Although it was started by Linus Torvalds as “an (free) operating system (just a hobby, it won’t be as big and professional as GNU) for 386 (486) AT clones“The Linux kernel and the surrounding operating system ecosystems have been ported to various architectures in addition to their x86 roots. So it’s not uncommon to hear about new ports for unsupported platforms, but it’s extremely unexpected to hear about one when the platform is a game console in the mid-1990s. [Lauri Kasanen] did, announcing a new version of Linux for the Nintendo 64.
This is also not a 1996 Linux. The port is based on an updated version 5.10 of the kernel with its N64 branch and a tempting possibility that it can be incorporated into the main Linux source for the MIPS-64 processor architecture. That’s right, the Nintendo 64 could be an officially supported Linux platform.
It would be too long for the story to call this any type of distro, because what it produced is a bootloader that loads the kernel and creates a terminal with the busybox loaded. With that in your flashcart, you won’t be replacing that Raspberry Pi anytime soon, so why else but [Lauri]in “because I can“Would you be interested in that? It provides the answer and is on the emulation scene, because having Linux for the platform makes it much easier to port other software to it. If that pleases you, you can view the source code in your GitHub repository, and we are certainly looking forward to what the community will do with it.
We are more used to seeing the N64 as a subject for case modding, either as a portable console or an all-in-one console.
Via Phoronix, and thanks [David Beckershoff] for the tip.
Header image: Evan-Amos, public domain.