Lots of things here..
the Linux thing:
I bet computationally it can be done, I mean.. the linux booter replaces the NT kernel with cromwell, so this is just the opposite, except.. I have the feeling that if it can, the linux kernel will protect against cromwell being overwritten. However, iirc the xbox doesn't have hardware protected memory support (or is it just that it isn't turned on by default? i mean the linux kernel does something to protect processes from each other, and protected memory is virtually the only way to do that efficiently). If you can write to kernelspace in linux then you can do it. You very well might be sheltered from doing this. If not, then you could replace the kernel in memory, set the XBOX into whatever state it needs to be in, and call the kernel functions to boot an XBE.
As for the hardware already being initialized, not really.. it will be set into a different state when you boot into linux, so you'll have to be doing *other stuff* (completely unsure here)
That's all out of my reach I'm afraid.. low-level programming like that is still out of my reach.
the XBMC thing:
XBMC core is based on mplayer, which has an SDL driver. However right now newlib is lacking some low-level libc calls that a lot of the assembly routines attempt to call (I've tried compiling). This is an eventual goal but some signifigant work will be needed to get it working. However compiling mplayer = being able to play the movies xbmc supports. All the application development put into xbmc would have to be redone at whatever level we'd want to implement it.
the python thing:
We could get (possibly) a python interpreter working but it wouldn't add networking support if that was what you were insinuating.. we need low level networking support.
PedrosPad I think you missed my concept a little bit. My idea was a normal dash that can boot applications written in openXDK, that comes with a seperate app that boots a minilinux distro so one can get an ftp server running too. You'd have to reboot to get back into the dash and run games, but it's an idea that would allow people to ftp to their xbox, and run a dash, that's legit, and doesn't involve some level of new features in the openXDK or a new linux->NT kernel hack. It can be done with today's technology. It's a compromise but there's nothing stopping it from being done today.
replicating the MS XDK API calls: BAD IDEA. They could legally go after us for this. Please don't do it. Feel free to make new APIs and build bigger code, but replicating their APIs can be taken as a hostile action. As long as we stay completely in our own world (sans xboxkrnl.h, but that's all reverse engineered) we stay out of trouble. Maybe make something that works _similiar_ so that code porting is easy, but make the same API calls.
