Linux

Historical Xbox Linux

Introduction

When it was announced that the specifications of the Xbox were known to be very similar to an X86 PC, Xbox Linux was quickly considered as a possibility. Michael Robertson, the CEO of Lindows.com, offered two $100,000 prizes with the vision of getting cheap Linux PCs into the hands of the masses. One of the prizes was for a demonstration of Linux running on an Xbox (with a $55,000 "subprize" for writing a BIOS) The other prize was for an exploit capable of getting Xbox Linux to run without hardware modification, ideally by using just a CD-ROM. (was this claimed? the prize deadline was extended here) The first Xbox exploits were created to make Xbox Linux possible, and were quickly repurposed by modders, while Linux remained a more niche application on the original Xbox. In the years while the Xbox was still being manufactured, it could function as a cheap daily driver Linux PC, and some users modded the controller ports into permanent USB ports. But, as with all PCs they eventually became obsolete as cheaper, smaller hardware became available with similar processing power.

Xbox Linux reached a point of stable releases around 2003, and the development continued, providing support for 1.4 Xboxes and their Focus encoder chip, and even support for 1.6 Xboxes and their changes in architecture. The 2.4 kernel was primarily used for Xbox Linux. The 2.6 kernel patches that were developed appear stable and quite usable, but scattered functionalities from the 2.4 kernel were never ported over.

Distros

A number of distributions were released, built around the Xbox Linux-patched kernel.

• GentooX - GentooX, unlike vanilla Gentoo, provided precompiled binaries to the user via a custom repository. These were binaries compiled specifically for the Xbox. GentooX had both Home and Pro editions, the Home edition built around a desktop environment and the Pro edition built around the CLI. GentooX was a popular and well-developed Xbox Linux distro.
• X-DSL - Based on Damn Small Linux, X-DSL was a lightweight Linux build. It used Knoppix patches to be able to boot to a desktop environment from small (<100MB) loop devices from FATX. X-DSL is an easy version of historical Linux to try out today, since it can be launched and run entirely from drive E and that avoids some incompatibilities of Xbox Linux with larger hard drives. (if your hard drive is 3TB in order to get that extra .1TB of space, it may not work).
• xUbuntu, Ed's Xebian, Fedora (images on xbox linux sourceforge)
• Mandrake, dynebolic, live-linux were spotted on the usual source
• xboxhdm is a tool made by Idotsfan for softmodding locked Xbox hard drives, which is a PC-based CD bootable set of Linux tools

Current Xbox Linux

Today, Xbox Linux has more of a hobbyist appeal. It would be possible, though, to use it to bundle Linux setups and individual Linux applications, once the proper functionality is set up. Linux also has applications as a platform for investigating the Xbox hardware.

The former kernels of 2.4 and 2.6 are woefully out of date. To save the day, haxar has patched a modern kernel (5.8) with everything needed to run a terminal-based instance of Xbox linux. This kernel can be used as the basis for setting up modern Xbox Linux distributions.

For a list of the current issues that are blocking functionality on Xbox Linux, see Xbox Linux Issues.

For some guides and information that might help you get Xbox Linux up and running, see Xbox Linux Tips and Tricks.

Links

• Haxar's modifications to the 5.8 kernel
  • A basic initramfs for use with that kernel
  • The busybox setup used in that initramfs
• mborgerson's FATX library, including a FUSE driver for FATX support in Linux
• Ubuntu Cosmic with FATX, DON'T USE THIS, there is no actual FATX code in this repo. It appears to be just a starting point for a FATX implementation in Linux. Posted here to save you the time of figuring that out for yourself.

Historical links

Much of the old Xbox Linux information now lives on archive.org. It is helpful if you come across anything useful, to add it here!

• The original Xbox Linux repository on sourceforge. The mailing list archives can help answer esoteric questions about xbox linux, sometimes. The files section contains various Xbox Linux software and historical distribution isos.
• The xboxhdm repository. It contains source and executables for many Xbox tools created and modified by Idotsfan. The X-DSL directory contains some information on the original Xbpartitioner table patches.

See Also

• 17 Mistakes Microsoft Made in the Xbox Security System by Michael Steil, a member of the Xbox Linux team
• The Night Watch Some inspiration
• The UNIX Hater's Handbook Some catharsis, from before the dawn of time