XBox Linux HOWTOs 309
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.
You're going to buy an xbox because of this? (Score:1, Interesting)
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.
Au contraire, Pooh bear! (Score:2)
Microsoft relies on selling game licenses to make a profit off of their whole X-Box venture. And in order to remain competitive with Sony's PSX-2 pricing, they've had to heavily slash their unit costs. The net effect? They take a loss on each unit sold ($150, maybe more?), with the expecatation that if they sell enough games per unit, they'll be able to make that money back (and then some). By buying an X-Box, you're hitting MS where it hurts...... and no, companies don't have nuts.
Re:That isn't a troll at all. (Score:2)
GM should give me 100$ because by not buying a $40,000 car of theirs, they're 'losing' (I think the term youre looking for is not realizing 40,000 dollars of revenue) more than just a tiny 100$? Is it preferable to them that I take 100$ from them instead of not buying a car since they 'lose' less that way?
Re:That isn't a troll at all. (Score:2)
Re:That isn't a troll at all. (Score:2)
My theory is that the Xbox will still be sold - the question is more like, did they sell it to somebody who is eventually going to turn it into a profit generating sale, or did they sell it to me so I can banish it to the closet? In that case, it seems me not buying one Xbox is going to hurt them less because it increases the chances that somebody is going to buy it for the games.
I see what you're saying, but if they end up selling every last xbox, I'm not really hurting them worse by not buying one. But I can cause a hit on their ROI numbers by buying one and flushing it down the toilet because its one less sale that will turn into profit through the game licensing side.
MS *makes* money on every XBox they sell. (Score:2)
Ancient history. This has been gone over before from time to time on
Yeah, the first year, they had to write down R&D costs, pay start-up costs like for molds for the housing, circuit board design and low-volume prototypes, etc, etc. On a per-unit basis that first year, yeah, they probably took a hit. They wrote that off against taxes.
All that stuff is now paid for. Incremental costs for case, circuit boards, etc is as low as you'd expect of anything else with that kind of production run. Hardware costs (chips, memory, drive, etc.) are lower now than a year ago. Et cetera, et cetera.
Margins may be thin with the lowered price, but they're not negative.
Besides which, every XBox they sell is one more they can point to when talking to game designers, trying to convince them to develop games for the XBox exclusively or at least before any other platform.
Re:MS *makes* money on every XBox they sell. (Score:2)
Re:MS *makes* money on every XBox they sell. (Score:2)
Re:MS *makes* money on every XBox they sell. (Score:2)
Re:MS *makes* money on every XBox they sell. (Score:2)
Remember, you've got to look at manufacturer's production cost, not what they sell it to OEMs for, not what the OEMs wholesale it for, and not what the retailer sells it for. You can bet that with Microsoft's clout, that's the price they're looking at.
Also remember that it's in Microsoft's interests for everyone (except maybe the shareholders who seriously look at such details, ie not many of them) to think that the box costs more to make than it does -- that way they think they're getting a better deal or snookering Microsoft.
The industry is littered with the corpses of companies who thought they were snookering Microsoft.
Re:MS *makes* money on every XBox they sell. (Score:2)
Man, we're not talking about a Gravis Gamepad, here! Also, even with large production, the NV25 is still an expensive chip to produce. We're talking about a chip that's about as complex as a Pentium IV, here.
In any case, the sources I refer to are not not competitors to MS, but customers who have no interest in MS losing money. It wouldn't make sense for MS to tell them that it's still losing money on the console. So until you come up with hard evidence, I'll have to go with the rumors (not that it's keeping me up awake at night!)
Re:MS *makes* money on every XBox they sell. (Score:2)
Anyway, you can believe what you want. If you want to believe rumors of what customers think the costs are, go right ahead.
But for a realistic perspective, you might want to talk to some industrial or manufacturing engineers.
Re:MS *makes* money on every XBox they sell. (Score:2)
Re:MS *makes* money on every XBox they sell. (Score:2)
And sure it's a mistake to apply the same standards as for PCs to consoles -- traditionally, more specialized and limited function hardware is cheaper to manufacture in large quantities than PCs. The PC field changes too fast to set up lines for a multi-year production run, so startup costs have to be amortized over fewer units.
