LinuXbox Boots

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)."

Comments

Hah! The irony!

[Anztac]

Will it really delude all the evil though?

Yeah...

[RinkSpringer]

...and there was much rejoicing! :)

Re:Yeah...

[Anonymous Coward]

>Yeah... and there was much rejoicing!

LOL, dude, ROTFLOL. :-)

Closer, but still...

[ewanrg]

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.

Re:Closer, but still...

[Anonymous Coward]

How the fuck is this "progress"? This is more useless shit created by a bunch of people with too much time on their hands.

Re:Closer, but still...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't they try and make an xbox emulator for linux? If you could play the games on your linux computer, then MS 'might' get worried. (They do lose money on every xbox sold, but make it up with games.)

The /. effect

[Alranor]

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.....

[tanveer1979]

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.

Re:What about my toaster.....

[MiTEG]

but if the toaster was made by apple you would already have marmelaide!

Re:What about my toaster.....

[phaxkolumbo]

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.

Re:What about my toaster.....

[furballphat]

Here's a java toaster that prints the weather on your toast http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/2/19442.html

Re:What about my toaster.....

[jonadab]

$ \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.

Re:What about my toaster.....

[netsharc]

6. ???
7. Profit!!!

I think the heat generated by an Athlon XP or a Pentium IV would be enough to toast bread, you do have to install Apache on it and put some Natalie Portmam pr0n on it and announce it on slashdot when you want to make the toast.

To AC.. or not to AC.. hmm...

Re:What about my toaster.....

[Anonymous Coward]

If your system were a toaster you'd have a seriously hard time cooling it. You'd never be able to overclock it!

Re:What about my toaster.....

[Anonymous Coward]

I have X and gnome running on mine now. I started a PyGTK GUI to control darkness, toasting time and element temperture. Count down timer and temperture gauges are available in digital and analog.

I have the code up at toastforge.

Someone's gotta ask

[Anonymous Coward]

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

[karm13]

some reasons are of course sports and to piss off microsoft.
a more serious reason would be that by the time a stable, non-mod-chip version that takes advantage of the hardwares capabilities, you probably can get an xbox for really cheap (and if all its hardware was supported, it should be worth even the $200 of today).

Re:Someone's gotta ask

[sub7mage]

yes the hardware in it might be worth the 200, but u can't upgrade it, can u? if u think there is a hardware problem ur not gonna be able to go in and fix it like i can with the desktop i built.

Re:Someone's gotta ask

[billbaggins]

1) $100k should be awarded for this hack. I would call that "financially interesting".

2) From a message on LKML:

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:

Not to mention M$ takes a loss for every hardware unit sold.

Draw your own conclusions.

Re:Someone's gotta ask

[duren686]

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.

Re:Someone's gotta ask

[leonbev]

"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.

Re:Someone's gotta ask

[Martigan80]

3) And finally, from a reply [iu.edu]:

Not to mention M$ takes a loss for every hardware unit sold.

Well if you think about it they lose even more money by NOT selling it. ;-P

How about...

[mindriot]

Now we're actually getting to a point where "a Beowulf cluster of these" might turn out to be a feasible and affordable option :)

xbox nethack

[Anonymous Coward]

Xbox linux: nethack has never looked better!

Re:Hah! The irony!

[Anztac]

Well, I meant dilute, but hey, irony is irony.

This is NOT a good thing.

[Krapangor]

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.

Re:This is NOT a good thing.

[owke]

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 ?

Re:This is NOT a good thing.

[scorp888]

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..

Re:This is NOT a good thing.

[jjh37997]

Micosoft losses money on each XBox sold. They make up the money by selling games. By buying an XBox and running non-microsoft software you're costing them money.

Re:This is NOT a good thing.

[Anonymous Coward]

But MS will make use of the numbers to sell more developers on moving games there. Once there, ppl will buy. Besides, if you really want to cost them, quit buying wait till they are < 100 (probably soon) and then buy them.

Re:This is NOT a good thing.

[0x0d0a]

Granted, it does make their installed base look larger, which can be convincing to game developers. If enough people don't buy MS software, though, I think we'll be okay.

Re:This is NOT a good thing.

[foonf]

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.

Re:This is NOT a good thing.

[I'm Don Giovanni]

"If enough people don't buy MS software, though, I think we'll be okay."

You guys *claim* that you want to buy Xboxes and use them as cheap linux pcs. But at the same time you want nobody to buy Xbox games so that MS loses money (why you care about this, I know not). But if that happens, Xbox will be dropped, and your supply of cheap linux pcs goes *poof*.

But anyway, I think it's time for a reality check: The number of Xboxes purchased with the purpose of using them as cheap linux pcs will be insiginficant when compared to the total number of Xboxes purchased. The money lost due to linux Xbox pcs won't even be noticed by MS.

Xbox

[MrHat]

(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!

Re:Xbox

[archetypeone]

Aren't they planning to chip the users for Longhorn?

Re:Xbox

[innocent_white_lamb]

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

In the USA.

I suspect that much of the American tech industry and technical educational institutions will move if such a draconian measure actually comes to pass. It's a big world out there, and once the "cream of the crop" has set up shop in Canada, Mexico, France and the UK, then American politicians will notice. But it may be too late..

Summary of functionality

[warmcat]

A better link is directly to the xbox linux 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.

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

Re:Summary of functionality

[Anonymous Coward]

SumDeusExMachina - crapflooder extraordinare - has his daily activities exposed to the public. Revenge is sweet.

Re:Summary of functionality

[Anonymous Coward]

Fix the tags on that page, somebody.

Re:Summary of functionality

[tshak]

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.

Re:Summary of functionality

[warmcat]

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.

Re:Summary of functionality

[Anonymous Coward]

if Microsoft chooses to sell a product at a loss it does NOT dictate how I will use the product. It is not my concern.

Re:Summary of functionality

[Anonymous Coward]

Having worked directly with a number of Businessmen I can tell that you haven't.

There isn't one that wouldn't screw over another company if given a chance.

Never send a catalog to a company with an obvious pricing error. (ie: 0 price on an item.) They will order thousands, upon thousands of them, and then bitch we you informa them of the price (even before the order is finished being created).

And no, business' don't have the same rights as consumers on that type of thing.

Re:Summary of functionality

[Anonymous Coward]

Business activities, by their very nature, are risk ventures.

No decent business would have to employ the threat of legal action (DMCA and copyright, and contrary to /.'s previous coverage, contact was made against the MIT individual who reversed engineered the Xbox), or monopoly and laundering (transfer of business assets from one illegal activity (OS) into a legal activity (Xbox)), all in order to bolster their product.

That's horrible business practices. They should be able to carry that out as they have, but it's THEIR risk. Don't blame the consumer for utilizing a product; it's about as inane as someone telling me I can't disable my grandfather clock to understand how it works.

