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Linux on Xbox One Step Closer?
RpiMatty1 writes: "Apparently the Linux Kernel has been booted on the Xbox. No mention of it on the Xbox-Linux Home page yet. Here is another posting of the same messages at Xboxhacker.net." I wonder if the recent security code change rules this particular development out for Xboxes purchased in the near future.
But are there any practical uses for an Xbox running Linux? Haven't you defeated the primary purpose of the Xbox: playing games?
I've heard people say that they could use it as a cheap webserver for a massive farm of servers, but this doesn't make much sense when you realize that you can build a better machine for just a little more money and a *lot* less effort. I've also heard people say that it could be used as a part of a rendering farm, but these machines have only a lowly (crippled) celeron processor in them and their graphics hardware isn't meant to do non-realtime rendering.
So what's the deal here?
Friends don't let friends use multiple inheritance.
Actually, every purchase of the Xbox sends Microsofts money to the hardware vendors. Sony and Nintendo see this and dropped their prices (still making $$ on the hardware) so MS would lose more. The hardware in the Xbox is expensive as game consoles go and a bunch of that money is going to Nvidia.
;)
So, Microsoft loses money on each sale of the hardware and it's been estimated that you'd have to purchase something like 10 or 15 game titles for them to break even.
Now you see why this is "interesting"? It's a hit against Bill Gates' wallet and there's a pretty cool graphics system onboard. All in a box that SCREAMS FOR THE X-WINDOW SYSTEM.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
If you really wanted to make them lose money you would never buy the xbox at all, you really aren't making them lose money by buying the system, you're really making them lose less money, you're helping them pay back some of the money that has gone into building the box. If no one ever bought an xbox microsoft would lose millions on the development and production costs.
I've seen people quote this "fact" all over slashdot. But has there been any hard facts? How do we know this isn't some kind of astroturf campaign to make anti-ms types think it's ok to purchase an xbox? I'd love to see someone who really knows about hardware manufacturing to do a cost rundown fo the xbox, giving conservative and liberal estimates of how much they think it costs MS to maufacture and why.
-- Knowledge shared is power lost. -- Aleister Crowley
Can you say "pie in the sky"?
Friends don't let friends use multiple inheritance.
You forgot:
You don't buy and XBox but someone else does: -100+ Royalties = profit
In other words so long as MS doesn't end up with excess Xboxes buying one does more damage, because then they have to make more. The best solution would be a massive coordianated campaign to buy thousands of Xboxes in a short period then stop. Thus causing MS to overestimate demand and get stuck with unsold inventory. However as a practical mater one can assume that MS will predict demand at this point in the cycle with some accuracy, so buying an Xbox now does the most damage as MS will take a hit, and the Xbox would have been sold anyways.
I'd do something interesting, but my server can't handle a slashdotting.
Lots of people here are saying Why bother wasting your time porting Linux to the Xbox, you can create a better cheaping Linux platform using, blah, blah, blah... But the Xbox is really a trial run for Palladium, i.e. an M$ only hardware platform designed to only run software authorized by the Bill himself. This is where we are heading folks, so any R&D done now will be valuble when the real thing comes along.
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
Ok, so let's say you are able to garner enough support to go on a massive 'Let's screw Microsoft!' binge and purchase as much as 20,000 Xboxes.
$4,000,000 - $6,000,000 = -$2,000,000
Two problems I see. And, while I'm not trying to be an ass, it'll certainly seem like it.
1.) Microsoft isn't the only one that'll see these sales figures. Game companies will too. They'll see a rise in demand and want to produce more titles for it (some exclusive, no doubt) therefore making Xbox more enticing to gamers. The increased production as a result of your buying spree might actually be able to be sold and you may unintentionally help Microsoft's plight in the gaming market.
2.) $2,000,000 isn't a lot of money to Microsoft. They probably don't even care that it's gone. But $2,000,000 in donations to open source projects would be a great thing. I realize that's not something that everyone is interested in, but if even half the people donated half that money to something more worthwhile than maliciously screwing Microsoft, you'd be doing a lot more net good than apparent net harm to Microsoft.
Just a thought. Could be wrong.
Buying Xboxes allows Microsoft to recoup some of its operating losses.
Imagine it costs $210 to make an Xbox these days. So Microsoft loses about $10 per Xbox.
"Great!," you say, "we can just buy 100,000 Xboxes and put MS down $1 million!"
It's a brilliant idea, because 100,000 Xboxes will cost you around $20,000,000 (minus applicable sales taxes). Microsoft paid $21,000,000 to make them, so this way MS loses $1 million and we've screwed Microsoft, right?
Well, imagine if you hadn't bought those 100,000 Xboxes. Then, not only would it have cost Microsoft $21,000,000 to produce them, but there is an added bonus that they don't make back $20,000,000; this sets them at a loss of $21 million, a much higher expense than just a measely $1 mil.
1) (reasonably) small machine with TV-out running Linux is good for a lot of neat AV type applications. It's powerful enough to be useful, and designed to look like Consumer Electronics Gear instead of like a computer, so won't look ugly in your TV cabinet (well, I personally think that the X-Box is ugly as sin, but that's just me). In addition, putting Linux on it opens it up to the whole world of Linux console emulators, so you could make your X-Box emulate an 8 bit nintendo or an Atari or a whole host of arcade games with MAME.
2) Last I heard, Microsoft was losing money on every X-Box sold. Their plan was to make it up through getting a piece of the action for every game sold. So if you hate Microsoft, buying an X-Box but not buying any MS-approved games takes money directly out of their pockets.
3) Pure hack value. Remember that Unix was originally designed so they could play a silly little game on a spare DEC minicomputer. Geeks doing weird things with weird hardware often leads to great results.
(Fun Fact: I found your post 'cause I was metamoderating it. It was given an "interesting" moderation, I metamoderated it "fair" and then came here to vehemently disagree with you. Ironic, really, but that's exactly how it really should work.)
--AC