As for "believe analysts and insiders when they say that MS doesn't [make money on every unit they sell]" -- show me an analyst report in this fiscal year (not last year when MSFT wrote off the startup costs) that actually says that, rather than saying weasel words like "rumor has it that..".
I've done system engineering and electronics manufacturing. I've been following the consumer electronics and computer industries for a lot of years, my wife's an industrial engineer and some of our best friends are production engineers.
I haven't seen Microsoft's specific numbers, but for what they're selling at the volume they're making them, with the purchasing clout they have, if they are losing money on each unit then they've got some pretty stupid people in their manufacturing and purchasing divisions. Not impossible, I suppose, but hardly the way to bet.
Re:MS *makes* money on every XBox they sell. (Score:2)
But don't take my word for it: read this June 24 analysis [redherring.com] on RedHerring. So, now it's your estimate, based on a faulty analogy with the PC world (which is cheaper, because the demand is much higher than for the Xbox - i.e. it's always more costly to produce a console that to assemble a PC; read up on it if you don't believe me) against insider rumors and professional analysis...Which is not to say that you can't be right...MS could be lying about their costs, I guess, though I don't see the point in that. After all, Sony's not shy to report that they're making money on every PS2 sold. And, as you say, they might have some people who made some stupid purchasing decisions.
Peace.
Re:One Word: DivX (Score:2)
The HOWTO sounds useful... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:The HOWTO sounds useful... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why?
The first, and perhaps most important reason is "Because I can." We're geeks. Geeks modify things just to show that they can, to excersize their geek skills, to reveal in the technology.
Second, for $200 I can get a machine with a stereo eqiupment form factor that will me a great mp3 and ogg vorbis player with visualization on my TV (great for parties), plays dvds, plays many classic games (courtesy of MAME, ScummVM, and others), browses the web (say, tvguide.com for listings), and if you're desperate can be used to ssh into work to fix something. For that, it's pretty good deal.
Re:The HOWTO sounds useful... (Score:2, Informative)
Graphics Processor: 250Mhz nVIDIA X-Chip
Total Memory: 64MB
Memory Bandwidth: 6.4Gb/sec
Polygon Performance: 125million/sec
Audio: 3D Audio Processor
Network: 10/100Mbps Ethernet
Media: 2-5x DVD
Hard disk: 10GB
Re:The HOWTO sounds useful... (Score:2)
but to do anything with this I would really need a WHYTO.
I think a John F. Kennedy quote is an appropriate response here.
You go buy your X-Box just to run Linux (Score:2, Funny)
Re:You go buy your X-Box just to run Linux (Score:1)
Re:You go buy your X-Box just to run Linux (Score:2)
I've already done it! (Score:5, Funny)
It was cool bringing a BASH prompt.
But now I really wanna play some Halo, but I can't?
It really sucks. I bought it for a gaming console, and now its just like a computer...
Re:I've already done it! (Score:2)
Well, you can't play Halo now, but how about Zork?
Re:You don't understand (Score:2, Funny)
Reward (Score:3, Informative)
silicon.com requires password (Score:1, Redundant)
Password (Score:1, Redundant)
An interesting precident (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:An interesting precident (Score:1)
Don't get me wrong, I'm not against modding or putting Linux on it or anything. More power to you if you want to do that. Just don't expect them to bend over backwards to accomodate you if you try to use their services. :)
Well ACTUALLY... (Score:2)
Re:Well ACTUALLY... (Score:2)
That's true; the DMCA is the weapon here. It's also why finding mod chips for PS2s is night impossible, since Sony goes after anybody selling them like a shark that smells blood.
Plus modding PS2's seems to be an imprecise science, but good luck finding ANY chip compared to the ubiqituous modchips available for the PS1.
Even if they were only used to defeat the 'region encoding' on games and not be able to play CD-Rs, that's a circumvention device and they can nail you for it.
It's really a shame; there are so many great Japanese games that I'm never going to get to play. I can't even import a Japanese PS2 easily, since Sony's clamping down on that, too.
Artificial market control. (Score:2)
The fact that some japanese game that will NEVER arrive in the US might be wanted by a few westerners is just a byproduct.
