise, you could literally make up new laws). EU courts often
find EULAs unenforceable due to a host of reasons (we're very consumer-
friendly over here).

Furthermore, you are only breaking the contract if you accepted the contract
in the first place; so it only covers what you can do with the product iff you
purchased the product (and accepted the EULA that comes with it). So if you
are doing blackbox reverse engineering, there is nothing the company can do to
prevent you from figuring out how their physical product works.

Finally, as another comment noted, in most parts of the world reverse
engineering for interoperability purposes is protected by law.

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Scarbutt
How well does Linux works on a MacBook air these days? I have a mid-2013 one
and thinking completely making the switch to Linux.

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openstack_guru1
I've been running Fedora on a mid-2013 MBA (i7-4650U) since April last year,
and I love it. I grew up on RedHat, switched to Ubuntu around 2010, but after
Unity I've switched back to the other camp, and Fedora has been really stable
for me.

I used this as a guide to get the install going:
[http://mattoncloud.org/2014/02/05/fedora-20-on-a-macbook-
air...](http://mattoncloud.org/2014/02/05/fedora-20-on-a-macbook-air/)

Although, I don't use the custom packages, because most things worked out of
the box. The only thing I have to do manually is update the display backlight
driver after every kernel upgrade, but I do updates once a month, and it's a
simple "make;make install" and an extra reboot.

I gave OS X a shot for about 2 years, but could never quite get used to some
of the quirks.

Fedora on this MBA has been super stable.

~~~
user1234666
I had some issues with the usb bus triggering the system to wake form suspend
on fedora22 but it was easy enough to fix .. and random HDPI issues but
nothing to bad

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Gys
Not a 'Apple FaceTime Driver'. Its a Linux driver for the build-in Broadcom
1570 PCIe webcam (Macbooks mid 2013 and later).

~~~
sctb
We updated the submitted title, which was “Building Apple FaceTime Driver for
Linux”.

