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LinuXbox Boots 248

Posted by timothy from the believe-it-or-not dept.
ducker writes: "Finally Xbox is ready for some real fun! Linux can be booted now ... just check out http://www.xbox-scene.com - Linux boots into a network-enabled state, running a web server and telnet, which allows you to log into the box from another machine. It can be booted either from flash memory, or (more easily) from a CD inserted into the machine. (The Xbox still needs to have a modchip fitted to allow it to run unsigned code)."
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LinuXbox Boots More

LinuXbox Boots

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  • Will it really delude all the evil though?
    • Well, I meant dilute, but hey, irony is irony.
    • I suppose since the Xbox is a Microsoft product, the porters felt obligated to have it boot into a networked state with our old insecure friend the telnet daemon running?

      Hope they'll have sshd (one of the non-backdoored ones) in as a replacement soon.

      • Can we all just stop screaming about the deap insecurity of Telnet for a while?

        Onless it's on a machine with a real IP address or connected throgh a device with NAT enabled to make it accesible.

        However in real life where IPs are expensive and your whole lan is conected to the net on ADSL or even dialup with your PCs and XBoxes having IPs like 192.168.*.* or 10.*.*.*, there is no danger from Telnet.

        BTW: This is the case in what I consider the best posible abuse of XBox-Linux. A Beawolf cluster. I mean can you even Ping the ones at fermilab or nasa ?
  • ...and there was much rejoicing! :)
  • I'm glad to see such progress being made, and for the hard-core hacker this definately is an achievement. For those of us who aren't trusted around a soldering iron, I will be more interested to find when they can come up with a CD/DVD version that can be booted without the hardware mods.

    At least the same site does offer some modded XBoxes for sale - which is a reasonable measure to get the solution out to more folks.
    • The Xbox is like a pre-Palladium machine. It has hardware controls to prevent unsigned code from running. Microsoft must be addressed to sign said code (hence they make themselves a necessary component in the Xbox software development process). I doubt that Microsoft are going to (somehow) sign a copy of the Linux kernel. Just like Palladium, you cannot get around this with software hacks. You have to break the hardware.

      • Re:Not possible... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by CTalkobt ( 81900 ) on Saturday August 17, 2002 @11:48AM (#4088906) Homepage
        Why not ask MS to sign the linux kernal on the X-Box?

        I'm not sure what it takes to ask for a signing but it would provide interesting fodder for the Dept of [in]Justice.

        It'd be the perfect Catch-22 to put Micro$oft in. If on the 1 hand they deny it then it looks bad for the predatory practices they've been doing. If they allow it, then it'd be good all around but not so good for M$ as they'd have to bump up their prices to a self-sustaining level and wouldn't be able to leverage their cash cow.
        • And which kernel should it be? What if I want some feature (e.g. smbfs support) and Microsoft only signs the kernel without it? There are thousands of different configurations, and it's unreasonable to ask anybody, even Microsoft, to sign all of them.

  • The /. effect (Score:2, Funny)

    by Alranor ( 472986 )
    I just wonder who's going to be the first to melt a web-serving x-box by sticking a link to it up here.

  • What about my toaster..... (Score:3, Funny)

    by tanveer1979 ( 530624 ) on Saturday August 17, 2002 @08:34AM (#4088460) Homepage Journal
    wont that be nice.. i boot linux on my toaster. Then I telnet.
    and then i check status
    eeks the toas has burned
    \rm -rf *toast*
    mkdir toast
    chmod soft-eatable-noblack toast

    Thats the only problem... i have to check various modes check which suits.
    And i was wondering can the quake III bots just use some plasma weapons and telnet the fire to my toaster. I will save electricity
    And now you are wondering why i am trolling about my toaster, rather than the x-box
    whew you never learn huh I CANNOT AFFORD XBOX but i can afford a toaster thats why.
    • but if the toaster was made by apple you would already have marmelaide!

    • How about this:

      1. Port Linux to toaster.
      2. Port Apache to toaster.
      3. Network the toaster
      4. Announce on Slashdot that you've ported Linux to a toaster, and it's serving pages right now.
      5. Enjoy your toast within minutes. Make more while the toaster lasts.

