and write an OpenGL app which puts multiple videos on the panes of multiple rotating truncated icosahedrons a la the old famous BeOS rotating OpenGL cube app from years ago.

Yoper works. That's the key thing. I've been a Mandrake fan for a while, but in Mandrake 10, which i paid for, Totem doesnt work, streaming audio is flaky and videos only work in X-Movie (i think, i forgot its name now i no longer use mandrake).

All of my hardware is detected and works. And it's damn fast too. Noticably faster. Measurably faster.

Specs:
Gigabyte GA-7N400 Pro2 mobo
AMD XP 3200+
1 GB DDR RAM
ATI 9600 XT (3D accelerated)
Sound Blaster Live! Platinum with Live Drive II (which actually works)
2*120 GB Seagates
MachTV BT878-based TV card
Realtek 8169 onboard nic
onboard firewire
usb1/2

fantastic.
Get it via the BitTorrent which is extremely quick.
cheers
peter