hello hardwarephytes, so I guess

I have no experience using or developing on linux, shell account through SSH to a unix system maybe, but always on top of windows.

I have been interested in doing projects in video and finding hardware solutions to video generation, I guess a video synth is what I am seeking help on.

Basicly I would like to have a tower up with a ps/2 or usb keyboard(some input), a video card running out through vga/composite/s-video on a pentium 3. I have no major need for running any programs other than a custom one written to generate video from an input device, initialy the keyboard. So thus far my questions are what Distribution provides a small memory footprint? allows me to compile C++ or Java? use io and have a low level access to video output, is there an API somewhere to handle this? Any body have any ideas or recommendations based upon this small description?

doop de de http://www.svgalib.org/