Re:Summary of functionality

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh please. Non-sequitur. Just because someone sells something below cost doesn't mean you're obligated in way, shape or form to use it how they want you to use it.

Reminds me of a an old joke:

A: I'm selling these widgets at $10 that cost me $15 to make.
B: So how do you plan to make any money?
A: Sure I'll lose money on each sale, but I'll make it up in volume!

-- Shamus

Bleah!

Re:Summary of functionality

[Anonymous Coward]

Amusing. Far more interesting than what I was doing, which was working.

Re:Summary of functionality

[Anonymous Coward]

after booting visiting http://192.168.0.64/

They lie! I popped that into my webbrowser, and nothing resolved!

HOAX ALERT!

Re:Summary of functionality

[ivan256]

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.

Re:Summary of functionality

[tc]

Nice job ignoring his main point, and instead poking at the slipup about being American. I'm British, and last I checked, government policy was broadly similar here and in the rest of Europe too.

Did you have a reply to the meat of the post or not?

Re:Summary of functionality

[Chris Johnson]

"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.

Re:Summary of functionality

[Cruciform]

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

Re:Summary of functionality

[tshak]

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.

Re:Summary of functionality

[ivan256]

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.

Re:Summary of functionality

[ivan256]

That has to be the dumbest thing I've heard in a while. Lying about your financials is a crime. Microsoft has done some shady things in the past, but I don't think they'd stoop that low.

Besides, it is well publicized by their vendors what it costs microsoft for parts. If you add it up you can tell that they're loosing money. (That's before you count packaging and marketing too) Are you implying a vast conspiracy amongst some of the largest hardware vendors? I wounldn't believe it for a second. Nvidia and Intel are #1 and #2 in the graphics market respectively, and lately Nvidia has been nosing into Intel's precious north bridge market as well. They couldn't get along for long enough to work something like that out. Especially since microsoft would be the sole benificiary of such a conspiracy.

Re:Summary of functionality

[jpmorgan]

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.

Re:Summary of functionality

[canadian_right]

Gord has the straight scoop on the "sold at a loss" myth. According to Gord, the Xbox was the first console to sell at a loss. See Acts of Gord for details. This is a funnny site.

Re:Summary of functionality

[Stonent1]

Knoppix sounds like an excellent cantidate. It runs entirely from CD, can mount anything remotely, and play DivX content from another system. Therefore you don't have to damage the contents of your HD.

Re:Summary of functionality

[ivan256]

The Dreamcast, the PS2, the XBox and the GameCube all also lost money per sale at their initial releases.

This is not true. Sony and nintendo both let the public believe that they were getting more then they paid for, but Sony broke even on the PS2 initially, and Nintendo has admitted that they've never sold a machine they haven't made a profit on.

At this point, after the price drop, Sony is making almost $100 per unit. Nintendo claims to be able to produce the gamecube for ~$100.

Also, the market conditions have never been better for video games. In fact, Sony has sold 30 million PS2s in less then 2 years, and expects to sell another 8 million by christmas (19 million for the whole of 2002). The only console doing poorly right now is the Xbox, which has sold just over 3 million and is expected to sell just 2-3 million additional machines by christmas (5 million for the whole of 2002).

Great

[Spackler]

They finally duplicated what my Dreamcast has been doing for years, on an Xbox.

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

Re:Great

[dd301]

They finally duplicated what my Dreamcast has been doing for years, on an Xbox.

I think the Xbox is a little more powerful than a Dreamcast.

Re:Great

[Cryptnotic]

I think the Xbox is a little more powerful than a Dreamcast.

Dreamcast had better games.

Re:Great

[dd301]

Dreamcast had better games.

The aim is to make a general purpose machine from an Xbox. And it helps that it is an x86 machine.

Re:Great

[Anonymous Coward]

The dreamcast was also smaller and had online gaming a lot earlier then the XBog.

Re:Great

[Anonymous Coward]

A few of them, sure. But a LOT of games for the DC just plain suck. Give the XBox another year or two and then compare the games.

The money

[wackybrit]

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.

Re:The money

[flacco]

So are they going to get the $200,000

I believe the terms were that it run on an *unmodified* xbox.

Re:The money

[Ubi_NL]

The reward was split in a number of goals

Project A: Porting Linux to a modified Xbox:
Task 1: Replacement BIOS (software/hardware)
Task 2: Kernel and XFree drivers
Task 3: Kernel logic: FATX and miscellaneous
Task 4: XBE bootloader
Project B: Xbox hack without any hardware modification

slashdot story

Press Release

Re:The money

[jamie]

The story is here: Anonymous Will Award $200,000 for Xbox Linux

The specific terms of the award are here: Xbox Linux Award & Development Roadmap

They will award $100,000 for completion of Project A:

Project A: Porting Linux to a modified Xbox:
Task 1: Replacement BIOS (software/hardware) ($55,000)
Task 2: Kernel and XFree drivers ($25,000)
Task 3: Kernel logic: FATX and miscellaneous ($10,000)
Task 4: XBE bootloader ($10,000)

And $100,000 for completion of Project B:

Project B: Xbox hack without any hardware modification

Re:The money

[coryboehne]

In defense of /.'s search function I will say that you must either have:

A: Not used the proper critera to search by

or (and I prefer this answer)

B: Did'nt try very hard

either way the link you were referring to is right here

However you were exactly right on the sum.....

Re:The money

[wackybrit]

B is probably correct.. however, Slash does tend to suck a lot when it comes to searching and archiving.

I mean.. Slashdot stories don't even have the YEAR on them. How retarded is that?

Re:The money

[yason]

• Project A: Porting Linux to a modified Xbox:
• Project B: Xbox hack without any hardware modification

• ?????
• Project D: Profit!

Re:The money

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you expect from open sores weenies?

What a mistake

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope that ppl will not buy MS's stuff just because it runs linux. MS is hoping that you will. By getting more sales of Xbox, then they are able to get game developers to port to their stuff based on falsely amplified numbers. It is like how MSIE uses MSN search engine to criminally inflate its numbers. Now, they are claiming that the search engine is heavily used.

Re:What a mistake

[bafreer]

yes, but the xbox costs MS money. If we all buy it, install linux, and never buy a game, they lose money.

Re:What a mistake

[scorp888]

"I hope that ppl will not buy MS's stuff just because it runs linux."

You mean I should give up my mouse and keyboard, as it's got MS on it?

Also consider the fact that by buying an Xbox and no games, you are probably costing MS about $200..

Re:What a mistake

[dd301]

You mean I should give up my mouse and keyboard, as it's got MS on it?

He was talking about systems. You buy their systems, their competitors go out of business, and they do as they please with you. Not a happy scenario.

