First Complete Linux Distribution for the Xbox Gaming Console

EUROPE -- October 07 2002 -- Today the Xbox Linux Project (http://xbox-linux.sourceforge.net/) announced that Xbox Linux Mandrake 9 has been released. This is the first complete Linux distribution for the Microsoft Xbox gaming console.

A 350 MB installation CD of Xbox Linux Mandrake 9 is available for download free of charge from the Xbox Linux website. It corresponds to a standard installation of the (free) 3 CD version of the well-known Mandrake Linux distribution (http://www.mandrake.com/), which has only been released a week ago, so it contains the graphical environments Gnome and KDE, as well as software packages such as OpenOffice.org, XMMS and Mozilla. Since Xbox Linux Mandrake 9 is 100% compatible with Mandrake Linux 9, all additional packages from the official Mandrake Linux 9 installation CDs or the Mandrake website can be installed into Xbox Mandrake Linux.

To be able to use Xbox Linux Mandrake 9, you need a "modded" Xbox and a USB keyboard and mouse connected to the Xbox by a Xbox-USB adaptor, which can be easily built by most users.

With Xbox Linux Mandrake, the Xbox gaming console is just as powerful as any comparable PC with Mandrake Linux 9. It can be used for office applications, the internet, e-mail, Linux games, or even as a web, file or database server.

Mandrake Linux was chosen as the base for our distribution for various mostly technical reasons. We have no affiliation with MandrakeSoft, the creators of Mandrake Linux.

This is an important milestone for the Xbox Linux Project, which aims to provide an easy to use and highly compatible Linux distribution for the Xbox gaming console, to give Xbox users the freedom to do anything with the console they have paid for, instead of being restricted to gaming.

The Xbox Linux Project, http://xbox-linux.sourceforge.net/