generic webcam?

[wpeng]

I'm trying to get ubuntu on my parents' old 800 Mhz Duron with 512 mb memory. Windows is just not cutting it in terms of performance. Everything autodetected well and I was able to get wmv's working fine for my mom's favorite streaming news show. The major obstacle is the webcamera and Skype, which my parents use a lot. I know Skype has a beta build with video, but my parents use some weird branded webcam (AVstar??) from China and I can't find drivers for it. Are there generic drivers, or is this household just not ready for linux yet?

 

[drag]

well there are generic webcams out there.. more or less.

For example my Asus EEE uses 'UVC' webcam which is a sort of a generic interface. It works over a internal USB connection, I beleive. Depending on your distribution they may have pre-built kernel modules (drivers) to support it. Then there are OVCam-based webcams and those are mostly supported also. So it realy depends.

If you can get the actual model number of the camera then that would help narrow things down.

Some compatability hardware listings for webcams...
http://mxhaard.free.fr/
http://mxhaard.free.fr/spca5xx.html
http://ovcam.org/ov511/cameras.html
http://linux-uvc.berlios.de/#devices
http://www.saillard.org/linux/pwc/
http://qce-ga.sourceforge.net/

I realy don' t know a whole lot about webcams or anything like that unfortunately. Maybe you can find a website online for it or a retail page with specs or something like that.

 

[Robor]

I wasn't aware Skype had a version with video support in Linux. Just downloaded and installed the .deb for 7.04 on my 7.10 box and it installs fine. I don't have a cam to test but maybe I'll give it a shot later.

 

[bamx2]

I have been playing around with Zoneminder ( www.zoneminder.com ) to use for a DIY video surveillance system. It might work if not overdoing it for what you are looking for .