    • Slashdot's one step ahead of you [slashdot.org].
    • $ \rm -rf *toast*
      $ mkdir toast
      $ chmod soft-eatable-noblack toast

      Ugh, so complicated. If you have Emacs installed with
      toast-mode set to autoload, you can just M-x make-toast.
      The first time you do this, you'll probably want to do
      M-x customize-group toast-mode and set up the various
      toast-mode variables to your liking. The defaults are
      reasonable for making wheat toast, but if you keep your
      toaster loaded with multigrain bread as I do, you may
      find that you need to set toast-mode-toast-threshhold
      a little higher, because the bread toasts more slowly
      than ordinary wheat bread.

      Someone a while back was working on an enhancement to read
      in the toast darkness from the toaster's sensors (if you have
      one of the more advanced models) and thus automatically make
      the necessary adjustments for different kinds of bread, but I
      think he ran into a problem where Emacs 20 didn't support
      something he needed and put it on the back burner. I don't
      know whether he ever resumed work on it after Emacs 21 came
      out, but I haven't heard anything about it. Anyway, you
      want to adjust how dark the bread is toasted according to
      taste anyway, so this enhancement is really only useful if
      you don't always stock the same kind of bread.

  • Someone's gotta ask (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 17, 2002 @08:35AM (#4088463)
    How much is an XBox today and is it still worth the effort to make it run Linux, compared to throwing an equally powerful system together from of-the-shelf parts? Or has Microsoft succeded in delaying the abuse of their console long enough to make hacking it financially uninteresting?

    • Re:Someone's gotta ask (Score:4, Informative)

      by billbaggins ( 156118 ) on Saturday August 17, 2002 @11:00AM (#4088735)
      1) $100k should be awarded for this hack. I would call that "financially interesting".

      2) From a message [iu.edu] on LKML [indiana.edu]:

      PS: flames about why we are supporting the XBox (a design of the Evil Empire) will be summarily ignored. I can only point you to it's HDTV, NTSC, PAL, and possibly VGA outputs, it's dvd/cd drive, and it's $199 USD price tag.
      3) And finally, from a reply [iu.edu]:
      Not to mention M$ takes a loss for every hardware unit sold.
      Draw your own conclusions.
      • Not to mention M$ takes a loss for every hardware unit sold.

        No, they take a loss for every unit built. They recoup some of that from every unit sold.

        • Yes, but (Score:3, Informative)

          by brokeninside ( 34168 )
          There business plan calls to build at least one other unit for every unit sold. Therefore, buying an X-Box causes Microsoft to build at least two units.

          If we lived in a world where X-box building was a one time event, then your reasoning would be sound. But we don't live in such a world. Microsoft will continue to build X-boxes to meet demand.

          Not to mention that the more X-boxes are bought to run Linux and not play prepackaged X-box games (realizing that these two are not necessarily mutually exclusive), the fewer game titles per X-box are sold and the less game developers are interested in the platform.

          • the fewer game titles per X-box are sold and the less game developers are interested in the platform

            Microsoft has better marketing than that; they'll see the upside ("We're selling more boxes") and they'll give developers that line, to make them develop more for the system that sells more units.

            Every Xbox sold brings them one unit closer to being more popular in the hardware game than Sony and Nintendo, which would drive developers to their system.
            • We're talking about winning development companies, not consumers. Gaming companies keep an eye out for how many titles sell per console. They will notice if fewer X-box owners buy games than other consoles.

              It isn't a hardware game, its a gaming game. Platforms that sell fewer games, lose.

    • "Or has Microsoft succeded in delaying the abuse of their console long enough to make hacking it financially uninteresting?"

      Unfortunately, yes.

      An XBox costs about $210 (tax included). The mod chip costs needed to boot Linux costs about another $35, or you can buy a pre-modded X-Box for $295 (shipped).

      Meanwhile, you can build a PC from parts with simular hardware specifications for about $350. The same system would have costed about $500 six months ago.

      By the time the X-Box Linux guys have this thing playing games and running stable enough to be a web server, the price of the parts to build a comparible PC probably will have dropped another $50. This makes the cost of the system a wash, unless Microsoft lowers the cost of the X-Box again this year.

      Also, the hardware specifications of the X-Box are already becoming outdated, and most PC's shipping now come with 1Ghz+ processors and 256MB of RAM.

      Getting Linux running on an XBox is still a victory, however, but not as large of one that it would have been six months ago.

