We at the United States National Security Agency hereby order you to stop posting on this thread immediately. The solution to this puzzle is clearly of great value to our national defense and therefore is to be used only with proper authorization from us. Big Brother is watching, and any further discussion will be appropriately terminated. And yes we will know. Now get back to work finding some more prime numbers, we need those too.
Like, I've got this way totally cool site, and you really should come over and...s..e....e.....i.....t.................!@#llk g953ynw5iywu58-hn4-g83h`2t- LOST CARRIER
Me: Hello, customer service? I just got a "lost carrier" message.
Hypothetical BellSouth guys: "Lost carrier" message? Oh, right! That means that you need to fork over more $$$ if you want to run your own site and take advantage of your First Amendment rights.
Me: So basically you're saying that I can't use my right to free speech unless I pay for it?
Oh, and I just remembered this too: I used to have (well, still have, actually) a GRiD 1720 laptop. 286 machine, 16MHz processor – could be switched to just 8MHz – with 4MB of RAM and a 60MB disk... fastest machine I ever owned. Seriously. Made in 1990, finally crashed in 2004 when both the hard and floppy disks simultaneously died... I always wanted to put an Energizer bunny on it because it kept going and going and going... but before I got a chance it crashed:-)
Since everyone's getting a bit off topic anyway, I guess I'll be fine sharing my own weird "stickers":
Superior Magikarp (main computer) – 2.4GHz, 512MB RAM, 80GB disk, Ultima Linux. Desktop machine, black tower case with blue highlights and a handle on top. Sticker is a Slaking Pokemon card on the top of the case, right by said handle. I really am lazy. There's also Tuxette, the U.L. mascot, on the monitor, along with another penguin sticker and a "Frank & Ernest" cartoon my friend gave me.
Micron XPE out of Hell – 133MHz, 80MB RAM, 6GB disk, Ultima Linux. This laptop's survived everything. Permanently glued a giant picture of Tuxette, the Ultima logo, on the back underneath the Micron logo, since I wanted something to look cool when the screen was opened and I figured I may as well promote myself.
Currently unnamed Dell system – 700MHz, 128MB RAM, 10GB disk, Ultima Linux. Optiplex system purchased from eBay (just $55!) to demo everyone's favorite operating system as part of a school project in April. Replaced the original DfMW2K sticker with a smaller version of Tuxette. It was appropriate enough.
Hmm, maybe my Windows stickers should go on my toilet, since everyone else puts them there.
Since I mostly use Linux whenever given a choice (in other words, any time I can connect to my machine at home and/or drag my laptop around), I tend to prefer open-source programs like Gaim, which seems to support logging in on more than one screenname or network at the same time. Although I will admit, the only network I've used so far is AOL's, mostly because I've been using their instant messenger for years...
Honestly, though, I rarely use instant messenger much. I can't stand it. Whenever I want to talk to someone they're offline, and whenever someone wants to talk to me I'm busy. In fact, despite what some people say, I find e-mail to be a much faster medium for communication – whereas Gaim is almost never running on my machine, mostly because I usually don't leave it running, I almost always have Gmail open as one of the five different sites I've configured to all come up whenever I start my browser. (Isn't tabbed homepages great?)
And the funny thing is, I'm not even 25 or more... maybe about ten years less would be a bit more accurate. The TV in my room, one of those old Sony's with the rotating knobs and dials, is older than I am. In fact, most of the stuff I own's older than me...
You mean you had cable TV? Back in my day, we had to settle for whatever we could get by playing around with the antenna, and no remote controls 'cause they weren't invented yet, and we LIKED it!
Maybe that's the reason why I seem to be the only person who can hear when a TV is on from all the way across the house (and in class – drives my teachers nuts...) I've always heard this high-pitched whining noise that just annoys me to no end, and so far it's never failed at finding the offending TV.
Oh, and the trick works for any CRT-based screen in fact, and no, it has nothing to do with if the sound's muted or not. A thousand little electron guns kind of do make a little bit of noise.
However if you were to stick to the more stable applications on your stable Slackware box you would have fewer (or no) problems. I imagine that the software that will be running on the missile defense computer(s) will be more thoroughly tested than some dodgy game port coded by someone during their spare time.
Saying that, if there were a problem it would give windows fans endless amounts of ammo to gun down Linux (sorry for the pun).