Re:What a mistake

[Anonymous Coward]

You are costing them 200 today. But MS does not look at today. They look at tommorow. They will be dumping these on the market at 100 / unit soon, if these are not being sold. MS does not really care how they get out. They just care that it gets out there. Even if 100% of them run linux, they don't care. They will argue to the developer that xbox is the big seller, not sony. They will also state that this linux stuff is < 1% of all units. and what will the business suit see? money. Will they notice the penguin booting on their kids xbox? not a chance. They will simply see xbox and the shere numbers of them.
If nothing else, look at MSN search engine. Its numbers are way up. Do you really think that it is becuase it is good or even being used? not a chance. It is simply MSIE sending all errors to it. Yet, business ppl will look at the lie, not the stats.

Re:What a mistake

[0x0d0a]

You *like* MS peripherals?

The mice are okay -- they have lots of buttons, though I think they feel kind of cheap compared to their Logitech counterparts and I *hate* where they put their fifth and sixth buttons -- off to the side, not underneath your fingers.

But MS keyboards just suck, outright.

Re:What a mistake

[fferreres]

Ok, what I am going to say is not along the usual slashdot karma whoring, but I am not here for the karma but to state my opinion...so...(but try to reply if possible).

You mean I should give up my mouse and keyboard, as it's got MS on it?

No, but you should have bough a Genius mouse for 1/10 of the price and have donated the rest to the EFF or to the GNU foundation.

Also consider the fact that by buying an Xbox and no games, you are probably costing MS about $200..

Also consider that cost of production should arround $190 per box (not including R&D which is always a sunk cost and that doesn't hurt MS marginally if they sell 1 or 1000000000000 millions Xboxes). What makes you believe they pay $400 per Box? Ignorance is very damaging, and your figure is just _uneducated_ guess.

Claiming that by buying MS stuff and using them in any other way you are damaging them is at least a _very_ dangerous game. Not to etion there are many other ways to not-help Microsoft that can really establish a decent competitor.

Re:What a mistake

[Anonymous Coward]

Reminds me of "If we all stop buying CDs, the RIAA will crumble." And we all know how that's working.

Geeks are not as big a group as we would like to believe.

Re:What a mistake

[Chris Johnson]

Good point! Microsoft are rolling sunk costs into their estimate of the costs of XBox- anything to inflate what it's 'worth'. I would bet money that they are already turning a profit on the units (writing off sunk costs), if it was at all possible to get at the truth- you only have Microsoft's word, so no bet, they lie.

I also love the way some posters are arguing passionately that hacker use of XBox hurts Microsoft anyhow because games aren't being sold that way, and gaming companies look at console/game ratios. They're using this as justification to advocate ubitiquous use of XBox as a generic PC-like computing device. Where does Microsoft want to go with XBox and XBox2? Ubitiquous use as a generic PC-like computing device. Way to GO, guys- you're out-turfing the real Astroturf. *clap, clap, clap...*

Re:What a mistake

[Anonymous Coward]

"yes, but the xbox costs MS money. If we all buy it, install linux, and never buy a game, they lose money." so what?

Re:What a mistake

[Anonymous Coward]

Whaat? MS Natural Keyboards are *the* best Natural keyboards out there, hands down. Built in USB hubs in the back, with the next versions having built-in Bluetooth hubs.

Re:What a mistake

[fferreres]

Who told you they think? They don't, they see a challenge and take it. They don't really know anything about economics or have the big picture, and that's ok. The problem only comes when the herd talks about hurting microsoft. Because in the end only us are hurt. :)

What the hell, i myght get an XBox myself...if they are going to win anyway why not have fun with the ride? Hackers are a bit inmature to see the big picture and that makes me wonder if i did the right thing when i invested in evangelizing linux/gnu/etc...

Just Months Away...

[dbretton]

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!

Re:Just Months Away...

[SuperCal]

Do you mean we are few months from gettin MAME for XBox, or that the port of Linux means that we are a few months away from a MAME port? I ask because you may not be aware that MAME has already been poted to Xbox

Re:Just Months Away...

[DrVxD]

> 1994 video games running poorly on 2002 hardware!
Some of the games supported by Mame date back as far as 1975. Which is more than can be said for some /. readers...

Re:Just Months Away...

[doofsmack]

Mame has already been already ported to xbox. However, it isn't supported at the MAME site any more. You can, however, obtain it in #xbins on efnet.

Compare to Playstation Linux

[MrLinuxHead]

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!

Re:Compare to Playstation Linux

[brunes69]

Or compare it with Dreamcast Linux, after which you will find that it is way ahead both of them put together.

Re:Compare to Playstation Linux

[talonyx]

Except that a Dreamcast has no built in hard-drive or ethernet adapter, which means that anybody seruously using Linux on it has to look around for rare peripherals.

Re:Compare to Playstation Linux

[zenyu]

I can tell you right now that the XBox will win on this count. The PS2 is a very specialized chip that does mostly floating point. But if you post a web page with your benchmark suite I'll run it on the PS2 for ya.

Re:Compare to Playstation Linux

[quinine]

Ram is a problem too, I found. At one point I was trying to get the NFS-swap patch into their kernel, but I met with limited success. Does anyone know if there's a way to mount the flash in the save-game packs as swap?

What modchip is needed?

[readc]

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?

Re:What modchip is needed?

[Anonymous Coward]

xbox-scene.com or xboxhacker.net should provide you with a detailed spec of the currently availible mod chips. There are strong rumors around that there is to be a new one relased soon that requires no soldering and is very easy to fit.

Suggest that you get one that is flash upgradable however. the pc-xbios chip that liksang just bought the rights to seems a good bet currently.

heh heh

[Lord Bitman]

X-Box+Linux+Emulator+Emulator+Emulator+Emulator+
Emulator+Emulator+Emulator+... ;)

Re:heh heh

[duren686]

Just think, some day someone will build an XBox emulator for it.

Please enlighten a doofus

[ascii]

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

[__aaaaxm1522]

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.

Re:Please enlighten a doofus

[Anonymous Coward]

But as the cost to produce goes down, MS will begin to make money on the H/W...

Re:Please enlighten a doofus

[jasonditz]

Don't forget homebrew development.

I've been coding for fun on my N64 and my Dreamcast. Getting Linux up and running might mean I could actually code the console ON the console, no PC required once I've got the Linux cd.

Re:Please enlighten a doofus

[class_A]

It won't bug MS. They may lose money on a sale, but it's at least some money back instead of no sale at all.

Also, the greater number of installed users, the more developers they can attract and therefore they sell a greater number of expensive dev kits and licences.

Buying an XBox does not hurt Microsoft.

Re:Please enlighten a doofus

[MrLinuxHead]

Same reason I just hacked a virgin iOpener. Cuz I can.

Re:Please enlighten a doofus

[KalvinB]

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

Re:Please enlighten a doofus

[Anonymous Coward]

I know a piece of software which, if it could be ported to an XBox would ROCK. The problem, it does not have a big enough market share and I doubt Microsoft would approve the license for it, even if the developer could afford the costs involved. I suspect he wouldn't recoup the costs.