Ok... (Score:1)
Re:Ok... (Score:1)
Re:Ok... (Score:1, Funny)
2. ???
3. Profit!
Mod Checking (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Whatever "slashdot" (Score:5, Funny)
humor folks, enjoy it
are you serious? (Score:2)
is this guy serious? if you just want to toy around with suse, BUY A PC. last i heard they were getting 1 frame a second on tux racer... for $300 you could buy a pretty decent PC that would run suse much better.
Re:are you serious? (Score:2)
Ah, but an XBox is only $199.
And linux on an XBox will get better.
Re:are you serious? (Score:2)
Plus you don't have to do ANYTHING geeky to put Linux on it. It already comes that way.
But it's shopping at Walmart... that's the part that's like having an AOL address.
Disclaimer: I NEVER shop at Walmart unless I need a gun in a hurry...
Re:are you serious? (Score:2)
If you don't have to do anything geeky, then what's the point?
Linux is too easy these days. You install it and it just works. Many of us pine for the days when it took WEEKS to get all your hardware working correctly under linux. We actually enjoy that stuff. There was a sense of accomplishment when the joystick finally worked or you could actually burn a CD from an IDE CD burner.
I think that is part of the appeal of XBox Linux.
Where, exactly, is modding prohibited? (Score:5, Insightful)
Furthermore, this restriction was only printed in a small box on one side of the product's shipping box -- nowhere did I see any EULAs on the unit itself, when I booted it up, or on any kind of sticker when I opened it up.
I'm just curious if they've since made it more restrictive. I know I was VERY surprised not to find a typical Microsoft EULA attached to a big red sticker pasted over the power supply, or somesuch.
That said, the "live network" could certainly deny access two whomever it wants -- be they people from another timezone, another country, or people using modded xboxes. But Microsoft shouldn't have any leg to stand on to prevent people from modding their boxes, except for the obvious one of avoiding copy protection on duplicated games (which wouldn't apply to 3rd party software, and *shouldn't* apply to backups). And Microsoft shouldn't go telling game companies that you've got a modded xbox and save folders on the hard driver for games X, Y, and Z (infering that they're illegally copied games).
Of course, what's right and legal is irrelevant when they've got more laywer money than most geeks with modded xboxes....
Re:Where, exactly, is modding prohibited? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Where, exactly, is modding prohibited? (Score:2)
I agree, but that hasn't stopped Microsoft from putting other theoretically or morally unenforcable terms into their software EULAs.
And it hasn't stopped them from really pushing hard to close down modding-related sites.
I was just curious if MS had even tried to prohibit modding, at the consumer-purchase-agreement level...
Re:Where, exactly, is modding prohibited? (Score:2)
hey you didn't rip the tag off your mattress did you?
Re:Where, exactly, is modding prohibited? (Score:2)
Re:Where, exactly, is modding prohibited? (Score:2)
Re:Where, exactly, is modding prohibited? (Score:2)
Wouldn't it be sensible that if you purchase a used Xbox (i.e. from a funcoland/gameco/used game store) you don't even see the EULA, and therefore are not obligated to abide by it? I'd love to hear the legalese on that.
xbox modification dection (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm betting there will be a new generation of stealth mods and hd swap kits for those who want to make the box 'clean' to get on XBL. I don't really feel like playing cat-and-mouse every day to stay ahead of the game. Online play has historically been one of the most effective (not 100% mind you) means of copy protection.
latest conspiracy theory (Score:2)
when Microsoft originally started shipping the xbox, they WISHED that that Linux would run on it as soon as possible. Why? They wanted a good excuse for entering the desktop/home PC market without being accused for using their monopoly power.
Now, because Linux has already soon changed the xbox from a game console to a nearly fullblown home PC - Microsoft can do it with windows as well. Want more proof, here [com.com]. They are practising for this take over in many fronts. And it's not only PCs, they also bought a mobile phone plant in china. Oh yes, they will be selling the whole package SW+HW very soon.
Why are we trying to do this at all? (Score:5, Informative)
For less than the price of an xbox you can get a really nice little motherboard Via technologies is putting out now for $130 or less.
http://www.via.com.tw/en/Products/eden.jsp
Now sure it doesn't have a 10 gig hard drive ($20 bucks?) or a dvd drive (+$40) or ram (128 +$20) or a case (+20) but so far for an Eden based system we're at $200, far less than the $270 you would expect to pay for a modded xbox.