You do have a very good point there, one which is worth noting. I will admit that a game emulator and a missile defense system are two completely different tasks so it wasn't the best comparison, but what do you expect from something posted in about a minute before I had to leave for school?
For the record, most of the programs on the system are highly stable, tested versions, and anything that I don't like doesn't go on. For example, unlike most Slackware derivatives I still use 2.4 – I've had some really nasty experiences with 2.6 before – and all the other stable choices Slackware seems to prefer.
The point I'm trying to make here is that no software, no matter how tested and stable, is bug-free, and accepting an offer to run your distribution on such an important system where failure is not an option is a very big responsibility. What I'm trying to say (and I should have worded it better earlier, I know) is not that I'd turn down any hypothetical offer on the spot, but that I would want to give it very serious consideration because even though it hopefully won't have any problems, there is still a slight possibility of failure, and we don't want another Mariner 1 now do we?
[By the way, I don't think Windows fans would have any ground whatsoever here, seeing as Micro$oft systems can barely run for five minutes without some bug, virus, spyware, or other random no-gooder taking down the system...]
OK, all the obligatory WarGames jokes aside... if you were a Linux developer, would you really want them to be using your product for such important stuff? I'll be honest, if someone came up to me and said they wanted to use Ultima Linux for missile defense or something like that, I'm not sure that I'd say yes.
So why wouldn't I want all that fame and fortune? One simple reason: Negative publicity. Yes, negative. How? Well, simple.
What if the system were to fail?
Now, I'm not badmouthing Linux or anything here – especially not my own system;-) – but even the most stable distributions can crash. For example, all my systems run my distro, which is for the most part a very highly customized Slackware. Well, Slackware's legendary for its stability, and for the most part everything runs just fine, but it can still be brought to its knees, say, if I decided to pull up a really CPU-intensive and potentially dangerous program such as Mupen64 to play Mario Kart without having to walk downstairs to my N64. It usually does just fine, but if it goes down, the entire system soon follows...
Just something to think about if you suspect that you may be the next RedHawk;-)
The problem with supporting "extensions" is that people (who don't know any better) will use them. They then become a defacto standard which makes browsers that don't implement it render the page incorrectly and appear "buggy" to the layman.
We have already seen this problem with IE's non-standard extensions resulting in pages not rendering correctly in FireFox, Opera, etc. You wouldn't believe the number of times people tell me they don't use FireFox because it's buggy since it won't even render a website they regularly use (it doesn't matter to most users that the website was coded by a moron - if it works in IE and doesn't work in FireFox then as far as they are concerned that's a bug in FireFox).
Happilly, with the increase in use of non-IE browsers and mobile devices it seems that many webmasters are getting a clue. But we don't want to reverse that trend by promoting extensions.
Whatever happened to Flock, the Firefox-based "social browser"? I guess it probably isn't mainstream enough yet, but I've been using it for a couple weeks now as my default browser (despite their recommendations;-) and have yet to see a more innovative piece of software.
Re:Here's what we could use for the patent section
on
Pictures by Hive Mind
·
· Score: 0
Here's one that we should have thought up years ago:-)
Here's what we could use for the patent section
on
Pictures by Hive Mind
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Something that's actually useful (mentioned here 'cause it's from the same guy): The Prior-Art-O-Matic. "It's a series of randomly-generated product ideas! It raises questions about the nature of prior art in patenting issues, has some inspiring ideas, and is occasionally amusing!"
(Please ignore parent; clicked wrong button, I meant to hit Preview)
First of all, 700MHz is not outdated. I recently purchased a 700MHz Dell machine with 128MB RAM and a 10GB disk from eBay to run a demo of my distribution as part of a school project, and the thing runs like a dream. In fact, half the time it's faster than my dev machine (2.4 GHz / 512MB / 80GB).
For that matter, I don't think that even 133MHz is too old to be running. I also have the latest version of my distribution – the latest software – running just fine on a 133MHz Pentium laptop with 80MB and a 6GB disk. Everything runs beautifully: Firefox, OpenOffice.org, even some games like SuperTux are acceptable on the thing. Even all three at the same time, with a wireless USB adapter hooked up. Very nice machine.
I think that the big thing here isn't so much the hardware, but the choice of system. Personally, as a Linux developer myself I tend to prefer my own system – obviously – but even that's not the right thing for all computers. Personally I don't like using Ultima on anything with less than 32MB of memory; it still runs, but it can be really slow if you want to use X applications.