  • How about... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by mindriot ( 96208 )
    Now we're actually getting to a point where "a Beowulf cluster of these" might turn out to be a feasible and affordable option :)
  • By adding new features to the XBox via modchips you are in fact helping MS to make more profit and to push competitors like Sony etc out of the market.
    Why were the other operating system features of the XBox blocked ?
    Because MS is under attack of the justice departments and anti-monopoly investigators, being accused of building up monopolies with illegal measures.
    If MS tried to push Sony etc out of the market with a cheap, versatile, all purpose gaming computer they would be sacked.
    But they can't be blamed for building a normal console. That's fair business. And if h4x0rz turn it into a real computer, they can't be blamed, really ? They threatened some legal action but this is just to make the scam really complete. And, in fact, they didn't sue the real XBox hacker at MIT. (? Caltech, look up yourself at /.)
    Oh, we don't want to sue little cute grad students. Hahaha. Nobody is so foolish to believe this.
    • I honestly don't think microsoft makes alot of profit on the XBox machine itself.

      And if this would be an elaborate scheme to circumvent monopolies, wouldn't they have made it alot easier to hack the thing ?
    • Yeah of course, MS selling a £200 Xbox that is the equivalent at least of a £400 PC is a bad thing.

      MS will make the money on the Games, same as Sony, if everyone bought xboxes and no games, MS would stop the xbox, same as Sony would stop the PS2..
    • You can run a full linux distribution on the playstation 2 and the dreamcast already. Video even works. Xbox-linux is hardly "ahead of the competition" in this regard.
    • I think he has a point and a very important one.

      Oh, I see, it's because you don't allow insigh that doesn't go like "HAHHAHA, we are beating MS asses , we are much smarter!". Well, in fact you can't be sure about that.

      Microsoft can't sell general porpuse computers for home use with Windows for $200, because they would get slatered at courts (dumping anyone?).

      But once Linux hacks their way out, how can they be prevented from doing just that? In fact, they ARE trying to replace the computer with XBoxes.

      They ONLY good thing would be to see no XBoxes are sold and that they just failed miserably.

  • Xbox (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MrHat ( 102062 ) on Saturday August 17, 2002 @08:43AM (#4088476)
    (The Xbox still needs to have a modchip fitted to allow it to run unsigned code)

    And if Microsoft's political engineering team has their way, you'll need one to run an "untrusted" OS on any machine! The joy!

  • Summary of functionality (Score:5, Interesting)

    by warmcat ( 3545 ) on Saturday August 17, 2002 @08:44AM (#4088477)
    A better link is directly to the xbox linux [sourceforge.net] site on Sourceforge.

    Basically this is a micro distro that fits either on 1MByte of flash in the xbox / in a modchip, or is also able to boot from an unsigned XBE on a CD. After booting web services, telnet, etc are available. We added a small precooked default website on the box; after booting visiting http://192.168.0.64/ (the default IP for the box) brings up this page direct from your box [sourceforge.net].

    We hope to issue a full distro that boots into X in the next couple of releases, with video, USB and audio up.

    • First point. You claim that this allows you "freedom" with your purchased XBox. Consider that if this "freedom" was originally given to you that MS would have to sell the unit at $350 or higher. This is simple business. What you are doing should not be illigal, but at the same time you have to understand that any halfway decent businessperson would have designed the XBox in the way it is.

      Second, the nice comment about "free software and ideas" is great but please move out of America or Canada if you are currently subscribing to this impossible reality. In American or Canada (and many other countries, actually) people can not rely on the community or the government to feed their children. If I'm painfully mistaken with your philosophy then please attempt to correct me.

      Finally, although I do not agree with this hack job, it was a good hack job - a job well done.
      • I live in the UK. The project leader and several other people who worked on it are in DE. This may be difficult to understand, but those are not states of America.

        I guess that was your contribution: thanks very much.
      • This is simple business.

        This is stupid business. Selling at a loss only makes sense if the purchaser can't use the product
        without a recuring cost. Nobody is forcing people to keep buying games for the xbox, so it's s stupid business model.

        any halfway decent businessperson would have designed the XBox in the way it is.

        Perhaps, but not for the reasons you give. Any halfway decent business person would have made profitability a design requirement for their product. If they hadn't insisted on using PC components in their system, then they could have made some money. ex: Sony & Nintendo. It arguably could have been a good idea to sell at a loss to catch up in the market share game, and then adopt a more sensable model, but obviously that was dumb too, since there are 10 times as many PS2s sold then xboxes.

