Few days back, I switched my desktop’s OS from Windows to Ubuntu 10.04 and I have been trying to get everything working smoothly as it used to work in Windows. Managed to sort out few things but my webcam become a big pain. Skype never detected the cam and even the cam’s mic did not work.

I googled around for quite sometime, checked many solutions and finally I managed to get things working.

So, here is the solution:

Get the video working (Ubuntu detected the cam but for some reason, it never worked with skype). So to get it working, try this command in the terminal first: (Solutions is posted here)

env LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libv4l/v4l1compat.so skype

This will basically load skype with the help of a shared library called libv. (Correct me if I am wrong here)

Once the skype is loaded, you can test the video and if it works. Just edit the Menu entry of Skype:

Right click on the Applications menu > Click on Edit Menus > Locate Skpye (Mostly under the parent menu called Internet) > Select Properties > enter the above command in the command box and hit close.

This will make Skype load using the shared library. (i.e. whenever you open it from the Applications menu)

So, this solves the problem with the video. Now, on many computers (Including mine), the mic never worked too. The mic showed under the Sound Preferences > Input devices but there was no sound while testing it.

So, this is how we get the Mic working:

  1. Download my patched GSPCA: gspca-2.9.51-vx1000-patch-20100712.zip
  2. Extract the zip file on your Desktop (so you have the folder “gspca-2.9.51-vx1000-patch-20100712?).
  3. Open a terminal window and enter the following commands:
    cd Desktop/gspca-2.9.51-vx1000-patch-20100712/
    make
    sudo make install
  4. Reboot your computer and test your webcam in an application such as Cheese (which can easily be found in the Ubuntu Software Center).

The above solution is provided here

So, after applying these 2 fixes, my Microsoft Lifecam VX-1000 worked perfectly fine and this helps me to solve another Windows to Linux migration issue. Will post more tips / pointers soon.

Hope it helps.