(By the way, the only Windows version that has ever run acceptably on one of my machines is 3.x. Even in 2004, right before its disk finally failed, my GRiD 286 with 4MB and a 60MB disk was the fastest system I ever owned...)
Here's some machines I've worked with and the distro I liked best:
2.4GHz / 512MB / 80GB, hand-built
Ultima Linux. This my dev machine right now, so it hasn't really run much else.
566MHz / 256MB / 40GB, Dell
Ultima Linux. Used to be my dev machine, before I upgraded. Before Ultima, it ran Slackware with about the same performance, and the newly-released Fedora Core 2, which was the slowest, must unstable system I have ever used, worse than even Micro$oft.
700MHz / 128MB / 10GB, Dell
Ultima Linux. Ordered off eBay exclusively to demo Ultima, hasn't had any other system while I've owned it.
133MHz / 80MB / 6GB, Micron
Ultima Linux. Previously ran Slackware, which was about the same since Ultima is mostly a customized Slackware. Before that it had Red Hat 9, which was nice but SLOW, and before that Red Hat 8 which was still slower than Ultima.
166MHz / 32MB / 2.5GB, hand-built
Damn Small. After my friend and I built it from a bunch of junkheaps he had lying around, the first thing we installed was Ultima, which is what it usually runs. I had Damn Small installed on it for a while, though, and I think that was the best choice for this machine.
66MHz / 8MB / 500MB, hand-built
Slackware. This thing's been re-built so many times... my friend has it now, he took apart the disk and I don't know what became of the rest. The only system that ever worked was Slackware 7.0, running on ZipSlack, with FVWM2 as the window manager. Netscape was slow, but most everything else was OK. Very tricky to get it running Linux, though.
50MHz / 4MB / 320MB, IBM PS/1
Customized IBM-tweaked version of Windows 3.1. Threw it out after years and years... should have gotten a picture for Wikipedia first, but oh well. It was always a Windows 3.1 box, even BasicLinux was too slow.
Oh, and Damn Small kicks ass. Seriously. Especially when you're away from your own machine and don't want to deal with Windows.
First of all, 700MHz is not outdated. I recently purchased a 700MHz Dell machine with 128MB RAM and a 10GB disk from eBay to run a demo of my distribution as part of a school project, and the thing runs like a dream. In fact, half the time it's faster than my dev machine (2.4 GHz / 512MB / 80GB).
For that matter, I don't think that even 133MHz is too old to be running. I also have the latest version of my distribution – the latest software – running just fine on a 133MHz Pentium laptop with 80MB and a 6GB disk. Everything runs beautifully: Firefox, OpenOffice.org, even some games like SuperTux are acceptable on the thing. Even all three at the same time, with a wireless USB adapter hooked up. Very nice machine.
I think that the big thing here isn't so much the hardware, but the choice of system. Personally, as a Linux developer myself I tend to prefer my own system – obviously – but even that's not the right thing for all computers. Personally I don't like using Ultima on anything with less than 32MB of memory; it still runs, but it can be really slow if you want to use X applications.
(By the way, the only Windows version that has ever run acceptably on one of my machines is 3.x. Even in 2004, right before its disk finally failed, my GRiD 286 with 4MB and a 60MB disk was the fastest system I ever owned...)
Here's some machines I've worked with and the distro I liked best:
2.4GHz / 512MB / 80GB
Ultima Linux. This my dev machine right now, so it hasn't really run much else.
566MHz / 256MB / 40GB
Ultima Linux. Used to be my dev machine, before I upgraded. Before Ultima, it ran Slackware with about the same performance, and the newly-released Fedora Core 2, which was the slowest, must unstable system I have ever used, worse than even Micro$oft.
700MHz / 128MB / 10GB
Ultima Linux. Ordered off eBay exclusively to demo Ultima, hasn't had any other system while I've owned it.
Oh, and Damn Small kicks ass. Seriously. Especially when you're away from your own machine and don't want to deal with Windows.
"More specifically, why would anyone want to put a bulky, general purpose operating system onto lean and special-purpose hardware?"
That's the thing. While most major Linux distributions are indeed bulky, general purpose operating systems, not all Linux installations in the world are like that. In fact, a good deal of Linux "installations" right now – in fact, the majority of them last time I checked – are not regular desktop systems, but embedded devices, which are just that: Lean and special-purpose hardware.
