Alright I've been wanting to build a Carputer for my jeep for some time, and I will only do it with Ubuntu as I do not want to use windows. The problem is that the only GUI for a carputer system is a windows app run in wine. I want to create a for linux GUI front end that is customizable to sute the driver's needs (sat. radio, cd, aux inputs, tv tuner, radio, possibly podcasts, GPS, ect.) I like the feel of the Elsia media center system, it is however a pretty power hungry app. I dont think this would be too large a hurtle as a carputer would most likely be only runing this app outside of the linux kernel.

The biggest problems that i can think of would be
-serial driver connections(sat. radio receivers, aux imputs, GPS receivers) I've tried before to get my Garmin gps receiver to be "seen" under ubuntu, without sucess.

I was thinking the linux ver of google earth as the navigation assistant.

Elisa uses G-streamer as it's media player and puts it's own GUI on top of that framework, so I would like to create our own "skin" for G-streamer to take advantage of all the plugin codex's available.

How would that be built? What language?
I would love to take this project on but I would need some guidence as to where to start.
-sean