Since UltraHLE i've never bought a console system. Why? If I put that $200 into my system, in a couple of years someone will write an emulator that can play it.
If you really want M$ to lose money, figure out a way around their copy protection, write an emulator, and watch how fast ISO images of the games start floating around IRC and p2p networks. Don't feed the beast by buying another xbox please!
--toq
Re:Why are we trying to do this at all? (Score:2)
Wow, clearly Microsoft should start selling XBoxes for a dollar a piece (with the DVD support), their sales would go through the roof and their stockholders would be in heaven.
Meanwhile, here on earth, shareholders tend to be interested in profits, which is the difference between revenue and expenses. An XBox costs more to make and ship than they profit from it. Revenue for XBoxes is less than expenses. Negative profit, or a loss.
Not that all losses are a problem. Eating a loss to develop a powerful web browse and giving it away may be a great way to protect your very profitable operating system monopoly. Eating a loss because the vast majority of XBoxes will be profitable through game purchases isn't so bad either.
Sure, you can build an similar system for a similar price. However, it's going to take my time to assemble and debug the hardware. For $200 I can build something that will match the technical specs, but will generally use lower quality components (bigger, noisier, flakier). What sort of case am I getting for $20? I don't see terribly good 3d acceleration on that motherboard you suggest.
(I've seen the argument that an XBox that doesn't sell is a bigger loss to Microsoft. True, assuming that the XBox wasn't going to sell. The question is, would that XBox have sold? If Microsoft is still producing new XBoxes, the previous ones must be selling. Microsoft has enough of a marketing research to minimize the risk of ending up with a large backstock that they can't move.)
If it works for you, great. Meanwhile, I want to play the games sooner than later, I want a system that is a breeze to set up, I want a system that has rock solid stability, I'm not interested in hanging around warez sites downloading various copies until I find one that works, and I want to support authors of high quality games by actually paying for them. To each his own.
Re:Why are we trying to do this at all? (Score:2)
The XBox is capable of 480i,480p,720p and 1080i straight out of the box. No extra hardware, no ugly configuration. Plugs right into your component inputs with the $20 HD kit. With Linux on the machine and its DVD drive, the possibilities are pretty damn cool.
-Mani
Re:Why are we trying to do this at all? (Score:2)
Did I mention the thing comes with 16-32 megs of IDE flash?
Re:Why are we trying to do this at all? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah! And who cares about all the game development houses who will be losing potential sales as a result of your elite 0-day warezing
Or all of us who have to pay more for slower bandwidth because of selfish hogs flooding the pipes with illegal ISO's
I'd rather "feed the beast" than stoop lower than them, stealing games under the guise of some techno-freedom fighter sabotaging the Goliath.
All that said, it's not the actual criminals/pirates/etc that bother me. It's the hypocrites
-Mani
Re:Why are we trying to do this at all? (Score:2)
check out www.tivocommunity.com
Re:Why are we trying to do this at all? (Score:2)
A bit more on the pricing: that XBox doesn't include a keyboard or the modchip you'll need to let it run Linux. And there's also the risk you'll take in frying the thing when you mod it.
Meanwhile you can get a pretty good preassembled PC for $199. Walmart.com is showing an 800 MHz, 128MB RAM, 10GB disk, 10/100 ethernet with machine with Linux preinstalled (okay, Lindows, but hey), keyboard and wheel mouse for $199.86.
Shop the mom'n'pop whitebox stores you can probably find something equivalent (quick check of local ads shows pretty decent kits in that price range, with the low-end on preassembled going for about twice that price with twice the CPU speed, twice the memory and four times the disk space.)
Wow. (Score:2)
What does morals have to do with anything? Why should that even enter into the question at all? Linux isn't moral or immoral it has nothing to do with that at all. You won't be judged by anyone on which operating system you chose to put on your xbox. You won't get rejected from the gates of heaven for modding your xbox.
Besides, how does this affect you except on a superficial level?