        Second, the nice comment about "free software and ideas" is great but please move out of America or Canada if you are currently subscribing to this impossible reality.

        That's funny. I make a good living writing open source software, and I have no need for the government to feed me. It doesn't seem that impossible to me. In many situations, Open Source just makes more sense. If you are looking to make money form a product, it is generally a good idea to let the customer USE the product. This is why operating systems, libraries and utilites should be Open Source. Of course that doesn't work if you want to make money by leaching off of 3rd party developers profits, but nobody is forcing you to adopt that business model. It is questionable how well that business model actually works without a monopoly anyway. Most companies can't get away with it, which microsoft is finding out as they bleed money throught their xbox division.

        There is more then one way to make money, and change is only bad it you're the one that is left obsolete after the change. Don't buy into the propaganda of established businesses that are afraid of a changing market. If you're not part of their little group, then they're against you too; even if you spout the same crap that they do.
        • "This is stupid business. Selling at a loss only makes sense if the purchaser can't use the product without a recuring cost."

          Since Microsoft isn't stupid, the conclusion is obvious:

          Microsoft is lying about their losing money on the XBox, to make it seem more costly and expensive than it actually is.

          Which is more likely: Microsoft is stupid and honest, or Microsoft are cunning and lie? Think, people.

          • Microsoft gets money from the sale of games as well... that's how it's been with all the consoles in the last few years. Sell the hardware at a loss and recoup via licensing costs.
            Funny how people keep forgetting that every time a console article appears on here. Sony's got nothing to lose by opening their market to the linux community now because they've doing quite well for themselves in the console market.
            MS has a lot (understatement) of money, but it's not like they have one central bank account that anyone can dip into at any time. Each division must work within it's own area of accoutability. And the money right now is all being banked on Xbox Live to pull the sceptre from Sony's hands.

            Anyway, they can tell just from reading Slashdot that there's no money in making the Xbox linux ready, everyone bitches any time they're asked to spend money on anything :P
            • that's how it's been with all the consoles in the last few years. Sell the hardware at a loss and recoup via licensing costs

              False. All the other vendors make money on the hardware sale. Sony was making $175 per console before the price cut. The Dreamcast was the first console to loose money per sale.

              It is true that the other vendors make money from the sale of third party games however.

              • No, the PlayStation 1 was the first console to loose money per sale. The Dreamcast, the PS2, the XBox and the GameCube all also lost money per sale at their initial releases.

                Research and development continues through the lifespan of the product and the engineers work on lowering the fabrication costs. And eventually they start to make money on the hardware. Of course, Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft were all forced to lower prices due to poor market conditions, so they're simply running to stay still.

        • I make a good living writing open source software.

          Congratulations, you are one of few who actually get paid to WRITE or DESIGN OSS. The rest of us contribute and all we get in return is kudos and cool software, but that doesn't pay the bills.

  • Great (Score:2, Flamebait)

    by Spackler ( 223562 )
    They finally duplicated what my Dreamcast has been doing for years, on an Xbox.

    hey mods: It aint flaimbait when it's true!

  • The money (Score:5, Insightful)

    by wackybrit ( 321117 ) on Saturday August 17, 2002 @08:53AM (#4088487) Homepage Journal
    So are they going to get the $200,000 (or whatever it was) that was put up a couple of months ago to the first person to get Linux running on the XBox? (The story was run here on Slashdot, but thanks to Slashdot's incredibly shitty search system, I can't find it)

    It'd be nice to see if whoever it was sticks to their word.

  • Just Months Away... (Score:3, Funny)

    by dbretton ( 242493 ) on Saturday August 17, 2002 @09:01AM (#4088498) Homepage
    From getting MAME on the XBox. How cool is that?

    1994 video games running poorly on 2002 hardware!

    Tune in next week when we hack the Kanazawa NEC supercomputer with Linux! With some luck, we may get to be able to run Doom at 30fps. Woo-hoo!

  • Compare to Playstation Linux (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MrLinuxHead ( 528693 ) <mrlinuxhead&yahoo,com> on Saturday August 17, 2002 @09:02AM (#4088499) Homepage Journal

    It would be nice to see a comparison between Sony PS2 and XBox running Linux. Same kernel, services, etc, and benchmark them to see what they offer for the average user using web, email, and word processing.

