Consumer-grade digital video cameras, firewire, Linux, anybody?

[Bob Raymond]

That friend of mine with the laptop battery troubles has a nice, fast
SuSE 8.0 with XFS.  I haven't tested battery yet, but the thing isn't
swapping to the HD all the time, even though I went overboard and gave
him 600 mb of swap.  Now, he wants to replace his now dead digital video
camera with something in the $300-$500 range, that works in Linux, and
is firewire, and is of good quality.  I'm giving up Googling.  I spent
about two hours on there and got plenty of links about webcams, but he
doesn't want a webcam.  Any suggestions on what to get?

Thanks,

Bob Raymond