Hello all!

I have three questions but this first one is the point of this thread.

1/2) I have been using linux for quite a few years and had finally come to realize that their is no nice way to playback video nicely on any distro. When I had a mac I got useto using VLC and it works for the most part but it has a god awfull interface and can be quite flaky at times.

Im stuck always having to mainboot into my windows XP because when I want to edit an mp3 I use wavpad, when I want to edit video I use vitrualDub/Tmpgenc/WinAVI and hers the BIG reason when I want to watch any video from the net be it an apple trailer, russian handycam or korean cellphone using Combined Comunity Codec Pack, Real Alternative, Quicktime Alteranive and Media Play Classic and over two years and hundred for formats I have never once had a codec issue.

I have never been a gamer and if I was i would get a console for that so my main reasons for using windows all this time was C/C++, audio video playback, and Firefox but now my side hobby has me booting daily into my Debian Etch distro for my ARM7/9 croll compiler toolchain and im thinking gee It would be nice to just have one OS that did what I come for.

Enough backstory, Does anyone know of a distro thats preferably debian based and will suit my needs? Or even of a good codec package that will match whats listed above AND a single player to rule them all?

3) The last thing is I come from an embeded handheld background the the concept of putting the kernel and root on a read only partition and virtually merging it with a variable read write partition for scripts and the handfull of files that require RW to work on boot. I currently run compact flash raid 0 between two 16gig drives to achieve 90% the same throughput as my 80gig SATA drive and was thinking of adding a 2-16gig card for /var files and making the Raid array read only but I havent been able to find any good Debian specific tutorials on making root read only. anybody got any links??

Thanks!!