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[XDelusion]

Before I gegin, I would like to point out a downside to Linux in general, and ecspecially Linux on the XBOX with it's limited and restrictive hardware limitations.

First off X is crap, it is slow, it can consume TOO much RAM and CPU, it kills your video game frame rate, and well, it just sux in comparison to GUI's avalable for other OS's such as BeOS, or Amiga OS. No matter how much you may love Linux, you have to admit this truth, it is undeniable. Linux needs HELP, and only those who are command line junkies, can deny this!

Secondly, the drivers for Linux on the XBOX are horrible, and I think the authors would agree. I've had times where I a LIB that I needed, was not compatable with the drivers provided for the XBOX's sound. So I could not play ZDOOM with sound, bummer. Also, no 3D hardware drivers for the NVIDIA chip.
 The screen set up was kinda funky last time I used it, it almost made you want to wonder how Amiga managed to pull it off, then you remembered! Amiga was capable of VERY low resolutions, and it's compact and resourceful all purpose GUI still managed to look great even at those resolutions, you could even double scan, to produce the illusion of even higher resolutions, but if you set it to high, then it would begin to become unreadable, like 800x600 or sometimes even 640x480.
I've tried compact GUI's for Linux, but alas X sucks, and the mouse felt really strange, not fluid, which for me has a LOT to do, with wheather or not I like a GUI.
 Regardless, at least we have 2D drivers and can play games that run in software mode, and even though X kills your frame rate, but usually you can still pull it off decently enough to play the game.

 Which brings me to the point of this post. The XBOX needs:

A: A made for XBOX compact and resourceful GUI for the XBOX. Unfortunatly most games require X, so it would have to be X compatable, but I'm sure a for a Linux coder, it would be possible to pull the two off, and include decent mouse control.

B: We need BARE BONES Linux distros that are set up for ONLY 1 purpose, such as Half-Life under WineX. Since we can not port Half-Life, someone who understand Linux and the Bare Bones neccessities required to run it, could create a Distro, that basically boots straight into the game, after the user, copied over the required files from his CD.
 We could use this to get a hard start on UAE, Aleph One, Duke 3D, Command & Conquer, Unreal, Unreal Tournament, ect ect ect. One distro for each, or a single distro that could support all, but not waste space or resource that don't need used!

Just some thoughts for some of you alledged Linux die hards.

[DarkLegion]

Take a look at svgalib and directfb,neither are perfect but svgalib is very fast and minimal on memory and directfb has ports of most(all?) of the toolkits that X has but is much more compact and speedy,could be ideal for this.I know for a fact that most emulators can run under this setup,you just won't have any 3d acceleration as 3d acceleration is only supported by a few older cards(matrox and some others) because of the lack of documentation of the newer ones such as ati and nvidia....a good part of the reason will will likely never see a fully 3d accelerated nvidia driver.Doom can run under svgalib I am pretty certain,although you may need to do some reconfiguring or recompiling.
Also sdl supports svgalib as well,so that covers a lot of games/emulators out there...
www.svgalib.org
www.directfb.org

I seem to remeber running svncviewer on xbox a while back so I'm pretty sure svgalib works on xbox.I am unsure about directfb but it should.There are also other framebuffer servers around,that may or may not work better..

[DarkLegion]

Also as for your second question,one could easily do that themselves,just trim all the fat from your startup configs,load the most minimal window manger you can find....I recommend ratpoison if you have a keyboard,otherwise blackbox if you just have a controller or mouse.Cut out all unneccsary kernel modules.,cut most of the virtual terminals out.And when its trimmed down enough just add a line that loads your favourite game at startup and your set.

[bobdavis]

If you don't like Linux on your Xbox, don't install it. People like you are sickening; you do nothing for yourself and just complain about the shortcomings you perceive in the OS. If you think something should be fixed, do it yourself.

Also, if you don't like X, then that's not a drawback to "Linux." X is not part of the operating system. If you don't like it, don't use it. If you don't like Linux, then go back to your Windows PC and quit complaining about things that you aren't willing to think about yourself.

[XDelusion]

Bod Davis: If Linux knew how to simply auto mount and un-mount a CDRW without me having to type a long line of code every now and then when the system refuses to return my CD...

...i'd take you seriously. But since Linux is infact only good at system admin, and sux outside of that when compared to BeOS or Amiga OS, I think I'll complain about its short comings all I want.

 Anyhow I am simply suggesting a boot loader for games that work around Linux's short comings as best as possible. I wasn't bitching this time, though I'll gladly start if you would like.