    PS2 needs a kit a Xbox needs a mod. Anyone game? Fire up the Weller temp controlled soldering iron, ma I'm goin in!

  • I hav been monitoring linux on the xbox for a while now, but I still haven't found what modchip I need. I know there are a couple (at least on liksang.com there are). Any advice which ones work best, is easier to solder, and the such?
  • X-Box+Linux+Emulator+Emulator+Emulator+Emulator+
    Emulator+Emulator+Emulator+... ;)

  • Please enlighten a doofus (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ascii ( 70907 ) <ascii@@@microcore...dk> on Saturday August 17, 2002 @09:14AM (#4088520) Homepage
    Though I have a hunch I'm going to regret asking this question I'm doing it anyway. Please don't see this as flamebait or as a provocation - I'd genuinely like to know:

    What's the point of the effort? Yes I've seen the 'You're in control of Your box' screenshot, but how many users conceptually think of themselves as restricted in their use of an X-box - or any other gaming console for that matter - apart from the occasional Slashdot'er?

    I can hardly see people moaning about not being able to use a desktop environment on what is supposed to be a gaming device. Either these people already have a desktop computer or they don't need one in the first place.

    Have I missed the bleeding obvious or what?

    Sorry for being a dumb*ss.

    • Re:Please enlighten a doofus (Score:4, Insightful)

      by __aaaaxm1522 ( 121860 ) on Saturday August 17, 2002 @09:22AM (#4088540)
      Not sure what they go for in the US, Linux on XBox means that for $299 Canadian, I can pick up a webserver / NWN server / mail server / whatever server.

      That's a good deal. And it'll bug Microsoft, as MS is losing money on each and every XBox being sold, and instead intends to recoup their loss via software license fees.
    • From a financial standpoint MS doesn't have much to lose from this as it has next to no mass market appeal. The average Joe buys the XBox and plays the games made for it like he's done with every console since Atari. If he doesn't like the selection of games for one system he looks at other systems.

      For programmers, this is potentially a great thing. If you want to get into console development you need a console that allows you to write your own software. The GameBoy (all versions) is an excellent system to code for since everything you need to get started is so readily available without hacks.

      Instead of trying to use an entirely different OS (break the system), historically, writing your own games for a console was done by emulating the system as is.

      Until they learn how to emulate the XBox so that Linux can run without modifications to the system itself. John Q Public won't care. But if they emulate the XBox, there really isn't a need for Linux since you could just as well write your games directly for the system without the extra layer of Linux.

      Multiplatform is neat but introducing extra layers to do it is a giant waste. The whole point of consoles is so you can avoid overhead and do more with less.

      Ben

    • Doofus enlightenment attempt (Score:5, Interesting)

      by warmcat ( 3545 ) on Saturday August 17, 2002 @12:09PM (#4088982)
      The X-Box is at the confluence of several bad trends in the world.

      1) The trend towards evolving a 'perfect customer', a sheeplike animal which only consumes and offers money. Such creatures may never contribute, it would be competition for the attention of the other sheeplike creatures.

      2) The introduction of extraordinarily overzealous punative Intellectual Property laws. The patent laws again are designed to stop people being able to contribute by making a land-grab of concepts on behalf of established interests. You are just not allowed, by dint of fines and imprisonment, to contribute in the areas these corporate barons have fenced off.

      And if you try to go around that, the barons are ready with the copyright law, EUCD, DMCA.

      3) The cross-ownership of Intellectual Property driven corporations and Media companies, which leads to...

      4) The meekness of our representatives in government. They are there to represent the interests of the people that voted them in. Instead they represent their own interests by pandering to the powerful media corporations, who hold out the dreadful stick of public humiliation in their outlets (or worse, no coverage at all), and who knows what kind of porkbarrel carrots

      5) The sleight of hand that takes money but delivers no ownership. Evil licenses. You buy software - but do you own it? What happens when that extends to physical hardware like the xbox itself? Already MS issue licenses that deny you the right to print comparitive benchmarks. You want things to extend down that path, controlling your rights to utilize physical objects that you paid for, with punitive laws enacted by your own gutless government to back them up?

      6) Palladium. With the force of the DMCA/EUCD.

      Consider these reasons, and then consider the act of Tux occupying the Instrument Of The Beast and telling people that they can be free.