On the other hand, his software already works on Windows and Mac (OS x) so porting it to the xbox should be mostly easy.

It really woud be nice to have it on such a beast, add in the controller ment for a new mech game (although it is expensive) and it would really kick some ass.

X-Plane would run like a dream on the XBox. Damn cheap compared to the equivilent machine to run it.

Re:Please enlighten a doofus

[JordoCrouse]

Do you know what would be cool? A media server in my living room - connected to the network with an attached CD/DVD so I could rip audio, an TV out connection so that I could monitor my playlists on the TV with the click of a button, and full control via a web interface. Oh, yeah, and an infrared controller.

You know what else would be cool? Get all the parts together in one place for $199 + $30 for a mod chip.

You see the XBox as a useless desktop computer. I see it as an $199 dollar box optimized for entertainment.

Re:Please enlighten a doofus

[0x0d0a]

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.

Re:Please enlighten a doofus

[alienw]

If simply buying an xbox meant that MS gets to make money off of it even if you put Linux on it, why would they make it so difficult to do that? Hell, sony makes their own Linux distro for the PS2, why couldn't M$ do the same?

There is a metric that says how many games are bought per system sold; that determines how much money is made. If someone uses an xbox as a SNES or an arcade emulator, the number of xbox games bought would probably be around zero. That means microsoft will _LOSE_ money.

Also, the dev kits and licenses do not make money alone. MS gets a cut for every xbox game sold, that's where they make money.

Re:Please enlighten a doofus

[nathanh]

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.

Remember the Indrema?

[Tyreth]

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.

Re:Remember the Indrema?

[Chris Johnson]

The Indrema vision was 'pay money to Microsoft and inflate their market share figures'?

Re:Remember the Indrema?

[Tyreth]

Xbox costs Microsoft money.

FINALLY!

[atrowe]

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!

Re:FINALLY!

[sapone]

> -atrowe: Card-carrying Mensa [mensa.org] member. I
> have no toleranse for stupidity.

Then you might consider changing your signature, or do you have _tolerance_ for people who make stupid typos (while trying to be arrogant)?

Re:FINALLY!

[jsse]

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. :)

Re:FINALLY!

[cheese_wallet]

"Then you might consider changing your signature, or do you have _tolerance_ for people who make stupid typos (while trying to be arrogant)?"

That was a joke. Apparently you have no sence of humor.

I don't think it is possible to "try" to be arrogant. You either are, or you are not, there is no try.

Re:FINALLY!

[Anonymous Coward]

Mensa has a card?

Can you buy beer with it?

Re:FINALLY!

[Anonymous Coward]

You either are, or you are not, there is no try.

Wow, Yoda reads slashdot..

Re:FINALLY!

[netsharc]

Actually, in Germany, yes, and yes. :) Mensa is what we call the food halls in the universities (somehow there's a company that monopolizes the service for student sector and in all cities with universities they have a place to eat called "Mensa". And they accept payment using a card that we have to "load" with money, and they also sell beer, so you're questions can be both answered with "yes."

Oh, sure, you're welcome.. :P

Re:FINALLY!

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on, atrowe == A Troll = Adam Rowe. Are you totally thick?

Re:FINALLY!

[Our Man In Redmond]

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"

Re:FINALLY!

[Reality Master 101]

Sheesh, every time this guy posts we find out who are NOT the Mensa members of Slashdot.

Re:FINALLY!

[Anonymous Coward]

Just for the "no sence of humor" you deserve at least +1 funny.

Re:FINALLY!

[cheese_wallet]

Thank you. I didn't think anyone would see or get it.

Wait!

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't plug an input device into it! What's the point of using it as a network server and storing pr0n on it if you can't plug in a monitor and look at it?

Hey, I posted a comment about this without mentioning BE0WULF CLUSTERS! I feel so...

...wait a minute.

Is USB compatible?

[Anonymous Coward]

I heard that the USB ports were not standard. Is the port pin compatible even if not plug compatible?

What are the prospects of one day running a Windows OS (not the one MS wanted) on an XBox?

Re:Is USB compatible?

[warmcat]

The USB is standard USB, except for the physical connector. However, inside the box is a hub daughtercard, which provides the four game ports. Until/unless Xbox -> Standard USB Type A sockets become available, a reasonable hack is to solder a short USB cable on the daughtercard hub connector.

The wire colours are standardized for USB and the cable in the xbox uses the standard colours, which you will find if you cut any USB cable.

Not possible...

[Lethyos]

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...

[iamplasma]

Well, given that every game you play on the XBox works solely as a piece of software, without any hardware modification, it must be possible to do the same thing with a linux kernel (well, assuming there's nothing that would specifically prevent an OS over a game). Sure, it may be infuriatingly difficult or even verging illegal, but it must be possible.

#include

Re:Not possible...

[DJPenguin]

Yes, just like breaking encrypted is _possible_. Of course it's possible, it's just VERY difficult - I imagine you'd have to reverse engineer MSFT's signing code which would probably involve encrypting something on the disk with a MSFT key.

Re:Not possible...

[gimpboy]

Well, given that every game you play on the XBox works solely as a piece of software, without any hardware modification,...

that is because the games are signed by microsoft. as the parent said, it would be able to boot the kernel if it too was signed. otherwise a hardware modification is needed.

Re:Not possible...

[CTalkobt]

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.

Re:Not possible...

[Magic5Ball]

Option 3: They develop their own "optimized" or "compatible" unfriendly linux kernel/lilo fork, add cruft to it, sign and release it (with oblique source). They could then claim that they're not anti-competetive, smear Linux a bit, and to a large extent maintain their cash flow by issuing "compatable" apps. This option also gives them the advantage of some protections via DMCA.

Re:Not possible...

[I'm Don Giovanni]

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

Why would the DOJ care? Xbox is not a monopoly product in any market, so MS is free to do what they want with it without worrying about antitrust bs.

Re:Not possible...

[nzhavok]

Because since MS has a monopoly on the PC market it is subject to different laws than a normal corporation. One of these means it cannot use it's monopolistic position in one market to leverage itself into other markets. I would call creating a game console using commodity PC components, created by companies which MS has a very strong relationship with in it's PC market, using a cut down version of the OS from that PC market, and using money gained from that market to sell the console at a loss in the new market leverage.

Therefore the DOJ should care. Although it won't since the other major players are not American, so they're unlikely to give a fuck IMHO.

Re:Not possible...

[BlowCat]

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.

Re:Not possible...

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Learn to spell kernel.

2. M$ only needs to sign the bootloader, not the kernel itself.

Linux

[fredopalus]

What's next? Is microsoft going to start bundling java with Windows?

Could this be practice for the future?

[bsharitt]

Could we be looking at this much trouble at booting Linux in the future once Palladium comes into play, and basically all PCs are big Xboxes?

