brent is complete removal, reboot, reinstall
Already been there and done that. No joy. The alternatives to Cheese that I've found are available for specific Ubuntu versions, or need to be build from source. That's more trouble than I'm willing to suffer, and leaves the updating to me.
This doesn't represent an urgent need. I just want to find out which family member is getting into my stuff after I retire for the night. Things like 4 or 5 pens disappearing, a mouse broken, and so on. There are two web cams connected to Solus machines that could solve the mystery for me. I don't want to accuse anyone without knowing for sure.