Re:Wow. (Score:2)
There used to be a company across the street from the one I worked at called netchameleon. They used to make PPP and TCP/IP stacks for dos, windows 3.1, and other operating systems. The majority of their business came from ISP bundles of their stack/PPP dialer.
Then MS decided it would be cool to include PPP in 95. Sales dropped, people got laid off.
Another good example is netscape.
And another one is BEOS
I'm sure there's a lot more companies to add to that list.
The biggest bitch people have with M$ products isn't so much the fact that they push other companies out with these practices, it's the inferior quality of this shit they shlep out.
Remember when
OOB
Used to make the 95 TCP/IP stack implode?
So is that enough ranting to justify my comment on why it's morally wrong to develop xbox on linux? No strawmen here, just facts.
MS is a bad business partner (Score:2)
Anyone who tries to compete with MS knows the rules, they haven't changed them since the DAY they were founded. If you know your MS history, they have acted in a consistant manner.
It's the companies fault if they only made one product and never diversified what they made.
BEOS was a great product, but it was not good enough to switch to. The drawbacks were more then the advantages.
Netscape was an example of illegal but not immoral practices.
Sorry that you love computers and hate MS, it's a fact of life, deal with it. It's like loving cars and hating roads.
If you think that because some people got fired through MSes actions makes them 'immoral' then I would venture to state that through their actions, more people then ever have jobs in the IT industry. If they were the number one server OS then almost everyone would have a job because it would take that many people to keep that infastructure going!
Re:Wow. (Score:2)
My graphic design teacher had a similar example. As recently as 20 years ago, there were these things called "Typesetting shops" wherein you would pay megabucks to set type on a page. Somewhere around $60 CDN per page. Then along comes Apple and makes a computer that can do all that typesetting stuff in the comfort of your own home, and output it to a laser printer for relatively free.
Guess what happened to the typesetting shops.
That's what happens to people who make a business doing something that can easily be done better once someone has the idea to implement it.
Mods aren't always good for gamers . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
Although some people will take the conspiritorial mindset that this was done solely to Microsoft's advantage and being anti-consumer, it was most likely done not to prevent silly things like Linux running on the box, but to prevent cheaters from modifying their boxes in such a way as to ruin the online experience for others.
It wouldn't take all that many cheaters with modded boxes to tank any online network's value to the average casual gamer.
Of course, there's the side benefit of punishing those who mod their boxes for copyright infringement purposes.
Re:Mods aren't always good for gamers . . . (Score:2)
If you buy an xbox and then hack it up to be a linux box, you're obviously not going to buy any video games.
So yes, if you have a slew of linux hackers buying up xboxes because they want to make a beowulf cluster of these, it will hurt profits [if they had any to begin with]
Re:Mods aren't always good for gamers . . . (Score:2)
So while you are right that it will hurt them a little, in the long run it will give them increased market share.
Re:Mods aren't always good for gamers . . . (Score:2)
However, the "XBox Live" which is doing the automagic checking for hardwarew/software modifications is Microsoft's online service for the system, one for which end-users pay $50 annually to play online against others.
If modded boxes allow gameshark like cheats online, and there was no method of checking for such cheat mods, this would ruin enough of the online experience for end-users that the annual $50 Microsoft is counting on to run those now cheat-enabled servers isn't going to be so easy to raise.
Re:Mods aren't always good for gamers . . . (Score:2)
A little reading through my previous posts will show that my point was that the checking for modifications in the hardware and software by the "XBox Live" online servers wasn't meant originally to simply catch DMCA violators, as some of the more paranoid in other threads have implied. It was designed to catch cheaters which would drive non-cheating, paying customers away from the online service.
Most other massively-multiplayer online systems (Everquest, etc) have similiar checks, though it technically should be easier for Microsoft as not only should you have the same software as everyone else, but the same hardware as well.
The ability to catch copyright infringement and Linux loading modifications is just a side benefit.
Re:Mods aren't always good for gamers . . . (Score:2)
If they can't write something with a decent client-server architecture there'll always be cheating. If they scan for simple stuff it'll simply mean that only people with a "large" investment in it can cheat. I'd rather have a game like Ultima Online where everyone could cheat, so I knew not to trust it, than one where two people could cheat but they were taking money to produce items or level-up characters for everyone else.