Amazing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoah! Linux running on Intel hardware! What will these crazy Linux hackers think of next...

Re:Amazing.

[mamba-mamba]

Yeah, but if I understand correctly, there is no ordinary BIOS on the xbox, so someone had to write one. That might well be just as hard as porting linux!

Besides, for a lot of people, doing this sort of thing is fun as an ends to itself.

--
MM

Microsoft Linux

[applejacks]

Well you just did the hard work for them.
Now watch them claim ownership of the boot loader thingamajigdoohickie.

December 25th 2002: NEW MICROSOFT LINUX 02
On sale at Walmart for 52.00$

What About Your Toaster?

[CBNobi]

Slashdot's one step ahead of you.

Tools?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm curious, what tools do you use to code for the N64? I'd like to partake in this as well. Links please?

Re:Tools?

[jasonditz]

Dextrose is the best place I've found for devtools

http://www.dextrose.com/dx_section_a4t.htm is where all the compilers are at. I use Groundzero myself, works ok.

Only thing is its all DOS stuff.

Re:Tools?

[Bert64]

Wasn`t the official devkit for the N64 based on an SGI Indy?
I seem to remember seeing one available for sale on ebay a few months back...

Re:Tools?

[Stonent1]

In a very basic sense, yes the N64 is a ~100Mhz R4400 Indy with Reality Engine graphics. But tuned up a bit with higher speed IO. (The Indy used regular Fast Page DRAM and the N64 uses Rambus IIRC)

Oh, the Humanity..

[CBNobi]

Slashdot's managed to annihilate:

• Gameboy Advanced
  
• Lisa
  
• Commodore 64
  
• a lego brick
  

The X-Box may be the most formidable yet.

Can't wait for the first report....

[Anonymous Coward]

...of someone being fired for suggesting to managment that they replace thier web-blades with a hacked game consol.

me...mememememememe!

Netwinder Alternative

[Malc]

I was looking at Netwinders recently to replace my Netgear router and P-75 mail and web server on my home DSL. Brand new, the X-Box is about 1/7th the price of a brand new Netwinder. The difference that I see is the X-Box doesn't have a built-in switch, and has much higher power requirements (try getting it below 25W!). It doesn't look quite as cool, but it could have some potential...

Re:Netwinder Alternative

[Nakago4]

How exactly do you plan on using a machine with only one network port as a firewall?

doesnt this have an adverse effect

[king_]

Is it just me but wont this drive up the cost of xbox games?

Re:doesnt this have an adverse effect

[mamba-mamba]

Well, considering that the people who are doing this are partially motivated by hatred of Microsoft, I would say that driving up the cost of the games is not one of their concerns. In fact, if they cause the entire Xbox endeavor to fail (I'm not saying they will), they will most likely call that a huge success.

MM
--

Re:doesnt this have an adverse effect

[fferreres]

Nope, they can just offer lots of rebates in carefully crafted ways to mae sure you can't run a non gaming stuff at subsidy prices. And that's if MS is not already making a profit in each of XBox sold today.

Imagine a beowulf cluster of these...

[AmoebafromSweden]

No, seriously!

If I want to build a server park for big calculations.

Would it be cheaper to just buy a bunch of Xboxes mod them and with the use of linux create a big cluster for calculations?

As I understand it the hardware in the Xbox is underpriced and would be the cheapest way in price per unit to lay hands on hardware with that capability.

Re:Imagine a beowulf cluster of these...

[Anonymous Coward]

no no no.

with the xbox you are paying mostly for the unified memory architecture, the video card, etc. just get headless machines with ram and processors.

-ac

Re:Imagine a beowulf cluster of these...

[glenkim]

Whatever you're going to do with them, I'd hope that you didn't need more than 64mb of ram per box, because that's all you're getting.

Re:Imagine a beowulf cluster of these...

[fferreres]

It may be possible that a brillian guy came up of a way to use 3D cards (new ones like NV30) for that, and that you could use several of them per machine (8 or 16 or more).

Depends on the kind of calculation you need of course. Textures would be numerical data and you can define operation on them, the buffers will hold the results.

Anyway, if it's usefull in any way, somebody will find out soon, as it's high bandwith, high speed, low price and scales well (several per each cheap intel box).

Re:Imagine a beowulf cluster of these...

[Chris Johnson]

Have you priced Celerons lately?

No. Seriously. You've been listening to Microsoft astroturf too much. The best you could say is it's not much worse than generic PC building for the purpose, plus you get elaborate GFX hardware you won't have APIs to use. But it'll still suck power and produce heat, causing problems for you in your cluster building.

Actually, it is a mistake

[Anonymous Coward]

Everybody thinks they are costing MS money. In reality, even if we bought 1,000,000 units (not likely), it would cost them 100,000,000. They have >50,000,000,000 in the bank. This is chump change. Has it hurt them? No, you have simply given them something that they are desperate for. ppl to buy the units to get their numbers up. If they are forced to dump these at 100 /unit or even give them away, then it is harder to get developers to port. But if 1 million units are bought and all are running linux, well, they simply will tell the developer that the linux part is a lie.

Wow!

[Clue4All]

Linux boots into a network-enabled state, running a web server and telnet, which allows you to log into the box from another machine.

Holy cow, REALLY?? This new technology that allows you to "log into" another machine is really astounding, I'm glad I was here to see it first on Slashdot! What can I say, I'm impressed.

Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

This is more useless shit created by a bunch of people with too much time on their hands.

Wrong. This fits your description: Internet-enabled Robot to Mow Lawns

However, a firmly extended middle finger to Microsoft a very useful and important expenditure of effort.

Too bad...

[RLiegh]

...that NetBSD hasn't been ported to the Xbox.

Then we'd have the added bonus of it being a Microsoft-approved license. ;)

Re:Too bad...

[0x0d0a]

Yeah. NetBSD needs to be more portable. ;-)

Re:Hah! The irony!

[dbirchall]

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.

My toaster runs NetBSD...

[bsDaemon]

and my coffee pot is 100% Pure Java(tm).

this is a good thing

[sub7mage]

Microsoft loses $50 (if not more sience the price drop) for each xbox they sell. the only reason they are doing this is to get into the console gameing busniess and possibly make alittle money off the games. if we make it so we just buy the xboxes and not the games we can really hit them hard seeing as they need the people to buy the games and now that people are using software that wasn't made by microsoft......

Re:this is a good thing

[Milk and Cookies]

I cliped out a newspaper from the hartford courant a while ago that says that Microsoft loses $150 for every X-Box they sell. They estimated that Microsoft will lose $1.1 billion dollars this year. To Microsoft, that's not a huge amount of money, but they do lose money on the console.

Why this DOES hurt Microsoft

[donnacha]

It won't bug MS. They may lose money on a sale, but it's at least some money back instead of no sale at all.

