> Which distribution of Linux is used and how fully featured is it?

Cut down version of debian. But you can un-"cut it down" as much as
you like. See here for how to do it: Mars

> Is it possible to FTP, Telnet or even WWW into the player?

Yes, you can run pppd on the empeg (see above url) and then run telnet
or a web server, or ssh or whatever you want on it.

PING empeg (192.168.205.1): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 192.168.205.1: icmp_seq=0 ttl=255 time=29.2 ms

> Is there enough room left in the unit to install an ethernet card? Access
> to the player at 100Mbs through UTP Cat 5 would be real cool :)

I really don't understand why they didn't put ethernet in instead of USB.
I bet they've spent countless hours on USB drivers when they could have used
an already working ethernet driver. Surely you can get hold of motherboard
mountable ethernet chips?

> Do you need to access the player using the provided software? ie. Could
> you FTP new Mp3's to the player which would automatically know of their
> existance?

You can use the windows software or the linux software (so far) to upload
data, or you can just copy the mp3s in over, e.g., ppp and create the
appropriate fidxx0 and fidxx1 files, and then rebuild the database from
them. In fact I'm thinking of abandoning the upload software and writing
a perl program on the empeg to create an automatic hierarchy of playlists
from the ID3 tags in the uploaded MP3s, i.e. /genre/artist/album/songname

> Leading from that - does the player build an index of available tracks
> on boot, during transfers or do you need to invoke an index rebuild?

At various times, on demand, and depending upon whether the empeg database
is missing/corrupt. Not exactly sure when, but it's possible. I'm sure
empeg could be persuaded to rebuild based on say the existence of a
flag (/drive0/REBUILDDBPLEASE).

Paul