If a game developer choses to use a p2p game model where any peer can tell the others that something happened (and not - "my client moved left", but "my client picked up gold") obviously doesn't care enough about security to do it right.
It's like MS blaming script kiddies for crashing servers. Sure, it's technically the fault of the person pressing the 'Nuke' button, but these attackers will always exist. In a world like this you need to develop secure products.
Re:Mods aren't always good for gamers . . . (Score:2)
How about bashing them because they lie and say it's for our own good when really they couldn't be bothered to get it right.
How about bashing them for trying to blame mod chips, which exist for perfectly valid reasons, for their problems instead of doing the work necessary to make a system that isn't vulnerable to the same lying-client attacks that we've known about since network games were first created and which have been discussed in literature since the 80s?
There are plenty of perfectly valid reasons to bash MS. I'm not making anything up and I'm intentionally staying just on this issue and I can get three.
Is the cost even worth it? (Score:3, Interesting)
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 :)
Cost effectiveness? (Score:2)
MOD $99-149
Risk of ruining your XBox when soldering the mod chip: minimal but possible.
Add the price of your favorite keyboard and mouse and it's more cost effective to just buy a cheap PC or a "Net PC" with Linux (ThinkNic's go for only $249 WITH a keyboard and mouse).
For me, I'll keep my XBox of the games, and my cheap x86 box for Linux.
Re:Cost effectiveness? (Score:2)
The xbox is also attractive at its price for DVD drive and a modern video chipset, plus excellent TV-out.
Re:Cost effectiveness? (Score:2, Insightful)
why ? (Score:2)
Not that I mind, really... (Score:4, Funny)
Save some for the commercial (Score:2, Funny)
Materials to mod the Xbox: $23.88
The look on his face when he realizes he just screwed up the soldering job and ruined the entire board: Priceless.
Sony's next move (Score:2)
I think Microsoft's management were so used to winning in the software market they belived they can just do a similar thing in the electronics market and get the same results. I don't think they realised what they were taking on when they took on Sony.
I believe Sony - as business strategists - are much more sophisticated than Microsoft, at least when it comes to electronics products. I predict a suprise from Sony with the PS3 - there isn't going to be one. What Sony will do is make it so that all their medium and high-end DVD players will have the capability to play games. Games is where the money is, after all, not the boxes. Watch Microsoft struggle trying to compete with that. It would be really difficult for them to persuade other DVD manufacturers to alter their boxes to play MS games. But Sony is the biggest manufacturer of DVD players. I'm afraid soon it will be game over for MS in the console wars.
Re:Sony's next move (Score:2)
hacking vs buying (Score:2)
What do you want to do? Do you want a $200 PC? Buy the Microtel. Do you have an afternoon free to show off your 133t h4x0r 5k1115? Buy an Xbox and mod it.
I bought the dreamcast ($50) for it's hackability. I think it's worth the $50, hands down. No hardware mods are essential. The possibilites are not endless, but quite attactive. I think these people who are hacking the Xbox are simply paving the way. When the Xbox can be found at the Pawn shop for $20, I'll buy at least one if I know it can run linux. Heck, I'll be watching the prices over the next 6 months. With the console war, the PS2 is the clear winner. How long until Sony drops the price? How long until Xbox drops price to follow suit? How long until Xbox gets cheap enough to be used as multifunction appliances?
To the people who like to tear things apart and install linux, I wish you the best of luck. You are the geeks who make linux work the way it does.
The HOWTO needs a TODO section (Score:2, Insightful)
If not possible, then how about mounting a NFS filesystem from another computer in the network, leaving the internal HDD untouched? I would still need to mount a remote filesystem in order to access my nearly 50GB worth of A/V files, as they won't fit into the regular Xbox HDD.
Lastly, a very important point here is that even though it is very useful to be able to convert the Xbox into a cheap and powerful $200 computer and use it as an A/V player in my huge TV, etc., I still want to use the machine in the way it was designed for, and that means running my legally owned games flawlessly.
What I really need is a non-intrusive Linux installation, such as the one in the Dreamcast. I know it might never be possible to run unsigned code without modifying the hardware, but THAT would be too much to ask.