No, at their current manufacturing costs they genuinely DO lose money on each unit. I understand the argument that an Xbox sitting on a shelf unsold costs them more money but that logic is inherently flawed. Each time a batch of, say, 100,000 begins to run out they must manufacture another batch or risk damaging their supply network i.e. losing their hard won shelf-space down in Electronic Boutique or whatever. Failing to maintain a constant supply of their product is equivalent to withdrawing their product from the market.

Also, the greater number of installed users, the more developers they can attract and therefore they sell a greater number of expensive dev kits and licences.

That's the best bit: even if only a tiny handful of people buy Xboxes to use as Mail servers or whatever, the perception of a solid userbase crumbles. Before this, Microsoft could legitimately say "We can prove we have one millions users" and developers could base their decisions on that. Now, however, it's going to be at the back of everybody's minds that there is some sort of erosion of the userbase going on. Even if claim to know the unknowable and put out an estimate that only 0.009% of Xboxes are Linuxed, developers will disregard that and come up with their own estimates that err heavily on the side of safety... it's their development costs after all.

Buying an XBox does not hurt Microsoft.

Buying an Xbox but not buying any games or subscribing to their online service DOES hurt Microsoft.

Spreading the knowledge that Xboxes make nifty mail servers hurts them even more.

Re:Why this DOES hurt Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

If the site is yours, check it with Netscape 4.7x
You will be unpleasantly surprised.

Re:Why this DOES hurt Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

It shouldn't be much of a surprise, as it's a well-extablished fact that Netscape 4.7x is inherently unpleasant.

Re:Why this DOES hurt Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, however, it's going to be at the back of everybody's minds that there is some sort of erosion of the userbase going on. Even if claim to know the unknowable and put out an estimate that only 0.009% of Xboxes are Linuxed, developers will disregard that and come up with their own estimates that err heavily on the side of safety... it's their development costs after all.

Running Linux on an X-Box in no way prevents a normal game from non-concurrently running on the same X-Box. An X-Box sold is an X-Box that can run an X-Box game.

Also, it is highly doubtful that any more than about 47 X-Boxes sold to end users will never run an X-Box game in its lifetime.

I don't know about anyone else, but when I look for a box to run as a dedicated server, I want a something that can be easily repaired on site by swapping standard components, or something which comes with a decent service contract. The X-Box fails on both these fronts.

joke/troll in .sig? -OT

[handsomepete]

Man, I hope that's on purpose. The irony would be so astounding that Alanis Morisette's head would explode.

Re:joke/troll in .sig? -OT

[Anonymous Coward]

That truely is ironic (also the guy seems like a right cock) however, there is nothing ironic about Alanis's song except for it is a song about irony that contains no irony, should be re-titled "unlucky".

no toleranse for stupidity

[Anonymous Coward]

"-atrowe: Card-carrying Mensa [mensa.org] member. I have no toleranse for stupidity."

but quite a high threshhold for egoism

I ported Debian to a bag of Fritos!

[Anonymous Coward]

I had to do a blind install, and it doesn't support my monitor or external CD-R, but I screwed the Fritos company good. I'm going to install Mandrake on an empty coffee can next.

Re:I ported Debian to a bag of Fritos!

[Anonymous Coward]

Fritos are made by Frito Lay. Fritos is the name of the product, therefore, you screwed frito lay.

Yes, but

[brokeninside]

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.

Re:Yes, but

[duren686]

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.

Bochs for Xbox

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone ported Bochs to Xbox as well, which lets it run Linux (command line), DOS, Win 3.1, and it even runs Windows 95 (slowly). It's probably going to get better. Right now, Duke Nukem 3D on DOS is playable :P

In this case marketing doesn't matter

[brokeninside]

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.

Off the shelf parts

[Anonymous Coward]

Only way you can build a comparable off the shelf linux box for $200 is if you're using cheap quality stuff.

Things like Amptron Mbs, generic ram, no-name brand CDs. Cases with questionable power supplies. Onboard video chipsets and audio chipsets.

There is the route of getting used computers... I'm sure a decent P3700 or athlon 700 can be had, used, for cheap, but $200? I doubt that.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Doofus enlightenment attempt

[warmcat]

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?

Re:Doofus enlightenment attempt

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm impressed !

no troll replied to this work of art - don't they understand it or don't they read longer postings ?

*G*

Re:Doofus enlightenment attempt

[Chris Johnson]

I'm considering the act of foolish people paying Microsoft hundreds of dollars. Yup, THAT'LL help.

Re:Doofus enlightenment attempt

[Anonymous Coward]

"no troll replied to this work of art" You just did.

Re:Doofus enlightenment attempt

[foobar104]

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.

Re:Doofus enlightenment attempt

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, for crying out loud. I'll bite.

"1) The trend towards evolving a 'perfect customer', a sheeplike animal which only consumes and offers money."

What trend? We've been there for years. If anything there's a slight trend in the opposite direction of people taking more control of what they own than in previous years. The customer has always only consumed and offered money. What do you expect them to do?

"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..."

Sure, patent laws are fucked. I think we all get that. What's your solution? Putting linux on Microsoft's gaming console?

"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"

Now you'll have to enlighten another doofus. What the hell does 'porkbarrel carrots' mean? Once again, I don't get how this rant has anything to do with the parent's question: "What's the point of the effort?" This just seems like you're letting off steam about how corrupt the government is. This is not a new trend either.

"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?"

Finally. Ok, so taking money but not giving you ownership. I can deal with that. However, putting Tux on Xbox doesn't change whatever fucked up license they have for that thing, so again, what's the point? Do you honestly think this rebellious effort of a handful of random hackers will make a dent in the country's (or planet's) collective concience? /. will read about it, tell a couple thousand people, and that'll be it. There are millions of people who have no idea that these things are happening and probably don't even care. They don't care what a EULA says. This isn't Ghandi work. I don't see us as political prisoners of this extreme sort that seems to be implied here. No one's forcing these crappy gaming systems down our throats.

While I think this is a neat accomplishment and may even go to the trouble of picking up a used Xbox to play with it on, it does not have this grand sweeping scope that you seem to think it has. If anybody really interested in the things you speak of really wanted to make a difference, they'd start making speeches or run for government. And actually *try*, not some ridiculous Green party b.s. where you defeat yourself by constantly whining and referring to yourself as the underdog.

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

I was already free before this happened. I'll continue to do so. I'm still patiently waiting for an actual answer to the parent's question and not a ridiculous bunch of grandstanding hot air that justifies something which can't be considered anything more than a 'useful neat hack.'

It has to be said...

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these!

When will OpenVMS be ported to the X-Box?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if OpenVMS will ever be ported to the X-Box, I think that would be very useful. Imagine a beowolf cluster of those.

This is real sick!

[Anonymous Coward]

You guys bought M$ hardware and support bill with your $$ to run Linux on it? Sick! I thinks this really sucks.

