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Xbox Runs Its First Legal Homebrew App
PineGreen writes: "As Michael Steil, the Xbox Linux project leader says:'On the Xbox Linux website, you can download "linuxpreview," an
application that runs on modded Xboxes and is completeley legal, because
the XDK was not used for development, and it does not contain any
Microsoft code.'. See the X-box logo and Tux on the same screen.
More information here."
Think of all the gaming possibilities now available to X-Box developers! 'Shell Scripting Xtreme!' or 'Marvel vs. Capcom vs. Vi vs. emacs!' I hear in the next Halo your standard gun fires tarballs and RPM's.
Hardly. If widespread modding, driven by a quite likely boom in Divx Movie piracy, becomes a reality, Xbox Linux could, no doubt much to the horror of "real" Linux folk, become by far the most popular form of consumer/home Linux.
Sometimes success can arrive in unexpected forms.
Why get all pissy with people who are enjoying themselves and are coding something that could potentially useful? I'm sure folks made similar claims when Linus rolled out his first kernel. "Why a new kernel? What a collosal waste of time! Think of all of the effort that could have been put into writing something for (insert favorite OS from 1993)
That's OK, though. All of us are short sighted in our lives. I used to think the same way about KDE and GNOME. "What collosal wastes of time" I used to think. Fortunately those very talented programmers didn't listen to the naysayers. Now I don't scoff when someone ports Linux to different hardware architectures. Hey, it's their life. Let them have fun with it.
Because they want to. They are using their resources to do something they want to do. They don't owe you anything. Open source hackers don't exist to make free software for you. They exist because they like doing it.
(I can almost hear you all gasping.)
To all of you hackers that have influenced and contributed to progams that I use: Thank you!
To all of you hackers that spend your time doing things that I find utterly useless: Have fun!
The masses are the crack whores of religion.
Well thats a simple question to awnser. Depening on your intrests you might want to:
;-)
.. posibly extend with those nice linux mpg recording programs to make my own tivo style setup
1) Make a microsoft sponsored linux box / workstation (they loose money on the hardware, so what could be sweeter!)
2) Make a microsoft sponsored DVD / MPG / DivX / MP3 player
3) Make a microsoft sponsored Top set box
4) Make a nice quiet, cheap, fast enough, linux web / email / ftp server / etc, sponsored by microsoft!
5) All of the above?
Personaly i can not wait. The xbox is nice and small, and still relativly quiet. I think my first use for it will be to hook up a (usb?) network to it, and use it to play movies and mp3's from my server on my tv, saving my self the hassle of having to drag around notebooks or dedicate a big, ugly noisy pc to that function.
Then hook up a nice wireless usb keyboard w/ intergrated trackball, and do a full screen galeon to create a nice web surfing / topset box experiance from the comfort of my couch.
Then maybe hook up all the posible home automation gimics to a nice interface thru the xbox / tv, and be able to control my house from my tv?
Then, install some tv cards on my server, and pipe its output to the xbox
Also, I wonder if my current colocation facility will accept xbox's ?
Man, the posibilities are endless, for a little under 300 bucks (and going down) and the sheere thought of microsoft sponsoring my linux projects, it's worth every bit of effort these developers are putting in to it!