So if someone were to create a special version of Linux optimized for doing everything the 360 does but better (eg, adding in Ogg & DivX support, or letting it play homebrew games) then that wouldn't necessarily have to be a big desktop system.
Slashdot Mirror
We at the United States National Security Agency hereby order you to stop posting on this thread immediately. The solution to this puzzle is clearly of great value to our national defense and therefore is to be used only with proper authorization from us. Big Brother is watching, and any further discussion will be appropriately terminated. And yes we will know. Now get back to work finding some more prime numbers, we need those too.
I would have never thought of that! ...unless I had never heard of Linux before, that is!
In large unnamed Eastern European country, you throttle bandwidth. In Corporate America, bandwidth throttle YOU!
Like, I've got this way totally cool site, and you really should come over and...s..e....e.....i.....t.................!@#llk g953ynw5iywu58-hn4-g83h`2t- LOST CARRIER
;-)
Me: Hello, customer service? I just got a "lost carrier" message.
Hypothetical BellSouth guys: "Lost carrier" message? Oh, right! That means that you need to fork over more $$$ if you want to run your own site and take advantage of your First Amendment rights.
Me: So basically you're saying that I can't use my right to free speech unless I pay for it?
Hypothetical BellSouth guys: Pretty much, yeah. That. Right...
No wonder their initials are BS
"I'm using a BS reseller..."
:-)
Well, it really is BS, any way you look at it.
Oh, and I just remembered this too: I used to have (well, still have, actually) a GRiD 1720 laptop. 286 machine, 16MHz processor – could be switched to just 8MHz – with 4MB of RAM and a 60MB disk... fastest machine I ever owned. Seriously. Made in 1990, finally crashed in 2004 when both the hard and floppy disks simultaneously died... I always wanted to put an Energizer bunny on it because it kept going and going and going... but before I got a chance it crashed :-)
Since everyone's getting a bit off topic anyway, I guess I'll be fine sharing my own weird "stickers":
Superior Magikarp (main computer) – 2.4GHz, 512MB RAM, 80GB disk, Ultima Linux. Desktop machine, black tower case with blue highlights and a handle on top. Sticker is a Slaking Pokemon card on the top of the case, right by said handle. I really am lazy. There's also Tuxette, the U.L. mascot, on the monitor, along with another penguin sticker and a "Frank & Ernest" cartoon my friend gave me.
Micron XPE out of Hell – 133MHz, 80MB RAM, 6GB disk, Ultima Linux. This laptop's survived everything. Permanently glued a giant picture of Tuxette, the Ultima logo, on the back underneath the Micron logo, since I wanted something to look cool when the screen was opened and I figured I may as well promote myself.
Currently unnamed Dell system – 700MHz, 128MB RAM, 10GB disk, Ultima Linux. Optiplex system purchased from eBay (just $55!) to demo everyone's favorite operating system as part of a school project in April. Replaced the original DfMW2K sticker with a smaller version of Tuxette. It was appropriate enough.
Hmm, maybe my Windows stickers should go on my toilet, since everyone else puts them there.
Since I mostly use Linux whenever given a choice (in other words, any time I can connect to my machine at home and/or drag my laptop around), I tend to prefer open-source programs like Gaim, which seems to support logging in on more than one screenname or network at the same time. Although I will admit, the only network I've used so far is AOL's, mostly because I've been using their instant messenger for years...
Honestly, though, I rarely use instant messenger much. I can't stand it. Whenever I want to talk to someone they're offline, and whenever someone wants to talk to me I'm busy. In fact, despite what some people say, I find e-mail to be a much faster medium for communication – whereas Gaim is almost never running on my machine, mostly because I usually don't leave it running, I almost always have Gmail open as one of the five different sites I've configured to all come up whenever I start my browser. (Isn't tabbed homepages great?)
And the funny thing is, I'm not even 25 or more... maybe about ten years less would be a bit more accurate. The TV in my room, one of those old Sony's with the rotating knobs and dials, is older than I am. In fact, most of the stuff I own's older than me...
Everything else – especially with computers – we want wireless, and yet with television, it's cable or bust.
You mean you had cable TV? Back in my day, we had to settle for whatever we could get by playing around with the antenna, and no remote controls 'cause they weren't invented yet, and we LIKED it!
Maybe that's the reason why I seem to be the only person who can hear when a TV is on from all the way across the house (and in class – drives my teachers nuts...) I've always heard this high-pitched whining noise that just annoys me to no end, and so far it's never failed at finding the offending TV.
