I was wondering what some of you may be using for a carputer system? I am interested in something compact that I could put in my car for playing mp3's and possibly music videos.

What linux distro and what hardware? I would like something that boots quickly so I don't have to wait forever to start using it after I crank my car. Is there a distro that can be safely shut down by just killing the power? I don't want to wait for it to shutdown after I get where I'm going. What media player? freevo?....preferably something that would look right on a 4x3 aspect ratio monitor like a cheap 7" LCD...

i've never heard of a carputer system before but i sure know there exists a distro for the sony playstation.

You need look for an embedded computer. Have a look at http://www.icpamerica.com and click single board computer. Find either 3.5" or 5.25" single board computers that might suit for your application. Next buy a Flash card that can store the OS. Then find a distribution that is small to put on the Flash card. I think slackware will do. Then pick a media player such as XMMS or Mplayer. To store your audio (MP3, OGG, FLAC, etc) use a removable drive bay and pick a hard drive. To power all of this you need a power supply. You need to find a dual switching power supply that can take 10 to 14 DC volts for the input and output 12 DC volts and 5 DC volts.

Flash cards are a lot faster than hard drives when accessing files. It will not take a long time to boot up from a Flash. Linux can not be shutdown at a flip of swich because the filesystems have to be properly unmounted. You can put a time limit on your setup to only stay on for about 5 minutes after you have turn off the engine. In 5 minutes the battery should not get too low so that you can not start the car.

Many people have done this setup but their way is not efficient. They used standard computer parts and a DC-AC inverter. Using an inverter creates a lot of lost of energy for mobil applications. Plus you have to count for energy lost of the computer power supply too. It also takes up a lot of trunk space.

Actually if you are running from Flash card, you are going to be using a RAMDISK based system (since a read/write filesystem cannot be mounted on a Flash card) so you could kill the power without any ill effects.

The Flash card would never be mounted, so there is no risk of corruption. The only thing that could be corrupted would be the storage drive, but this could be avoided by mounting the drive as read only in the fstab. You would just remount it read/write when you wanted to add new media to it.

I've been looking at Mini-ITX motherboards, especially since they now make miniature 12VDC power supplies (up to 200 watts) and a little add-on module (can't remember what it's called) that will send a startup and shutdown command to the system in sync with starting or shutting off your car. I did read about someone mounting the hard drive in read only mode, but they were using just the hard drive (no compact flash card) and haven't had any problems. I have also read about people using an IRman module to work in conjunction with a steering wheel mounted remote. Will this IR module work with linux?

You might want to check here for information about IR remotes:

LIRC

Thanks! looks like some useful info on the IR remotes. I really want to build a carputer...just hesitating to drop the money into it. Then I have to decide whether to put it into my nice ride (gas guzzler) or put it into a cheap 4 cylinder for daily driving....

I don't know much about carputers myself, but I know that everyone at Pheaton will be willing to help you out (http://www.pheatonforums.com). Hehehe. Shameless plug

Hardforum and Bit-Tech also might be good places to look.

Thanks. Those people may be a good resource for making a custom case for the project.