I am putting a computer in my car and I am wanting to use linux. I think that I can scale the os down. I am wanting the computer to powerup to an mp3 player with playlist. I am also wanting this to sync with my wireless network so i can push mp3s to the car(or delete them)

I am close to just using 98 but i dont think i can customize it as I want.

Any ideas of where i should start?

the computer is an old compaq armada 7790 DMT 233mmx 64mb ram 4 gig hd(a new hd may be added with many more gb)

i have read that gnome has been installed successfully on one of these...
any help is much appreciated

Well for an MP3 player/Playlist manager IMHO Amarok is the best at the moment. It'll run just find in GNOME although when you install it it will pull in some QT/KDE depedencies.

Really though if all you want it to do is show an MP3 player window don't even install GNOME - just install one of the very lightweight Window managers. Then install Amarok (use your distro's package management system to make sure you get all the dependencies). It should work much faster when it doesn't have to load the heavyweight desktop environments like KDE or GNOME.

it seems that these windows managers are designed to be installed ontop of a linux distro.....

am i wrong? can i just burn one of these on a boot cd and load it?

Yes a windows mgr runs on Linux or BSD.
If you want a live CD that runs from CDROM
http://www.knoppix.net/
http://www.freesbie.org/
And there are many others.
http://linuxiso.org/
For that old PII 233 I would recommend Slackware, FreeBSD, http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/,
or something with a light windows mgr like Fluxbox. Trying to run KDE or Gnome on that PII 233 wont be nice.

Slackware or FreeBSD running Fluxbox and lighter applications will work on that PII.

Can anyone help me in getting a proper video,audio and mp3 players for my fedora core 3.
My helix and totem movie players can't work with the mounted files from windows partitions.
Also can anyone tell me from where can i get free Cd's of various linux(both live and install)
distros..
Please help me..
Thanks in advance..
Gejoe

Whatever Linux distro you choose will most likely have packages to install these window managers. They may even be an option during the installation.

Most hard drives are quite sensitive to shocks, and will rapidly fail when used on a moving vehicle. The 4 Gb drive you mention is not likely to last long unless it's one of the new "hardened" (read "expensive") drives. In fact, I seem to recall that one of the HD companies (up the road from here, in Longmont) just announced that they were developing the first HD hardened for vehicular use, to be available "sometime next year."

This is really a different topic and probably should be in a new thread. Anyway see here: http://www.fedorafaq.org/fc3/#xmms-mp3