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XBox Linux HOWTOs
killmenow writes "Following up this slashdot story from a few days ago, today The Register is reporting that the XBox Linux folks have released a HOWTO for getting SuSE 8.0 running. Cool...I may have to go buy an X-Box now." There's also a HOWTO for Debian if that's your style. All of these require an XBox with modified hardware... There's also a story about the XBox online gaming service that implies Microsoft will be scanning your machine to make sure you haven't modified it, but we can't link to it since silicon.com has some sort of stupid registration requirement. Anyone find the story elsewhere? Ah, News.com has a story about XBox Live.
Cool...I may have to go buy an X-Box now
You boviously have more money than brains if you want to go buy an X Box just because you can install Linux on it. If you want to install Linux on something, buy a PC. Xbox is for games.
MS has the right to block any one form its networks. However, if they pursue the X-box owner (most likely by lawsuit) this is a different story. While X-box live is their network, the X-box is the consumer's personal possession. With that said, the person who owns it has the right to do anything he wants to it, modding included.
There is nothing wrong with being gay. It's getting caught where the trouble lies.
Bah! All you need to do is add another mod to hide the mod they look for. Remenicient of the ever popular radar-detector-detector.
With a modded Xbox running Linux I can use mplayer (possibly even Xine?) to watch all my DivX movies on my Wega flatscreen with simulated dolby surround.
Modding isn't prohibited, because it can't be prohibited.
You don't *license* Xbox hardware from Microsoft, you *buy* it. When you buy something, you *own* it, and can do whatever the hell you want with/to it.
So there is not and can not be a "license agreement".
Now, Xbox Live is a different story. Xbox live is a service, not a piece of hardware. Microsoft can legally define the terms of that service, and one of the terms can be that only non-modded Xboxes are allowed to use it.
To summarize: modding Xboxes is/can not be prohibited. Using modded Xboxes on Xbox Live can and probably will be prohibited.
In a recent Fry's ad, I saw an ad for a AMD Duron 1Ghz processor and motherboard for $79, and the motherboard had on board sound / video. Add some RAM, a hard drive, etc, and you can build a more powerful machine for probably around $300, and you don't have to solder in anything or void your warranty.
Anyone have a really compelling reason to run Linux on an XBOX? I'm sure there's at least one... maybe small machine footprint? XBOX is huge for a console compared to PS2 / Gamecube, but it's still small compared to even a midtower PC.
And yes, I'll accept "Because it's fun" as an answer :)
Cool...I may have to go buy an X-Box now.
Do us all a favor and please don't. Microsoft may lose money if you buy one, but it loses more if you don't. A console's fate is decided on how many are sold, it has nothing to do with sales of games. So when geeks start making Xboxes fly off the shelf, just to install Linux, it still makes the Xbox look like a high selling success. If the Xbox is seen as a viable console with high hardware sales, Microsoft will have have the last laugh. Then we'll see Xbox 2, 3, and 4, a prospect no one around here wants to see. Let the Xbox sit on the shelf , and then MS may get the hint and get out of the console business when it sees that they aren't selling.
Nanite
Yeah, Small.
God is real unless declared integer.
I normally hate every attempt to snoop my systems. But I can see one good thing about the X-Box chip scanning online.
Now, I don't have a X-box or even played with it, so I don't know all that the chip mods can do. But let's assume that the gaming network catches on and there will be some very popular online games on the x-box. Couldn't one imagine that some would produce mod-chips that enabled the user to cheat the games in some way? Either by a function in the chip or by modified games.
Cheating ruined my enjoyment with playing Counterstrike( that and the games was getting old), so I would like to play a game where I was sure that nobody cheated. With every major game coming out these days, there's a constant battle with cheats, so the checking of the system could be a way to ensure a fair game.
Still I agree that it sucks and the fact that some servers insisted on scanning my files on my PC for cheats, before I could join a Counterstrike server, really made me say enough is enough. The X-box is not a pc, so maybe most people will not find it quite as bad. I don't know, I'm not going to buy a X-box anyway.
my sig
2 bucks and a trip to radio shack and this is easily accomplished. (SPST or DPDT micro toggle, depending on the style of mod)
Thing is, people want to mod so they can swap in a 100 gig hard drive (anything bigger xbox cant use) and copy everything they rent from blockbuster to it. Or swap in a PC DVD drive which will read CD-R(W)/DVD-R(W). (The xbox has trouble with cdr)
Same thing with linux. It wastes up yer hard drive, putting it 'back the way it was' isn't so easy.
Much harder to switch. Though, not impossible.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!