The AS8SC laptop from Asus has a 1.3M pixel webcam. Let's use it!

First step is hardware identification. As root, the lsusb shows:

~$ lsusb
Bus 006 Device 001: ID 0000:0000  
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 0000:0000  
Bus 005 Device 003: ID 046d:c019 Logitech, Inc. Optical Tilt Wheel Mouse
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 0000:0000  
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 0000:0000  
Bus 007 Device 001: ID 0000:0000  
Bus 003 Device 002: ID 04f2:b028 Chicony Electronics Co., Ltd VGA UVC WebCam
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 0000:0000  
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 0000:0000

Good news, the webcam is a UVC (USB Video Class) and is supported by the linux-uvc driver. We just have to compile it:

~$ apt-get install linux-uvc-source
~$ cd /usr/src
~$ tar xjvf linux-uvc.tar.bz2
~$ cd linux-source-2.6.24
~$ make-kpkg modules

Once the module compiled and the package created, we can install the package and load the module:

~$ cd ..
~$ dpkg -i linux-uvc-modules-2.6.24_0.1.0.svn193-3+2.6.24-10.00.Custom_i386.deb
~$ modprobe uvcvideo

The webcam is ready to use! Canorama won't work (it only support v4l but inux-uvc driver is a v4l2 driver only), but others applications like luvcview or cheese can do the job. The webcam can also be used in visio with amsn.

~$ apt-get install luvcview cheese amsn

Enjoy !