Turn it on. I had to turn mine on by pressing FN + F6. Then it worked perfectly.
However the sound wasn’t working in Teams either. I had to go to the Sound settings and on the input tab turn the sound level up from 0. Isn’t that interesting that by default Linux turns off the cam and turns the sound input to zero effectively creating privacy for the user?
Now this isn’t what I did at first. Normally when a cam isn’t seen it has to do with the browser setting and it being confused if it should share the cam/mic. When I checked that out in Brave it showed that they were allowed to be shared. Then I thought that they might be incompatible or something so I started to research that. I did lots of funky command line stuff and got lots of interesting results back. However in the post someone suggesting pressing FN + F6 and I was like, why not? I was so pleased when it worked.
However to make it work I had to download a program called Cheese from Software Manager to test it locally. When it started working I asked a nice coworker to do a meeting with me and then he saw me. He said I didn’t have any sound, so I figured that out.
I never use the Function buttons. I just don’t find them reliable. They differ from model to model and most of the time I have no need to turn cams on or off. I would leave them on all the time and then shut the lid when I want privacy. I don’t trust a button to do the job that a closed lid could do. I can appreciate that some people like the Functionality of the Function keys but this is probably a holdover from using the mac. I don’t want to have to remember functionality changes as well. That is why the mac functionality bar aka Touch Bar that they experimented with failed. Mac had taught us not to use the function keys and then they wanted to improve on it? There was no compelling reason to use them and I never did.
I like that the MSI computer has a physical sliding lock that can cover the cam. I never use it because it is a small piece and I want to save it in case closing the laptop isn’t possible in the future. Often the weak-spot of a laptop is the hinges so you can kind of plan on those failing at some point.
Always try the simple solution first before you get complicated. Now in the future if the Linux Mint computer complains about something I’ll see if there is a function key that might apply.