If it's not, then should I download a third party program?
2 Answers
FireWire devices work plug and play on all currently available versions of Ubuntu. To list the available FireWire packages run apt search firewire
and filter the search results by IEEE 1394 and IEEE1394.
Here is a list of a few FireWire packages that are in the default repositories of all currently supported versions of Ubuntu and also Ubuntu 20.04.
- libavc1394-0
- libavc1394-dev
- libavc1394-tools
- libdc1394-22
- libdc1394-22-dbg
- libdc1394-22-dev
- libdc1394-utils
- libraw1394-11
- libraw1394-tools
As an update to this answer, four years on, support for firewire on Ubuntu is pledged until at least 2029. See here: www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-Firewire-New-Maintainer
But as of Ubuntu 20.04 (or thereabouts), permissions were changed so you have to do a bit of tweaking to get dvgrab to work. You have to add a rule for firewire in /etc/udev/rules.d
sudo nano /etc/rules.d/80-firewire.rules
This will open a new file in rules.d in which a single line is needed:
KERNEL=="fw*", GROUP="video", MODE="0664"
Then you have to add yourself to the video group:
sudo adduser <yourname> video
Explanation for this was found here: https://superuser.com/questions/236562/permanently-changing-permission-of-firewire-device