      Does this answer your question?
      • I'm considering the act of foolish people paying Microsoft hundreds of dollars. Yup, THAT'LL help.
      • Does this answer your question?

        Yes. It tells me that the people who are doing this have paranoid fantasies and delusions of grandeur, and wasting their time and money. "Telling people that they can be free," indeed.

        Mod me as a troll if you like, but note well that I posted this under my own name. No "post anonymously" for me.
    • It's a fun technical project. I don't think many of them are on a jihad to try to attack MS. It's just the sort of thing engineering sorts do when they're into their field and have free time.
    • What's the point of the effort? Yes I've seen the 'You're in control of Your box' screenshot, but how many users conceptually think of themselves as restricted in their use of an X-box - or any other gaming console for that matter - apart from the occasional Slashdot'er?

      All Xbox games on the market are paying royalties to Microsoft to be signed. This Linux boot is one step closer to a completely free - cost, freedom, and royalty-free - tool-chain to develop games on the Xbox. It might not have much of an impact on the high-budget games like Halo, but if it means some of the smaller software development houses can sell their game even $10 cheaper then they will sell more units and I get more games for my money.

    • Here's my demented ravings, take em for whatever use you find them. When pondering why I'd want a modded X-Box here is one idea I keep having.

      Grab an X-Box, screw that puny 8G drive and stick in something more manly. Then get that neato USB Tuner+MPEG encoder box from Hauppauge and twiddle the connectors to get em together. Add PVR software already floating around on the net after modding it a bit to talk to the USB dohickie instead of a BT-9xx device. Can you say fully open Convergence appliance? And for under $750 you get a nice professionally designed case, a Big Ass(tm) HD and all the trimmings.

      And unlike the PS2 we will hopefully be able to get at the DVD drive so we can play DVD/DIVX/VCD/SVCD/MP3/etc. Word is no CD-R but CD-RW is OK. At current blank media prices that probably isn't a deal breaker. It has a 10/100 port so it can hook up to an inhouse LAN, mutant USB for easy hookup of external storage, and if you check to make sure the PVR doesn't plan to record anything for the next couple of hours you can probably still find a way to get it to play Halo. (Leave the first 8GB of the drive as an image of the original and lock the new drive with the same password?)

      I can see somebody making a nice chunk of change selling a prefab PVR conversion kit.
  • I'm sure we all remember the Indrema project.

    What if we were to use the Xbox hardware to revive the vision of the Indrema? Once this project gets it going, we could have a Linux gaming console.
  • xbox-scene.com links to a lot of different sites that sell pre-modded Xboxen, anyone tried any of them?
    <p>
    I've done business with Lik-sang before, but I know they've had import problems of late (customs agents ripped the hell out of the packaging my Dreamcast coders cable came in, hate to see what they'd do with a modded x-box)
    <p>
    www.hackershardware.com has a decent deal on a pre-modded X-ecuter box, anyone know if they are legit? Tried to check newsgroups for reviews on them and all I got was a bunch of spam.
    <p>
    If I stick a modded X-box on the network with my 2 javastations and my NetBSD running Dreamcast I'll have the damnedest network in the world.

  • FINALLY! (Score:5, Funny)

    by atrowe ( 209484 ) on Saturday August 17, 2002 @09:29AM (#4088555)
    I'm starting to get sick of playing all those flashy professionally-made games on my high end gaming machine. Now I can finally play classic games like Tuxracer, Freeciv, fortune, and hangman and leave all those crappy multi-million-dollar Xbox games on the shelf. Thank you, hackers, for bringing Linux' superior game selection to the Xbox!
    • I think the point is to make XBox boot Linux while you can still boot your games on it. Unlike traditional PC, your OS/entire game load on each boot.

      That'd be cool to run Linux on this powerful hardware. However, the hardware is already outdated by the time a full Linux distro of it would be released.

      Nevertheless, what we do to make Linux on XBox is like pissing on Bill's face. :)
    • For a guy who says he doesn't tolerate stupidity you sure picked a dumb game to play.

      /usr/games/fortune<enter>

      <laughs>

      /usr/games/fortune<enter>

      <laughs>

      /usr/games/fortune<enter>

      "I don't get it"

    • Linux has good games, laddie buck (Score:4, Informative)

      by 0x0d0a ( 568518 ) on Saturday August 17, 2002 @02:20PM (#4089574) Journal
      Interesting point, but I really doubt that this is aimed at the general consumer. It's for Joe Linux, who prides himself on doing nifty tech things with Linux.

