I've recently got a new laptop, so my old "worker PC" has now become a target for some heavy modification! I have an old broken Marantz CD player (for a separates stereo system) and am planning on putting the old mobo in there, silencing things a bit (Athlon XP 1800 with a noisy stock fan) and having this new "media PC" in to my stereo stack as a jukebox / NAS / Firewall / router-type thing
Eventually, this will run my own OS (when it's up to scratch), but for now, I'll probably be running linux. Question is, how would you do this and with what distro? The old video card is far too bulky for the case, so I'll pretty much be needing to do everything remotely. Problem is, I'm not too familiar with Linux - I've used vnc before and am vaguely aware of the capabilities of ssh.
My online searches have brought up GeexBox, but this kind of assumes you want a graphical interface and video playback. The aim is that I will eventually be able to control everything via the existing CD player buttons and remote (I have an Atmel AVR development board, so will be fixing something up with that and the old serial port - the SOYO mobo also has an internal spare serial header, which should keep it neat).
So I guess the question is twofold: has anyone here done anything like this at a hardware level before, and does anyone have any views about the kind of OS / distro that is best suited to this sort of environment? Oh - and I'm not looking to throw any money at this
Cheers,
Adam
[edit:]PS - it's possible that I will have to reinstall this without a video card in future, so anything which can be installed remotely or without the need for user input would be a big bonus![/edit]
. In my college days I intially had only a Amd k6 with 64 mb ram and my hardisk crashed. My development and everything got screwed up . But linux came to the rescue . I can write at length on this . But the easiest soultion is to remaster existing ones like Damn Small Linux or a Light Weight Version Knoppix . You might also find WOMP Linux interesting . Take a look at blueflops as well . I actally made a small rescue floppy with everything i need (tcc -- the most important stuff ) 
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