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KDE Running On A GameCube

Bruno_me writes "Some of the folks at the GameCube Linux project have gotten KDE to run on a GameCube. There's a screenshot of what it actually looks like and what it should look like. This is the first real 'GameKube.' And of course, here is the original frame buffer (dd if=/dev/fb0 of=./kde.fbdump)."

23 of 169 comments (clear)

  1. Wow. by SmithG · · Score: 4, Funny

    This seems very useful.

    1. Re:Wow. by Gentlewhisper · · Score: 5, Interesting

      On the keypad there is only A, B, C, and D, what about the rest? How do you type on this?

    2. Re:Wow. by gustgr · · Score: 4, Informative

      Maybe with somthing like this?

    3. Re:Wow. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Well, there's the obvious "like a highscore table entry" method, or the "on-screen keyboard" method, and how about higher-speed methods for advanced users like chording? 4 buttons => 2^4 = 16 chords minus the 0 chord, gives 15 chords. defining each letter as a 2 chord sequence, that gives 15*15 = 225 2-chord combos, enough to cover a standard keyboard.

    4. Re:Wow. by OneHungLo · · Score: 4, Informative

      To enter text commands, just do an "ssh -l root 192.168.0.47" from the console on your PC. The default root password is "cube". Once you've done that, you can do pretty much whatever you want with it. Use apt-get to install links and BitchX, and you can brag to your friends that you're running a browser and IRC client on your Gamecube and typing through your PC.

      It's not really useful for anything but Geek points at the moment, but GC-Linux development is coming along very quickly. There's already a hardware-accelerated video driver, and ALSA is working, as well as SDL and many more things. I wouldn't be surprised if in the near future, some kind of Mplayer-based streaming media client was written for GC-Linux, and it found a practical purpose as a way of playing MP3/Vorbis/Videos from NFS shares on a LAN. All the framework is there, it would just take someone to put it together.

  2. KDE is heavy by gustgr · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Does KDE run smoothly on a 486Mhz PowerPC with 40mb of RAM?

  3. Screenshots by rudib · · Score: 5, Funny

    So, the first screenshot is when you are sober and the second one is when you are on acid?

    1. Re:Screenshots by gustgr · · Score: 4, Funny

      when you are on acid?

      This is the only way I can tolerate KDE.

    2. Re:Screenshots by metlin · · Score: 5, Funny
      <flamebait>

      No, you definitely can't be sober if you're using KDE.

      </flamebait>
      :-p
  4. Well by bburton · · Score: 4, Funny

    Well I'm convinced... if KDE can run on a gamecube, it must be better than Gnome.

    laugh, its a joke

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  5. about the shots by sla291 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Well, at least, we can say that KDE runs well on black&white TVs :)

  6. First step by Chuck+Chunder · · Score: 5, Funny

    Scratch out the "C" and replace it with a "K"

    --
    Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
  7. Gamecube: pretty hard to hack by phoxix · · Score: 5, Informative

    Unlike the Xbox or the PS2, there are no mod-chips for the gamecube. Nintendo did one hell of a job constructing this little machine.

    The way to hack the Gamecube is somewhat interesting. Back in the days of the Sega Dreamcast, there was a game known as "Phantasy Star Online", which attempted to connect to a remote server to get and execute whatever code it got from the remote server.... grin :^).

    When Sega ported the game to the GameCube, the exploit came with it. So what folks do is they load up Phantasy Star Online 1+11, run a "loader" on their computer (linux or windows). And have the loader on their computer send the gamecube whatever they want (home games, illegal rips, the linux kernel, etc).

    This has been over-simplified greatly.

    And note: some of you might be thinking about using this to play illegal copies of games. Don't bother. You end up needing to use a bazillion different loaders to load whatever game, and the network port of the Gamecube is limited to 10mbps, which makes many games unplayable.

    Sunny Dubey

  8. "original frame buffer" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    probably get modded down or troll for admitting i use IE6, but the FB link crashes it. maybe i'll be using that gamecube for my browsing soon..

