The bulk of the Xbox-Linux article describes the technical details of how Microsoft’s lockdown worked, how they reverse engineered it, and the tricks they discovered for capturing effective control of the Xbox and installing Linux on it. We would expect them to succeed – in computer security, physical control of a device almost always can be leveraged to control the device’s behavior – and indeed they did. To do this, it needed to stop unauthorized software – otherwise people might buy the Xbox, install another operating system on it, and never buy an Xbox game.Ī group of clever engineers, calling themselves the Xbox Linux Project, set out to discover how Microsoft had tried to lock down the Xbox hardware, and how they could overcome Microsoft’s lockdown and install Linux. Microsoft did this because it wanted to sell the Xbox hardware at a loss, and make up the difference by charging a premium for games. The latter goal is the more interesting one. And it wanted to stop people from running other (noninfringing) software such as Linux. It wanted to stop people from running Xbox games that had been illegally copied. Microsoft had two reasons for locking down the hardware. The technical details are quite interesting, but nontechies can learn from this story too. An article at explains how this lockdown plan failed. Problem was, Microsoft had tried to lock down the Xbox hardware to prevent unauthorized programs – such as the Linux kernel – from running on it. The Xbox had all the hardware needed to run Linux and its applications. ![]() The Xbox was a pretty nice computer, priced at $149. When Microsoft shipped its Xbox game console, Linux programmers salivated.
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