Hacking the Xbox

CHAPTER 11
Developing
Software for
the Xbox
While the focus of this book is educating readers in the ways of hardware
hacking and security, one ultimate goal of Xbox hacking is to run homebrew
software. This chapter is devoted to describing some of the homebrew
software projects in progress for the Xbox at the time of this writing.
Xbox-Linux
The goal of the Xbox-Linux project is to create a user-friendly and legal port
of GNU/Linux and of GNU/Linux applications to the Xbox hardware
platform. Thanks to the dedication and contributions of hackers around the
globe, the Xbox-Linux project has had a great deal of success toward
meeting its goals. A picture of the core Xbox-Linux project team can be seen
in Figure 11-1, and the sidebars in this chapter and in Chapter 9 contain
interviews with Xbox-Linux project team members. (The homepage for the
Xbox-Linux project is http://xbox-linux.sourceforge.net.)
Significantly, the Xbox-Linux project and its principle hackers are not anti-
Microsoft. They are pro-“freedom to tinker,” and not puerile Microsofthaters;
they have an agenda that touches upon preserving the very freedoms
of thought and speech that brought technology to where it is today.
Xbox-Linux is not the ultimate software project for the Xbox; on the
contrary, it is just the beginning of Xbox software hacking. Porting the