I have my empeg connected to a router at home and typically access the interent via wireless lan, except when i need to access the empeg with empolde. do i need a 10baseT switch to force 10mbs to the empeg? Shouldn't the router automatically do this based on the end device?

What sort of problem are you having? Are you saying that you cannot access the empeg from your wireless LAN but you can from a wired LAN? Or can you not access it at all.

Also, let's get your terminology straight so that we can be more sure what your problem is. A router is a device that connects two different networks, in your case, the internet and your local LAN. A hub is a device that connects many devices together on one network. A switch is a specialized hub that provides some additional, mostly transparent security and performance, features.

The device that you have that you're referring to as a router is probably a router that has a hub or switch built into it. Does it also have a wireless access point? (I realize I'm being a little pedagogical here, but it pays to be precise.)

Most modern switches can easily detect whether the attached device is 10Mbps or 100Mbps. Some hubs can, as well; they're usually marked as dual-speed hubs. As to whether or not the one you're using can, I don't know. These types of devices are often not of the highest quality, and even if they claim to be able to, they might not. What model do you have? Someone else may be able to confirm or deny that it works for them.

Is there a linux based screen saver program i can use to cycle through pictures over a networked harddrive? where would a new uninformed linux user find out about this stuff?

Sure. Remote filesystems under Unix are usually provided by NFS, which is (almost) totally transparent to client programs. Mounting a Windows fileshare is a little harder, but Linux also has a transparent mounting program for that.

The most common Linux screensaver these days is xscreensaver, which I think has a random image module, but, even if it doesn't, should be easy to write. You could also use something like gThumb, which isn't a screensaver, but does have a fullscreen slideshow mode.

There's a pretty good Linux software index at freshmeat.net.