MS Teams Wallpaper on Linux

My only envy of Mac and Windows users has been video backgrounds in Microsoft Teams. Not any more, thanks to backscrub.

You'll need to compile it yourself (which will also compile Tensorflow).

$ git clone https://github.com/floe/backscrub.git
$ mkdir build
$ cd build
$ cmake .. && make -j$(nproc)

Then, load the kernel module:

# modprobe v4l2loopback \
  devices=1 \
  max_buffers=2 \
  exclusive_caps=1 \
  card_label="VirtualCam" \
  video_nr=10

You'll then be able to choose your background with:

$ ./build/backscrub \
      -c /dev/video0 \
      -v /dev/video10 \
      -b ~/pictures/wallpapers/foo.jpg

In Chrome/Teams/Skype++ you'll then choose /dev/video10, which will show up as VirtualCam because of the card_label option to modprobe above, instead of /dev/video0 as the camera input. That's it.

...well, there is actually another thing you must do: Currently (2021-10-06), the eigen library is down on Gitlab, so before running cmake, you'll have to do:

$ find -type f | 
  while read -r f ; do 
    sed 's#https://gitlab.com/libeigen/eigen#https://gitlab.com/libeigen/eigen-backup#g' "$f"; 
  done

Thanks to backscrub, I no longer have a thing I miss on Linux ;-)