Hello Fellow LINUX devotees/[experimenters , time for me to get-use a webcam since this COVID -19 ridiculousness.

My OS is STELLAE LINUX 6.8 (Ilike it very much!! ~ similar to good-ole REDHAT/fedora )

an APP called CHEESE WEBCAM BOOTH enable sone to use a Video Caht /Communication on it -but I don,t have a Camera /webcam .

I was wondering what type of Webcam s are Linux compatible???

regards -chili

I picked up a cheap Creative Live! camera for a few bucks on ebay which included a microphone, and it works just fine (I think video is only 640x480 or thereabouts, but it's good enough - the built-in mic is easily 'nicer' than the camera, relatively speaking). Doing a bit of research before buying it I concluded anything UVC compliant (which is apparently most newer webcams that connect via USB) should work 'out of the box' with linux. See here for more:
https://linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/UVC_Webcam_Devices

And a list of some compatible devices here:
https://www.ideasonboard.org/uvc/#devices

FireWire is the other option, if your computer has a FireWire (IEEE 1394) port available, and I know there's a similar 'standard' interface there, but I didn't pursue it because most of my newer systems lack 1394 ports. I do remember years ago 1394 being easier to live with for webcams (I actually had one about 20 years ago) in Windows and OS X because of that standardization, whereas USB was a bit rougher. If I remember right I did find out that the Apple Facetime cameras are pretty 'standards compliant' - but they tend to cost a few bucks more even as used. See this for more, but sadly a lot of the links are dead/taken over by domain squatters: https://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Webcam-HOWTO/hardware.html

If weather-proofing is not an issue, I'd take a close look a the new camera for the the Raspberry Pi with its C-mounted lenses. You could run it off of a Raspberry Pi 3A+ (or even a Zero W) for a secure base since it runs a full GNU/Linux distro. The main down side is that you are stuck with a ratio of 1:1 for Raspberry Pi computers to cameras.

I don't think you really need UVC unless you mean some sort of indoor or outdoor security camera. (not fully sure on that opinion)

Since you are on a very unknown distro we can't say what was built into the kernel. Easy enough to put a mainstream distro on a usb flash if an issue. Might be a good idea anyway.

I don't think I've ever seen a logitech camera fail to work.
https://linuxhint.com/best_webcams_ubuntu_2020/

I'm not sure what all UVC ultimately encompasses in terms of devices (it's probably more than just 'webcams' as a device class though), but the linked list includes quite a lot of 'webcams' from Logitech, Creative, Asus, etc as well as many laptop models, which should all work. They do mention that 'older' Logitech cameras have a firmware/hardware bug, but the website they cite has been taken down. Wayback Machine has it though: https://web.archive.org/web/20081101...ompatibilities (looks like pre-2007, so 'they are out there' but if you're buying something brand new, maybe not a concern).

I'm also not sure there's really a difference between 'security cameras' and 'webcams' from the system's perspective - it either uses USB video as a class or it uses something else, but I know with applications like Motion they don't really discriminate and 'webcams' can be used as 'security cameras' along with other kinds of devices (apparently the PS3 USB camera is a popular choice for that too).

Also to note: CHEESE is not, to my knowledge, able to actually do videocalls - you'd need a complete service/application for that, like Jitsi. CHEESE can record video clips though, so if that's sufficient for your purposes, it's a great choice.

Chillibowl - is this the distro you're using? https://li.nux.ro/stella/ If so, that should have no trouble getting any/all applications here, as a CentOS 'remix' with EPEL compatibility.

UVC is usb video ?camera?. It's the generic driver for most USB cameras. Some camcorders come with usb cables to connect to your computer and act as webcams. Most laptop webcams are on the USB bus. Which for old junk laptops you cuold extract and attach a usb cable (only 4 wires) and use as a usb camera. Probably not the best quality though. I've gotten a few $50-ish sony sensor webcams off of amazon. They work well with usable low light performance. I can at least make out my car in the drive with only moonlight as the light source. Far out in the country so no light pollution. Lots of options.

For high end stuff you could HDMI capture a professional camera with something like a magewell capture card. Lots of options running many price points. Tinkernut on youtube has a few videos about salvaging old laptop webcams.

A web search for "web cam linux" will turn up a number of articles and reviews.

I have one that works very nicely. I can't find much information by looking at it, except that it says "Ultra Full HD Live Camera" on it. But I can't find detailed make/model info and I've had it so long I don't remember where I got it from.