Oh, and the trick works for any CRT-based screen in fact, and no, it has nothing to do with if the sound's muted or not. A thousand little electron guns kind of do make a little bit of noise.
Should Diebold pull out of North Carolina? Quick, to the voting booth!
Just to clarify a bit:
Having said all that, I will say that I fully support their decision and would hope that they would continue working with Linux in the future.
Thank you, and good-night!
You do have a very good point there, one which is worth noting. I will admit that a game emulator and a missile defense system are two completely different tasks so it wasn't the best comparison, but what do you expect from something posted in about a minute before I had to leave for school?
For the record, most of the programs on the system are highly stable, tested versions, and anything that I don't like doesn't go on. For example, unlike most Slackware derivatives I still use 2.4 – I've had some really nasty experiences with 2.6 before – and all the other stable choices Slackware seems to prefer.
The point I'm trying to make here is that no software, no matter how tested and stable, is bug-free, and accepting an offer to run your distribution on such an important system where failure is not an option is a very big responsibility. What I'm trying to say (and I should have worded it better earlier, I know) is not that I'd turn down any hypothetical offer on the spot, but that I would want to give it very serious consideration because even though it hopefully won't have any problems, there is still a slight possibility of failure, and we don't want another Mariner 1 now do we?
[By the way, I don't think Windows fans would have any ground whatsoever here, seeing as Micro$oft systems can barely run for five minutes without some bug, virus, spyware, or other random no-gooder taking down the system...]
OK, all the obligatory WarGames jokes aside... if you were a Linux developer, would you really want them to be using your product for such important stuff? I'll be honest, if someone came up to me and said they wanted to use Ultima Linux for missile defense or something like that, I'm not sure that I'd say yes.
;-) – but even the most stable distributions can crash. For example, all my systems run my distro, which is for the most part a very highly customized Slackware. Well, Slackware's legendary for its stability, and for the most part everything runs just fine, but it can still be brought to its knees, say, if I decided to pull up a really CPU-intensive and potentially dangerous program such as Mupen64 to play Mario Kart without having to walk downstairs to my N64. It usually does just fine, but if it goes down, the entire system soon follows...
;-)
So why wouldn't I want all that fame and fortune? One simple reason: Negative publicity. Yes, negative. How? Well, simple.
What if the system were to fail?
Now, I'm not badmouthing Linux or anything here – especially not my own system
Just something to think about if you suspect that you may be the next RedHawk
Hallelujah!
Whatever happened to Flock, the Firefox-based "social browser"? I guess it probably isn't mainstream enough yet, but I've been using it for a couple weeks now as my default browser (despite their recommendations ;-) and have yet to see a more innovative piece of software.
Here's one that we should have thought up years ago :-)
5 3994
http://thesurrealist.co.uk/priorart.cgi?ref=40689
Something that's actually useful (mentioned here 'cause it's from the same guy): The Prior-Art-O-Matic. "It's a series of randomly-generated product ideas! It raises questions about the nature of prior art in patenting issues, has some inspiring ideas, and is occasionally amusing!"
(Please ignore parent; clicked wrong button, I meant to hit Preview)
First of all, 700MHz is not outdated. I recently purchased a 700MHz Dell machine with 128MB RAM and a 10GB disk from eBay to run a demo of my distribution as part of a school project, and the thing runs like a dream. In fact, half the time it's faster than my dev machine (2.4 GHz / 512MB / 80GB).
For that matter, I don't think that even 133MHz is too old to be running. I also have the latest version of my distribution – the latest software – running just fine on a 133MHz Pentium laptop with 80MB and a 6GB disk. Everything runs beautifully: Firefox, OpenOffice.org, even some games like SuperTux are acceptable on the thing. Even all three at the same time, with a wireless USB adapter hooked up. Very nice machine.
I think that the big thing here isn't so much the hardware, but the choice of system. Personally, as a Linux developer myself I tend to prefer my own system – obviously – but even that's not the right thing for all computers. Personally I don't like using Ultima on anything with less than 32MB of memory; it still runs, but it can be really slow if you want to use X applications.
(By the way, the only Windows version that has ever run acceptably on one of my machines is 3.x. Even in 2004, right before its disk finally failed, my GRiD 286 with 4MB and a 60MB disk was the fastest system I ever owned...)
