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Free60 Project Aims for Linux on Xbox 360
BlueMoon writes "The Free60 Project wiki and developers mailinglist has been launched. The project aims to port open source operating systems like GNU/Linux and Darwin to the Microsoft Xbox 360 gaming console.
The site already contains some interesting details about the Xbox 360 security: per-box key stored on CPU, boot ROM will be on CPU too and a hypervisor verifies the running state of the kernel."
My question when I see stories like this is: Why? More specifically, why would anyone want to put a bulky, general purpose operating system onto lean and special-purpose hardware? One of the big advantages of consoles is that the "os" is minimal, to the point of being a tiny set of hardware interfacing code. The Xbox 360 (and the original Xbox) isn't running Windows or anything like that, because there's no need. You get nothing out of running Linux on such hardware.
This is a dry run where their extreme measures will not be as controversial.
What they really want is Linux-free PC's. Namely they want to ensure that the cheap, consumer level hardware which runs Windows will be---by crypto-in-hardware---unable to run Linux.
And hardware which runs Linux, or any other operating system which is not Microsoft approved, will not run Windows.
Entirely new motherboards and processors would have to be designed for Linux. This will raise costs dramatically. No doubt that implementing such Windows-able hardware will require licensing software (BIOS) and patents from Microsoft, and it just happens that those hardware companies which are "friendly" and "decide on their own" to go Microsoft-only get a very large discount---one which makes or breaks the profit margins in such fierce competition as CPUs and motherboards.
Microsoft is attempting to do what's never been done before: make an entirely proprietary hardware architecture where everybody else has to put in the capital investment and take big financial risks and face competition, while they skim off huge profits.
Do you think the antitrust settlement will prevent this?
NO! Microsoft very cleverly negotiated enormous loopholes---anything dealing with "security" they have a free hand.
All of this will be couched in terms of security.
This way they can negate two of Linux's advantages at once: lower price (as Linux HW will be as expensive as Mac HW), and security (Only Windows works on "highly secure PC's!!!!").
The copyright and patent scare didn't work to hurt Linux. Now they go for the final solution.
Google is the only thing that Microsoft will, at present, be unable to destroy.