Please Don't buy an Xbox Just for Linux (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Please Don't buy an Xbox Just for Linux (Score:2)
ii) MS loses money with every XBox. A good reason to buy one.
iii) The game companies care much more about their sales than about MS sales. Even if gazillions of XBoxes are sold and noone buys games, no company will release new games in the future.
IMHO: If you think it's fun, buy an XBox. You're not doing anything particulary good or bad to MS.
But remember: As soon as you start buying games for the XBox you'll really start supporting the XBox and MS. But on the other side these games may be a hell lot of fun
BYMMV.
Bye egghat.
One good thing about the scanning. (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
I know why! (Score:4, Funny)
If we hack the X-Box to run linux, won't that be an i386 platform console that can run seti@home? And then we can say, "See! People *DO* want to run seti@home on their game consoles. When can we get dreamcast and PS2 binaries to download?"
Question and Point... (Score:2, Insightful)
Point: The DMCA only kicks in if you are circumventing encryption (i.e. to play illegally copied games). If I'm correct, this setup uses the mod chip to entirely bypass the existing OS. So you aren't even running the OS that has the decryption. It should only be illegal if you employ some Linux based software to then circumvent encryption on commerical software or games.
I can't see how the DMCA could be used against someone just running Linux and freeware on the Xbox.
Re:Question and Point... (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh god, NOBODY who'd hack an XBox would dare do something like that, would they? :D At any rate, I'm consistently amazed at the amount of effort worldwide that's been put towards actually hacking this machine. I'm not yet convinced there's any real benefit to it other than just some people doing stuff as a hobby, but maybe someone might do something really cool.
Far cheaper than an Xbox (Score:2)
Not only Linux, either - lots of homebrew games [boob.co.uk], NetBSD [netbsd.org] and even QNX [astranetwork.com]
There are even lots of good, and now very cheap, commercial games available for it.
Sure, it's not as advanced as an Xbox or a PS/2, before someone makes that very obvious point. But that is not what we are about, is it? The fun for many of us is in subverting the manufacturer's intentions and doing something unorthodox with the hardware - well the DC's the best for that.
Certificate problem (Score:2)
Any way to get a certificate and create another certificate with an issuer of Microsoft or something?
just a stray thought from the void...
Re:wow (Score:2)
Did you go to the site? It's a hacker project, with the current version running only on MOD CHIPPED X-BOXES. With MS threatening to use xbox-live to scan for mod chips, I'd say the answer is pretty obvious.
Re:Now that you did the X-box (Score:2, Informative)
Re:A complete waste of cash. (Score:2)
I may like linux for certain tasks, but that doesn't mean I'm an anti-MS zealot. That's just idiocy. It behooves me not to be so close-minded.
Sony are not the "good guys". Nor are Nintendo, nor Sega. They're all running the same race towards the same finish line.
I own all 3 current systems, because I love video games. All 3 have exclusive titles that I want to play. End of story.
Sheesh.. Nerds spend 500 bucks on the latest whiz-bang video card, then talk about a 200 dollar console being 'a waste of cash'. I dont like PC gaming in general, so I'd rather spend the 500 to own all 3 current consoles (and I did). It's just a matter of taste.
Btw, this comment is idiotic..
>>"some games that were "exclusives" only because MS bought up their producers for that reason"
Thats how the industry works, goofball. You act like its some evil conspiracy, sheesh.
Nintendo bought exclusive rights to resident evil, Sony bought exclusive rights to GTA3, MS bought exclusive rights to DOA3 and Halo.
Meh, I shouldn't be feeding trolls.
Re:A complete waste of cash. (Score:5, Informative)
Funny, I've heard the opposite [bizjournals.com].
FUD. The PS3 is at least two years out from now, if not more. Sony is simply trying to do to Microsoft what they did to Sega (ie, when the Dreamcast started doing well, they began flooding the media with PS2 announcements, even though you wouldn't see the console for another year and some months).
