I used to have a webcam (a Creative), it was very easy to get it working, just had to load the correct modules, ov511 (the webcam model driver) and v4l (video 4 linux).
To show the images from the camera I used camsource, which opened a port and showed the captured image when requested (I had to access something like:
http://myip:8889 and the image was shown).
I would search on the web for the correct module for your camera and start with that, the page you could find is likely to have instructions on how to use it too.
