Installed!
I reinstalled the Linux partition in i386. That means, all the proprietary software that I want. :P But seriously. Finally, I got hardware acceleration to work all the time, but it wasn't b/c of the AMD64'ness of the previous installation, just the fact that the card used a different scheme (one has to disable AIGLX in the server options). I tried to install Beryl, a recent fork of Compiz, a modern window manager, but could on only one screen. From the information I gathered, Xgl, the Xwindow server - the layer on which Beryl/Compiz works -, does not support dual screens, and I can't use AIGLX on my graphics card (ATI 9550).
So, I had it on one screen, and it was quite an impressive work of eye candy. I think that there is more that you can do, beyond the wobbly menus, desktop cube. Except for window-resizing (another inherent issue of the engine, something with having to redraw all of the windows at once) and maybe the "magic lamp" effect of reducing window, then the performance is very very nice, especially all windows given this sort of jello-ish texture, and the water surface effect that I didn't try, but which you can see in one of the many demos of Compiz on YouTube.
it's quite the buzz in the Linux community, but the first time I see it in actions (friends would be like, my graphics card is not that great, but I can run Xgl on it). If they resolve some issues, then it can bring Linux for users up to the level of MacOS and Vista.
So far, I am satisfied with the new install.Only the very proprietary Windows Media Player streams don't work. There also a weird bug pushing a video outside of its frame, related to my dual screen setup (when my cursor goes outside the containing screen, or a windows is pushed beyond its limits).
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