And yet, the XBox library is growing quite well. The first run of games (Halo, Gotham, Amped, DOA3, etc) did quite well, with a number of them topping sales of 1 million. The next round was mostly filler (like all consoles, there is always a lot of filler -- even more so if the console is looking to increase its library size. the PSX has a bunch of filler crap, as does the PS2), with a few gems like Rallisport, Gunvalkyrie, and Crazy Taxi 3. There are a number of great games being released this month now, too. Sega GT 2002, Sega Soccer Slam (yes, a Gamecube port), the next rev of sports titles (NFL Fever 2003 in August, Madden 2003, NFL 2K3, etc), Dead to Rights, Quantum Redshift, and more. What's my point? A console can develop a great library even if it doesn't have the benefit of being backwards-compatible with something else. Hell, the SNES did quite well, even though it wasn't backwards-compatible with the NES. Same for the Genesis and SMS (though there was an adaptor there). And of course the PSX did quite well, even though it was Sony's first machine (after Square decided to get on board, of course).
You just like making stuff up, right? Did you forget the 10+ years of backwards compatibility in Windows? The backwards compatibility in Office (new Office versions can read old Office files)? The simple truth is, Microsoft has proven that they value backwards compatibility in their other products, so why would you even think that they wouldn't with the XBox and theoretical XBox2?
First off, there's absolutely nothing wrong with being "100% anti-Linux". It's simply not comparable to being "anti-competitive". (hell, for Microsoft to be anti-linux, that means they're acting competitively, so they can't be both anti-linux and anti-competitive, right? anti-competitive != anti-competition, since the goal of being competitive is to wipe our your competition.) Anyway, once again you've failed to apply past evidence to your argument -- namely, Microsoft generally uses the courts as a very last resort (unlike some other companies *cough*ORACLE*cough*, *cough*SUN*cough*, *cough*NETSCAPE*cough* who run to court if Microsoft bats an eyelash at them). In other words, I doubt you'll see Microsoft taking anybody to court over Linux on the XBox unless things start to get really bad.
It simply amazes me that you can call Microsoft "the man" while at the same time praising Sony. Sony is just as "bad" as Microsoft, if not worse, but because their name isn't "Microsoft", I guess that doesn't really matter, does it?
Re:A complete waste of cash. (Score:2)
It almost seems as if Sony was not ready for this. It would kill the Xbox if PS/3 came out right now. It makes you wonder why Sony didn't release the PS/2 enhanced or somthing. you know the blinkn lights edition with full compatibility and obscure XYZ GPU postprocessing.
Re:A complete waste of cash. (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, but Microsoft unfortunately doesn't have the first f**king clue about the electronics market. Sony does, in fact Sony are the biggest electronics manufacturer in the world. The reason that Sony don't just throw a bunch of off-the-shelf components into a box is because they understand their business better than Microsoft do.
Give it a couple of years and I'll bet you'll see Microsoft giving up on the X-Box.
Re:A complete waste of cash. (Score:2)
Flashback to 1982:
Yes, but Microsoft unfortunately doesn't have the first f**king clue about the computers market. IBM does, in fact IBM are the biggest computer manufacturers in the world. The reason that IBM don't just sell software is because they understand their business better than Microsoft do.
Give it a couple of years and I'll bet you'll see Microsoft giving up on DOS.
Re:Mod Chip ON/OFF switch? (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Re:Mod Chip ON/OFF switch? (Score:2, Informative)
(honestly not meaning to advertise a seller, but it's the only link I had handy)
From the description:
9 wires only
Full BIOS update possible
Works with all import games (US, JAP and PAL)
Original BIOS remains unmodified
Works with online games
Import games works with standard AV cable in full color
The only "ModChip" 100% safe for future upgrades
Allows to use home-made software on the Xbox
Parallel port built-in - upgrade BIOS anytime without soldering
Play Import games
Play Backup games
There's discussion on the Xbox mod forums about all of this. Some people seem to think this is a good solution. For $60, I'd give it a shot.
Re:What a waste, don't let Microsoft distract you! (Score:5, Funny)
Well, you see, the situation where people tell you what to code (because it's useful) rather than you coding what you want to is called having a job.
Coding what you want to is a hobby.
If I want to spend an inordinate amount of time trying to get freeBSD running on a kitten then that's between me and the kitten (and possibly the RSPCA...).
Who are you to tell me what to code ? I'll code what I damn well want to, motherfucker!
graspee
Re:some sort of stupid registration req? (Score:2)