I do not know if you webcam is supported by out of the box, but if it is then you can use a program called cheese to activate the webcam to take pictures.

In a terminal, give us the output of:

lsusb

we really need to know what type of webcam it is before we can help you.

Most of the posts I've found are a bit old, from 2 to 3 years back. The driver for that webcam is available at souceforge, link below:

http://syntekdriver.sourceforge.net/

Mepis is a Debian derivative, as is Ubuntu, and a post from 2007 tells how a Mepis user got the webcam working on an older Mepis install. I'll give you the link to the Mepis thread:

http://www.mepislovers.org/forums/showthread.php?t=12459

My advice would be to see if Ubuntu has a recent version of the .deb used in the Mepis thread and see if you can install it using the instructions given in that thread. (Actually it's a single post).

If your adventurous, you can look at the documentation on the sourceforge site and see if that helps you also.