      Okay, Tux Racer may not be the most amazing thing in the world, but it's fun for a couple hours.

      Freeciv...why is freeciv bad? You don't like civilization? There are some differences, but aside from the fact that civ had more artists (and, IMHO, a worse interface) and is a bit easier to use, not huge difference in fun factor.

      Lets consider some others:

      zangband [angband.org]/ToME [t-o-m-e.net]/angband [angband.org]/nethack [nethack.org]/etc: These *are* a lot of fun. Diablo has much more simplistic, boring gameplay, and it took off all over. Most variants have a pretty simple text or 2d graphics based interface without music, but some [www.hut.fi] are a bit more elaborate. Be a bit of a pain to play on the controller, yes...

      Chromium BSU [reptilelabour.com]: flashy scrolling shooter. Could use the 3d hardware in the X-box.

      Dunno if you can just use ordinary ol' x86 binaries (particularly considering RAM usage), but:

      Quake 3 [idsoftware.com] (use the 3d hardware). Not free.

      Abuse [labyrinth.net.au]: This was a *blast* when it came out -- I played it over and over. It's looking a little dated now, but it's still a good game. Free now -- thanks crack.com.

      Pingus [seul.org] is apparently shaping up pretty well.

      There's part of the amazing Exile [spiderwebsoftware.com] series available for Linux. (shareware)

      Maelstrom [devolution.com] may be too "simple" for you, as it's only an astroids clone, but it was a very well known game on the Mac for a long time, and I still like it.

      While I'm not a tremendous fan of Illwinter's Conquest of Elysium II [illwinter.com], their Dominions: Priests, Prophets, and Pretenders [illwinter.com] is a non-flashy but very deep, very good strategy game. Shareware.

      There's a DOS-style shooter from Mountain King Studios, Raptor [mking.com]. (shareware)

      Finally, there are all the emulators and whatnot...take a look at GNUboy [unix-fu.org], TuxNES [sourceforge.net], snes9x [snes9x.com], DGen/SDL [pknet.com],
      FreeSCI [linuxgames.com], Sarien [sourceforge.net], Exult [sourceforge.net], XU4 [sourceforge.net], ScummVM [sourceforge.net], Basilisk II [uni-mainz.de], YAE [netfront.net] and others.

      There are a host of Loki ports that you can't get any more except used. Lots of good stuff from LGames [sourceforge.net], though I'm not as big a fan of their stuff as some other people are.

      Finally, text-based but really, really sophisticated, good, and almost all of them free, there are text-based interactive fiction (Try Tower of Babel before giving up on this...first one I ever beat without cheating, and it's *soooooo* good). The Interactive Fiction Archive [ifarchive.org] has games and players.

      Finally, many good games can be played through WINE [winehq.com] -- Starcraft, Fallout, Max Payne, Half Life...

      These are just some of the games that I enjoy under Linux. There are lots more (admittedly, some of lower quality) available at the SDL Games Page [libsdl.org] and the Linux Games Tome [happypenguin.org].

      Linux games usually take a bit more (okay, often a lot :-) ) more effort to set up properly. But they're often very customizable, you can actually have an impact on the game design ("This game needs feature X"), and you don't have to leave the comfortable environs of Linux. And the environment is getting better, not worse.

  • Amazing. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 17, 2002 @09:43AM (#4088579)
    Whoah! Linux running on Intel hardware! What will these crazy Linux hackers think of next...

  • Oh, the Humanity.. (Score:3, Funny)

    by CBNobi ( 141146 ) on Saturday August 17, 2002 @10:03AM (#4088621)
    Slashdot's managed to annihilate:

    The X-Box may be the most formidable yet.

  • My toaster runs NetBSD... (Score:4, Funny)

    by bsDaemon ( 87307 ) on Saturday August 17, 2002 @11:02AM (#4088739)
    and my coffee pot is 100% Pure Java(tm).
  • Very nice to see that it separates the memory used for cache from the rest of memory usage.
  • Where is a good place in the US to buy a modded chipped Xbox that is reputable and actually accepts credit cards? It would be helpful if they actually had a customer service number too.

    Thanks!

    -Pat

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