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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)."
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.
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.
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
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?
Now we're actually getting to a point where "a Beowulf cluster of these" might turn out to be a feasible and affordable option :)
(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!
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.
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 ?
They finally duplicated what my Dreamcast has been doing for years, on an Xbox.
hey mods: It aint flaimbait when it's true!
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.
mogorific carpentry experiments
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!
It would be nice to see a comparison between Sony PS2 and XBox running Linux. Same kernel, services, etc, and benchmark them to see what they offer for the average user using web, email, and word processing.
PS2 needs a kit a Xbox needs a mod. Anyone game? Fire up the Weller temp controlled soldering iron, ma I'm goin in!
I may be bad with names, but I'll never forget your IP address
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.
naah sig schmig
"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..
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!
-atrowe: Card-carrying Mensa member. I have no toleranse for stupidity.
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.
Why bother.
Whoah! Linux running on Intel hardware! What will these crazy Linux hackers think of next...
Slashdot's one step ahead of you.
The X-Box may be the most formidable yet.
Hope they'll have sshd (one of the non-backdoored ones) in as a replacement soon.
and my coffee pot is 100% Pure Java(tm).
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.
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 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.
If we lived in a world where X-box building was a one time event, then your reasoning would be sound. But we don't live in such a world. Microsoft will continue to build X-boxes to meet demand.
Not to mention that the more X-boxes are bought to run Linux and not play prepackaged X-box games (realizing that these two are not necessarily mutually exclusive), the fewer game titles per X-box are sold and the less game developers are interested in the platform.
The 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.
Just think, some day someone will build an XBox emulator for it.
Y2K Compliant since the late 1890s
It isn't a hardware game, its a gaming game. Platforms that sell fewer games, lose.
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?
Very nice to see that it separates the memory used for cache from the rest of memory usage.
Thanks!
-Pat
It'll be just like the distributed RC56 contest...just this time, it's to break MS's signing key. :-)
May we never see th
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.
May we never see th
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.
May we never see th
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.
:-) ) 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.
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
May we never see th
Yeah. NetBSD needs to be more portable. ;-)
May we never see th
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.
"(Man) tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story. But you have to choose: live or tell." --Sartre
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.
unfinished: (adj.)
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).
unfinished: (adj.)
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.
unfinished: (adj.)
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.
unfinished: (adj.)
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 ?
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
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.
The Indrema vision was 'pay money to Microsoft and inflate their market share figures'?
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...*
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...
unfinished: (adj.)
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.
Democrat delenda est
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.
-- john
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.
"Caffeine is not an option. Caffeine is a way of life."