Slashdot Mirror
Linux on the Gamecube?
An Anonymous Coward asks: "Previously on Slashdot we have covered the hacking and programming of numerous consoles,- the Xbox, Dreamcast , and of course the Playstation 2. With Linux migrating to all of these platforms as fast as you can blink, why isn't it that I haven't heard anything about the Gamecube.
These little beasts have been promoted by Nintendo as easy to develop for, so are there as yet any open source tools for Gamecube development? Are there any Initiatives to get an alternative OS on these systems? The feature of being able to plug a gameboy advance into one of these units makes them even more hack worthy." There was a Sourceforge project for this, but it's activity stats are fairly flat. What barriers are there in getting Linux to run on this piece of hardware, and how do they compare with the difficulties faced by similar projects on the X-Box?"
It is 99% impossible to get software you wrote to run on the gamecube. The problem is that Nintendo, being smart to avoid piracy, always uses a proprietary media format to put games on. The Gamecube's OS doesn't do much but run games. It looks for discs and runs them.
You CAN'T make a Gamecube disc without Nintendo's help. It's a small DVD that spins the opposite direction. Nothing you can buy can make one of those.
The Gamecube will have a broadband adapter, but you can't make it boot from that. It also has no hard drive, so where are you going to store all the data? RAM?
The best bet is to explore the possibilities of the GBA link. You can make a GBA game. And you can store some data in the GBA cartridge, but not much. If the Gamecube will run and begin playing from a linked GBA the BEST you could do is have 4 GBAS with 4 different cartridges be your hard drive/boot device. Then use the broadband adapter and your computer to control everything.
All in all, even if you could make a gamecube disc, the cube isn't very useful for anything other than playing gamecube games. And codwarrior will eventually have a dev kit. So if all you want is to make games, I'm sure Nintendo will be happy to make discs if your game is extrememe high quality.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
Yes, I have heard that the Gamecube is easier to develop for, but that doesn't necessarily mean it will be easy to port Linux. It just means that the Gamecube has a nice API sitting on top of whatever OS they have running it, which makes programming games nice. Since the hardware is proprietary and documentation is not widely available I would imagine it is damned difficult to port Linux to the Gamecube.