Here's some machines I've worked with and the distro I liked best:
2.4GHz / 512MB / 80GB, hand-built Ultima Linux. This my dev machine right now, so it hasn't really run much else.
566MHz / 256MB / 40GB, Dell Ultima Linux. Used to be my dev machine, before I upgraded. Before Ultima, it ran Slackware with about the same performance, and the newly-released Fedora Core 2, which was the slowest, must unstable system I have ever used, worse than even Micro$oft.
700MHz / 128MB / 10GB, Dell Ultima Linux. Ordered off eBay exclusively to demo Ultima, hasn't had any other system while I've owned it.
133MHz / 80MB / 6GB, Micron Ultima Linux. Previously ran Slackware, which was about the same since Ultima is mostly a customized Slackware. Before that it had Red Hat 9, which was nice but SLOW, and before that Red Hat 8 which was still slower than Ultima.
166MHz / 32MB / 2.5GB, hand-built Damn Small. After my friend and I built it from a bunch of junkheaps he had lying around, the first thing we installed was Ultima, which is what it usually runs. I had Damn Small installed on it for a while, though, and I think that was the best choice for this machine.
66MHz / 8MB / 500MB, hand-built Slackware. This thing's been re-built so many times... my friend has it now, he took apart the disk and I don't know what became of the rest. The only system that ever worked was Slackware 7.0, running on ZipSlack, with FVWM2 as the window manager. Netscape was slow, but most everything else was OK. Very tricky to get it running Linux, though.
50MHz / 4MB / 320MB, IBM PS/1 Customized IBM-tweaked version of Windows 3.1. Threw it out after years and years... should have gotten a picture for Wikipedia first, but oh well. It was always a Windows 3.1 box, even BasicLinux was too slow.
Oh, and Damn Small kicks ass. Seriously. Especially when you're away from your own machine and don't want to deal with Windows.
First of all, 700MHz is not outdated. I recently purchased a 700MHz Dell machine with 128MB RAM and a 10GB disk from eBay to run a demo of my distribution as part of a school project, and the thing runs like a dream. In fact, half the time it's faster than my dev machine (2.4 GHz / 512MB / 80GB).
For that matter, I don't think that even 133MHz is too old to be running. I also have the latest version of my distribution – the latest software – running just fine on a 133MHz Pentium laptop with 80MB and a 6GB disk. Everything runs beautifully: Firefox, OpenOffice.org, even some games like SuperTux are acceptable on the thing. Even all three at the same time, with a wireless USB adapter hooked up. Very nice machine.
I think that the big thing here isn't so much the hardware, but the choice of system. Personally, as a Linux developer myself I tend to prefer my own system – obviously – but even that's not the right thing for all computers. Personally I don't like using Ultima on anything with less than 32MB of memory; it still runs, but it can be really slow if you want to use X applications.
(By the way, the only Windows version that has ever run acceptably on one of my machines is 3.x. Even in 2004, right before its disk finally failed, my GRiD 286 with 4MB and a 60MB disk was the fastest system I ever owned...)
Here's some machines I've worked with and the distro I liked best:
2.4GHz / 512MB / 80GB
Ultima Linux. This my dev machine right now, so it hasn't really run much else.
566MHz / 256MB / 40GB
Ultima Linux. Used to be my dev machine, before I upgraded. Before Ultima, it ran Slackware with about the same performance, and the newly-released Fedora Core 2, which was the slowest, must unstable system I have ever used, worse than even Micro$oft.
700MHz / 128MB / 10GB
Ultima Linux. Ordered off eBay exclusively to demo Ultima, hasn't had any other system while I've owned it.
Oh, and Damn Small kicks ass. Seriously. Especially when you're away from your own machine and don't want to deal with Windows.
When I went to post I got this message:
500 Internal Server Error
Maybe you need to upgrade your servers...?
"More specifically, why would anyone want to put a bulky, general purpose operating system onto lean and special-purpose hardware?"
That's the thing. While most major Linux distributions are indeed bulky, general purpose operating systems, not all Linux installations in the world are like that. In fact, a good deal of Linux "installations" right now – in fact, the majority of them last time I checked – are not regular desktop systems, but embedded devices, which are just that: Lean and special-purpose hardware.
So if someone were to create a special version of Linux optimized for doing everything the 360 does but better (eg, adding in Ogg & DivX support, or letting it play homebrew games) then that wouldn't necessarily have to be a big desktop system.
This must be the alternative to string then! :-)