I have been playing with my webcam in GNU/Linux, I have found this web where you can find a list of interesting applications you can use with a TV or webcam (everything is Video4Linux). I have tested several of them, the most insteresting for me:

• webcamserver You can make your camera’s stream available through a Java Applet.
• lives You can insert effects in your videos, I have not tested it too much.
• EffecTV Absolutely fantastic, you can add real time effect to your camera image… as I have see you can play with “video loopback” to try to record the result. I have to search more info about vloopback.
• Camorama GNOME app

The only thing I have not been able to do is recording video with a decent program 🙁 Xawtv does not permit me to use a lower resolution, it takes 640×480 and the frame rate is too low for a good video.

I have started playing around with Beatrix LiveCD, it is based in Ubuntu with Knoppix boot loader and Kanotix installer. It seems that they have integrated part of the desktop into the kernel so it get loaded very very fast. It is oriented to old computers so it comes with little software, but as it is like an Ubuntu… you can install anything you want later. I am now downloading others liveCDs in order to compare them 🙂