Large chunks of SuSE Linux running on Xbox

THE ATTRACTION of being able to run Linux on a machine that has been subsidised by the Vole itself is obviously encouraging some Linux hackers to throw caution to the wind and spend hours reverse engineering the darkest secrets of Microsoft's Game-Console-not-PC.

And those clever hackers from the Xbox-linux project (with a little help from 'bunnie' and 'visor') are getting closer to collecting the first $100,000 prize for porting Linux to the Xbox.

See the prize page.

They now have the TV-out display working and are able to run KDE, web browsers, emulated Commodore 64 games from the 80s etc. on their game consoles.

Despite the fact that the Xbox is no PC (nothing like, honest), it runs unmodified Linux programs as used by PCs the world over.

There are still a myriad of small 'inconveniences' regarding Linux on the Xbox: You have to use a TV not a monitor, you can't switch off overscan so the edges of the screen are not visible and you have to use a mod chip in your Xbox to let it run unsigned code. As an alternative to the mod chip you can reflash your BIOS, but then you can't use it as a game console any more (unless you count the Playstation emulator under Linux...). That would presumably make it an Ex-Xbox.

On the other hand the Ethernet connection works, the hard disk has plenty of space for a Linux partition and keyboard and mouse support seems to be coming along nicely.

We hope for their sakes that they get the $100,000 because they could soon be needing them in order to pay their lawyers' fees. It seems unlikely that Vole Central will let them get away with converting Xboxes into cheap cluster building bricks or living room email-stations incapable of running officially Vole-blessed games: The only possibility for Microsoft of actually making money from the Xbox is supposed to be the lucrative game-blessing service.

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