I picked up a "web Cam For Dummies" starter box from the clearance bin, as in the IDG series of publications. lsusb gives me this output:

Bus 001 Device 006: ID 093a:2468 Pixart Imaging, Inc. Easy Snap Snake Eye WebCam

Has anybody been able to make this device work under Linux? And I'm currently running OpenSuse 10.2

Hehe I did the same bought it for $9 but the camera is a iConcept POS that I have yet to figure out how to make work.

That said what is a decent low cost webcam that is easy to set up?

This is reported as working with the spca5xx or gspca driver, with a link to http://mxhaard.free.fr/

I think that's a triple contradiction

If you just want a toy maybe you can find a driver for your $9 cam at http://mxhaard.free.fr/ also. Just plug in it and run 'dmesg' and it may give you some more useful info about the hardware.

Looking at some recent (but not latest) kernel source docs it seems like there is not much official support for more recent cams. Maybe individual distro packagers have added more stuff.

The older Logitechs are supported by the pwc driver:

http://www.saillard.org/linux/pwc/

and the newer ones by the UVC driver:

http://linux-uvc.berlios.de/

If I wanted a good webcam I would probably try one of those, but would expect to have to compile/install it myself.

I never got into this expecting a "good" web cam.
Got it running with Ekiga. It looks like a funhouse; now whether that's just the subject or the cam, I don't know, but it is sending out a message so it's somewhat functional.