The team of tmbinc, Cpasjuste, stonersmurf and the rest of free60.org, who've been furiously at work porting Linux to Microsoft's Xbox 360 have just made two big releases getting us closer to the dream of having a full-blown Linux distro on our 360.

First, the Free60.org team released X.org drivers for the Xbox 360 hardware called xenosfb. X.org is the implementation of X Window System, the software used by Linux to render graphical user interfaces. This means that once distros incorporate these drivers into themselves, you can run these distros with better graphical compatibility, including higher resolution support.


And the second release is what I just talked about. Cpasjuste has released a Gentoo LiveCD (Full version - 608 MB) with these new drivers built into it. This means that you will be able to run the LiveCD with the GUI and with a lot more compatibility. The livecd uses the xenosfb drivers, plus it includes a powerpc toolchain so that you can compile and build applications on the 360 itself, without having to cross-compile applications on your PC and then transferring them to the 360. The Gentoo LiveCD contains the Gnome Desktop Environment.

Firstly, here's what the Free60.org team had to say about their new drivers:

X.org driver and a new LiveCD No April Fools' Day joke. We have released a preliminary X.org driver and Cpasjuste has built a new LiveCD which makes use of it. Unfortunately, support for Samsung drives and sound drivers are still missing.

This is a liveCD for Linux on the Xbox 360. It is based on the experimental gentoo liveCD that can be found here. It has a few changes to boot on the Xbox 360 (codename xenon). Currently, Samsung drives aren't supported, there is no sound driver, and you should use vga output for better results. This liveCD is build with the new xenosfb driver so it have a full gnome desktop. It also contains the powerpc64 toolchain for developers.

How does it work?

• Burn gentoo-livecd-xenon-beta.iso.
• Upload the cdreader binary via serial, or use the new king kong patcher with built-in readcd code, this will open the dvd tray.
• Put the gentoo-livecd-xenon-beta CD in the drive.
• cdreader will automatically start the xell bootloader located at lba 0x20 on this cd and boot the Linux Kernel."