Whew!

[buzzcutbuddha]

Finally Xbox is ready for some real fun!

I was just getting so sick of playing my Jedi games and Halo and Max Payne. Thank god they ported a web server to the XBox so I can have some REAL fun on it.

Maybe my boss will even let me develop on it. woo hoo!.

Re:Whew!

[mamba-mamba]

Go ahead, amuse yourself.

Personally, I hate video games. But figuring out how a system works, now THAT is fun. Building linux from scratch using the lfs book (http://linuxfromscratch.org/) that is fun. If you don't want to do it, that's fine, but why disparage the efforts of those who do enjoy it?

I don't have or want an Xbox, but I can understand how much fun it would be to get one to boot linux. Then again, I'm an electrical engineer, so there's probably something wrong with me to start with.

MM
--

Re:Whew!

[buzzcutbuddha]

Then again, I'm an electrical engineer, so there's probably something wrong with me to start with.

Hmm. Troll. Then again, I like video games so there must be something wrong with me. ;)

I don't disparage the effort, I admire the work that was done, and I give kudos to the people who did it.

But I still think it's a funny statement to say that "Now that we have Linux ported to it this $300 game console is really going to be fun!"

Memory usage

[ehiris]

Very nice to see that it separates the memory used for cache from the rest of memory usage.

Where can I buy a modded Xbox?

[PatJensen]

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

Re:Where can I buy a modded Xbox?

[Hoonis]

http://www.extreme-mods.com/products/premodxbox1.h tm

I just followed some links..

The next distributed project

[0x0d0a]

It'll be just like the distributed RC56 contest...just this time, it's to break MS's signing key. :-)

Re:The next distributed project

[darc]

Ha! That's bloody impossible. The MS signing key is a 1024 bit key. Good luck, it'll take a while. In a billion years.

Re:The next distributed project

[jon_eaves]

Actually, the interesting thing here is that there are known attacks on RSA when you have large amounts of encrypted text.

Therefore, the more games that Microsoft create and sign, the greater the chance that a key can be found.
RSA, depending on the mode that it's used in, may be quite susceptible to a non-brute force, known text attack.

Oh No!

[dbretton]

I've been modded down by the ./ police!

That must mean that I didn't agree with their views...

Lemmee check.. yup! I dissed Linux on the XBox with a little something I like to call "sarcasm".

Oh no! I can feel my karma dropping from "excellent" as I type this.... Oh crap! I just realized that, since I am talking about the post which dissess Linux, that this post too must be dissnig Linux, and will also get modded down.
Shit! I'm screwed! Ack!

Re:Oh No!

[BathTub]

you were probably modded down for thinking that mame wasn't already on the xbox, look around for MAME-X

I'd not thought of that

[brokeninside]

Assuming that Linux is otherwise made functional on the X-Box, perhaps the cost of licensing the X-Box SDK and having a "game" signed would be entirely recouped through the reward for getting Linux to boot on an unmodded X-Box.

I wonder if a lawsuit could force Microsoft to sign Linux for the X-Box in the case of their refusing to do such.

Re:I'd not thought of that

[gimpboy]

i'm not sure, but i dont think microsoft would agree to "sign" the linux "game". plus i think the licensing restrictions placed on it would make it violate the gpl/eula.

for example if i distribute the linux kernel for the xbox, i'm required by the gpl to provide the source. if the eula states that i cannot give up source related to the sdk, then i might not be able to give up the kernel source.

so i would have to violate either the eula or the gpl.

Linux has good games, laddie buck

[0x0d0a]

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/ToME/angband/nethack/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 are a bit more elaborate. Be a bit of a pain to play on the controller, yes...

Chromium BSU: 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 (use the 3d hardware). Not free.

Abuse: 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 is apparently shaping up pretty well.

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

Maelstrom 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, their Dominions: Priests, Prophets, and Pretenders is a non-flashy but very deep, very good strategy game. Shareware.

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

Finally, there are all the emulators and whatnot...take a look at GNUboy, TuxNES, snes9x, DGen/SDL,
FreeSCI, Sarien, Exult, XU4, ScummVM, Basilisk II, YAE and others.

There are a host of Loki ports that you can't get any more except used. Lots of good stuff from LGames, 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 has games and players.

Finally, many good games can be played through WINE -- 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 and the Linux Games Tome.

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.

Re:Linux has good games, laddie buck

[jasonditz]

Now if we can just get WINE running on the Xbox, we could have some real fun

Re:Linux has good games, laddie buck

[Have Blue]

An unmodified Xbox has Halo. Any questions?

Re:Linux has good games, laddie buck

[vsprintf]

An unmodified Xbox has Halo. Any questions?

The modded Xbox has Halo, too. Any questions?

Re:Linux has good games, laddie buck

[Have Blue]

The unmodified Xbox has Halo and many more dollars and hours. Any questions yet?

Re:Linux has good games, laddie buck

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, you spent $200 (or $300 if you got it early) for one game? Wish I had that kind of wasteful spending.

Re:Linux has good games, laddie buck

[Zapper]

+5, Funny

Damn Slashcode

[Anonymous Coward]

I posted that logged in, BTW, but apparently Slashcode didn't like the way I pressed the "Submit" button.

-- Shamus

Damn you! Damn you all to hell! -- Some guy in a movie about apes

Re:Hey, dickwad!

[Anonymous Coward]

YHBT. YHL. HAND.

who marked it as flaimebait?

[fferreres]

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.

Re:who marked it as flaimebait?

[Anonymous Coward]

Very Good point!

This is something that's been bugging me for some time now. The idea that we as a community are somehow hurting microsoft by getting linux running on the xbox. Sure it's cool that someone hacked it and got linux up on it but we're kidding ourselves to think that this really hurts microsoft.

If you really want to hurt them DON'T BUY ONE!

Consoles/Platforms live and die based upon the games and number of titles that play on them. The higher the market penetration a console has the more likely the owners of the platform will be able to convice game development companies to develop titles for it.

So if you really to hurt microsoft then get a playstation,gamecube or a pc.

Sure microsoft looses some $$$ on each box sold. Why do you think that is? It's not because their stupid. They do it because they are willing take a loss for the market penetration.

yea, yea, I know. If you buy the box and don't buy the games then you're hurting them. But not that much. Besides the amount that microsoft looses on each one of boxes decreases over time

PS2 Linux Kit is crippled, I understand

[Anonymous Coward]

If a "full linux distribution on the playstation 2" is available, I'd like to know about it. It sounds like Sony's PS2 Linux Kit is a crippled linux distribution that does not allow reading data from CD-R discs.

LinuX Box?

[Anonymous Coward]

I would rather call it LineXBox... which sounds more X box than linux...

Re:Hah! The irony!

[Forge]

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 ?

