Slashdot Mirror
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)."
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?
(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.
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.
Whoah! Linux running on Intel hardware! What will these crazy Linux hackers think of next...
The X-Box may be the most formidable yet.
I think the Xbox is a little more powerful than a Dreamcast.
Dreamcast had better games.
My other first post is car post.
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.
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.
There's a gorilla from Manilla whose a fella that stinks of vanilla and has salmonella.
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?
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
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.
He who defends everything, defends nothing. -- Fredrick The Great