Whichever distro you use, there will be a selection of kernels to choose from. Even Arch has an elderly LTS option. Gentoo obviously offers all kernels since 0.97 (dig out egcs) including several that haven't been released and a couple that will never exist outside of a parallel reality!

I've owned several Inspirons and have no issues but then I use Arch (actually). Have a look into what kernels are on offer and consider a different one. However you may have another issue because I seem to recall that cams are now all basically standards based.

Try grabbing a couple of live "CDs" of other distros and boot them. See if your camera works. Try something like OpenSuSE "tumbleweed".