Connecting Xbox to a Monitor ? MAX RES 1024x768

[Anonymous Coward]

I think this is a very important topic for xbox users that want to use it as a desktop replacement.
SO PLEASE MOD THIS UP !

I'd like to know if the Xbox can be connected to a PC monitor.
If yes, are external converters needed ? What's the maximum resolution ?
I heard xbox can do 1024x768. Is this true ?
A Linux workstation running at NTSC/PAL resolutions is a no-go so I hope we can do
at least 1024x768.
Thanks for infos !

Re:Hah! The irony!

[timftbf]

IPs are expensive in the US (and other regions covered by ARIN). In Europe, IPs are free. You demonstrate your need to RIPE, fill out the appropriate form via your ISP and addresses are assigned to you. You have four machines at home, you'll get a /28. (4 + router + network + broadcast + 1 spare - you have to round up to the next boundary).

You may still have to pay an ISP to route them, but fundamentally IPs are a zero-cost resource over here. Good job too, as routed public IPs are the only way to go. NAT is flat-out evil, and I'd never pay an ISP for a NAT service.

Your point about the security of telnet on non-routed networks stands, I just don't think your assumption about the numbers of geeks with NATed rather than real networks is necessarily true...

Regards,
Tim.

reward?

[quinine]

So, who else thinks they should take their share of the first part of the reward money and send an X-box to the same guys in Haifa that did DSS?

What's the use?

[ModernGeek]

What is the use of running linux on an xBox?

Misguided effort

[Anonymous Coward]

This seems like a totally misguided effort. Not that there is anything wrong with trying to run Linux on an X-Box. But there is zero sense in running Linux on an X-Box to hurt Microsoft -- which is what all the excitement seems to be about.

Think about it. How does any of this hurt Microsoft? Is there any reason to suppose that buying X-Boxes hurts Microsoft? Sure, yes, I know; X-Box is being sold at a loss. But put yourself in their position. What would you prefer? Sale or no sale? And are you sure you are never going to buy a game for your X-Box? Really sure?

But the problem runs deeper. Lets suppose for the sake of argument that Bill Gates is pulling his hair out because a few happy hackers managed to boot Linux on the X-Box. Fat chance, but let's suppose he does. Then what? What has been accomplished except for the fact that Bill Gates' world has become a little bit uglier?

What has been accomplished except that a number of puzzles have been solved (that were already solved mind you, just kept secret)? What can be done now that could not be done before?What do people gain from this on a personal level, except showing off?

I suppose subversion is a creative process. But is it really the race we want to be running?

Occassionally you hear people: "Yay, hooray, I defaced your website, I won!!!". But this competition, it exists only in the minds of the hacker. Because the people running the website care more about making a good website on time and within budget, than about making it difficult to hack. From their perspective, "losing" means that somebody else makes a better website.

The X-Box was defaced. But that does not mean that Microsoft lost anything.

Rather it means that we lost talent and effort on a misguided egotrip. Which is fine by me -- just don't pass it off as "victory"... Thanks.

Finally, an intelligent statement

[I'm Don Giovanni]

This is one of the few intelligent statement I've seen on this topic. Most of the posters applaud the LinXBox effort because they see it as a means to hurt MS (any harm done would have virtually zero effect). But the idea that this is a fun engineering project is a much more solid and reasonable motivation for the LinXbox effort.

Re:Hah! The irony!

[stor]

Heh, a dude defending telnetd. Who'd a thunk it?

RFC1918 Addresses only give a meagre level of protection. That said, I use them (RFC1918 Adds) extenstively, in combination with a lot of other security measures such as not running telnetd.

IMNSHO Even half-decent security requires the administrator to try to secure down *every* service. Some things are difficult to secure but that doesn't mean you should neglect to fix the straight-forward stuff.

Cheers
Stor

What about your toaster?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not alone when i say i've heard of a /. poster, but never a /. toaster.

just a thought.

XBox CPU revealed!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well well, it seems it's not a Pentium III afterall...
http://xbox-linux.sourceforge.net/pic /info.png
HAHHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

Re:XBox CPU revealed!

[whizzter]

first up: the identification isn't always correct for "unknown" cpu's (the coppermine name is prolly not in the cpuid info)
second up: notice the SSE flag, the pII family was ppro+mmx, SSE was for pIII.. so it's somewhere in the same family
/ jonas lund

It isn't that simple

[brokeninside]

(1) The GPL has an exception clause for linking against system libraries.

(2) The GPL requires release of the source, not release of the compiler used to compile the source.

Re:It isn't that simple

[gimpboy]

it's never that simple :). i'm familar with (1), i'm just not familar with the eula shipped with the sdk. i wouldnt be surprised if there was something in the eula that conflicted with using the gpl. perhaps there isnt, i just wouldnt be suprised if there was.

My ponderings re: why?

[jmorris42]

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.

Re:Hah! The irony!

[Sir Joltalot]

I'm not sure this is entirely correct. Most of the people I know living in Europe only have 1 IP and run NAT just like most people in North America. I realise, however, that just because people *I know* do that, it's not necessarily the only way things are done. Still, bandwidth is *much* more expensive in Europe than it is in North America. You may be able to get 4 or 5 IPs, whoopee.. you've still only got 512kbps down. Maybe you think 512kbps is a lot? Well coming from Canada where you literally cannot get broadband at less than 1mbit down it doesn't seem like all that much... And for that 512kbps down you'll have to pay at least 50 quid or 75 euro a month.. that seems like an awful lot for a Canuck used to paying $40 - $50 Canuck bucks (around 25 - 30 euro) for 1mbit or more. I'd rather have more bandwidth and run NAT personally...

NAT works fine and then (as the previous poster mentions) boxes behind your NAT box aren't completely exposed so it gives you a bit of extra security. I wouldn't, however, go so far as to say it's all well and good to run telnet behind NAT. There's just something about clear-text passwords that makes me winge, even if they are behind NAT.

But, to put at least one thing in here that's on-topic, I don't see a problem with the fact that this new Linux for the Xbox "distro" (I guess it's not really a distro yet) runs telnet. Few people are gonna put LinuXboxes online with this release, and telnet is nice and simple for testing to see if it's up and running. Plus in clusters (a potentially big thing for LinuXboxes) Xboxes almost certainly wouldn't be connected to the 'net at all, even through NAT.

Any questions yet?

[vsprintf]

The unmodified Xbox has Halo and many more dollars and hours. Any questions yet?

Yeah. You have an unmodded Xbox that has "many more dollars and hours"? Your Xbox has a load of cash and lot of uptime? Well, interesting, I guess.

Re:Hah! The irony!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hardly. And everytime slashdot writes about it MS gets free punlicity and ads for it. It's a great idea to make linux for when there even aren't enough drivers for for example webcams on linux

What about Wine? :^)

[jn42]

Can we get Wine working, and run Windows programs on a Microsoft box? :^)