But, if you have a brand new (bought within one week from today) then you may have a version 1.6 xbox, in which case you are currently SOL for your doing anything with the xbox. That is because you are unable to boot to anything except the default dashbord environment... no exception.. the box doesn't have a flashable chip, so you have to have a mod chip, because you are unable to downgrade the dash to one that works with any other of the current 'soft mods' (i.e. the Audio hack, and the Font hack). Since it doesn't have a flashrom you are also unable to replace the rom to the cromwell one that will boot linux. But like i said these are questions that are better asked in the xbox-scene forums, you will (no offince meant) find people smarter at geting the box to do the things you want it to do then you will here.

But if you are going to do anything on an older xbox, I reccomend the book by Andrew 'Bunnie' Huang called 'hacking the xbox'. It is very informative about modding the box, and on ideas on reverse engineering devices.