  9. Re:What is this kde.fbdump garbage? by vadim_t · · Score: 5, Informative

    It's a dump of the framebuffer console. To view it, you've got to run Linux with vesafb, for example. Just "cat kde.fbdump > /dev/fb0". You need to use the right bit depth and resolution for it to work though, and it's not specified.

  10. Re:Enquiring minds want to know by danamania · · Score: 5, Informative

    From all reports yes it booted but the color map was broken on the x server so it didn't look really great. Here is what it looks like. I think it took slightly less long than expected, only four and a half days.

    nooooo. no no no.

    The boot failed due to a byte-order issue with drive images made on PCs, and failed at the four and a half day mark. I'm not sure where you got the URL for the image, I can only presume once it was pasted on IRC it spreads everywhere :). That image is of the Centris display, but it's my Athlon's PearPC session merely using X11 on the Centris.

    I'll have it booting sometime soon, just not this week :).

  11. It's official by Admiral+Justin · · Score: 5, Funny

    It's official, Linux does run on everything, toasters, xbox, gamecube, your grandmother, robot cheney...

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  12. Anytime... by BaltikaTroika · · Score: 5, Funny

    The first screenshot is what KDE looks like when the Predator is using it.

  13. Re:Gamecube: pretty hard to hack by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Unlike the Xbox or the PS2, there are no mod-chips for the gamecube. Nintendo did one hell of a job constructing this little machine.

    The problem has never been the mod chips, it's been the fact that Nintendo uses a custom media disc, not the CDs/DVDs that the PS2 uses, or the DVDs that the Xbox uses.

    If the GCN could take commodity media, then I'm sure a mod chip would be forthcoming. However, Nintendo stopped you from getting to the point where a mod chip would be useful.

    You do have to admire the fact that they, unlike Microsoft or Sony, managed to beat the piracy problem on the cube.

  14. Re:applications? by apanap · · Score: 5, Informative

    Mplayer works fine, and you can see some more useless screenshots here. Snes9x has also been ported, as well as a couple other emulators (MAME and some neogeo emulator for example). Other than that I haven't found much use for it except for the geek-factor, the memory is too limited to do anything heavy... But playing SNES games on the cube is pretty sweet though.

    --
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  15. Re:Practical uses? by mausmalone · · Score: 4, Informative

    (a) no modding involved, so in that respect it's really easy to get up and running. (b) Well, since they have mplayer running, you could use it as a network media player. I think if someone developed a front end specifically for gclinux that would let you specify a samba/windows file share in a .conf file somewhere, displayed the files in some user-friendly way, and then spawned mplayer when you clicked on one,... well that'd be nice. ... sadly, I don't know how to program squat on linux or I'd be all over that.

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  16. Re:What is this kde.fbdump garbage? by Ford+Prefect · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Just open it as a 'raw' image file, 640x480x16bpp. You say you'll have to write a program specifically for this? Sounds like you are a true /. geek! :-)

    Oh crap. I win the 'Geek' prize, then.

    I wrote a really poor PHP program to do it - and ended up with a fairly uninteresting screenshot.

    Okay, so KDE on a Gamecube is pretty useless, but it does show that the cross-compiler is working on complex software (even if it is just for a PowerPC), and that pretty resource-intensive software will work on the machine. Plus, I bet the people doing it have learned a lot in porting this stuff to work on an unfamiliar, undocumented hardware platform.

    Now, port Linux to run on any generic Postscript printer! :-)

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  17. Re:Gamecube: pretty hard to hack by StillAnonymous · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "You do have to admire the fact that they, unlike Microsoft or Sony, managed to beat the piracy problem on the cube."

    And it answers the age-old argument that gets posed back and forth. You know, the "I wouldn't pirate games if they were cheaper...Games would be cheaper if you didn't pirate them"

    Apparently the industry lied and games aren't made any cheaper even when they aren't pirated.