Re: video(4) landed. "No webcam driver" is dead.

On Tue, Aug 11, 2026 at 12:43 PM Abdelkader Boudih <[email protected]> wrote:
> The userland path was not removed , multimedia/webcamd  still works if you want the isolation tradeoff.
> video(4) isnt a replacement for that option, its a shared framework for the kernel drivers.
>
> uvideo itself isn't new code we're taking a fresh risk on, it's OpenBSD driver port, in-kernel there since 2008 and ported by bapt.
>
> video(4) is that same logic factored out so uvideo, fwcam, and future capture drivers stop reimplementing their own buffer/mmap handling. Any crash bug in the core is a bug OpenBSD has been carrying for 15+ years, not one this change introduces and the review found several (UAF, lock ordering) that are now fixed upstream of both.

This still doesn't answer the question why the usermode
implementation shouldn't be preferred. For example, the
tradeoffs of FUSE file systems are well-known, and for
a given FS or use case we can decide which implementation,
a kernel one or a usermode one, fits better.

So what about video(4)?

> With more non tech people moving from windows or macos to freebsd, having a "Plug'N'Play" experience is what we should aim for.

If by "plug'n'play" you mean that there is no need to install
an additional daemon from packages, then I view this as
a purely distribution problem. We don't provide a graphical
experience out of the box anyways.