Wii Linux

Wii Linux
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It's Linux on the Wii, but it's actually modern, and works well!

What works and works well:
- Booting
  - Booting properly to a getty or display-manager
  - Booting from the MINI firmware replacement for the Starlet co-processor
- Hardware
  - Using a portion of MEM2 to boost the total usable memory count from 24MB to ~78MB
  - Internal Broadcom 4318 Wi-Fi
  - Internal Broadcom 2045A Bluetooth using bluez
  - USB ports, hubs, and devices
  - SD Cards
  - USB Gecko (serial console in GameCube memory card ports)
  - Graphics output, in either 480i or 480p, using either the Linux VT, or anything that writes to /dev/fb0 (e.g. Xorg)
  - Swapping to SD Card or USB device
- App support
  - Most applications that you would want to use - anything in ArchPOWER officially, including handpicked extras on my own repo.

What works if you ignore the obvious problems:
- Anything that uses Java (memory issues, and INCREDIBLY slow)
- The DVD driver (can see discs, can't do much with them)
- The SDGecko (SD over memory card) driver (can read and write cards, nearly unusably slow due to EXI limitations)
- gamecube_defconfig on GameCube (nearly unusably slow due to the requirement of SDGecko for storage and swap)

What doesn't work at all:
- Wayland support (requires a Direct Rendering Manager / "DRM" driver for the Wii's GPU)
- KGDB - Linux kernel debugger, works over USB Gecko (previously worked, but the driver I previously used is no longer present in 4.5 or newer)
- Running under the vWii (it can't use BootMii/MINI)
- Booting from HBC (Homebrew Channel) under IOS (such kernels have been broken seemingly since they were introduced)

Links
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- Downloads page  Get all of the files here!
- Official Discord Server
- Installation Guide
- Official Wii Linux Wiki
- Wii Linux developers blog  See progress updates and generally what's going on here.

Developers
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- "Techflash" (Michael)
    - Lead project organizer
    - Tester
    - Gives Support
    - Most of the current kernel development
    - Does most of the compiling
    - Built essentially all of this website so far
    - Got kernel 4.5, 4.6, 4.9, 4.14, and 4.19 working
    - Attempting kernel 5.4 port

- "TheOtherOne" / "ThatsItForTheOtherOne"
    - Previously the main kernel developer
    - Hosts docker container for build tools
    - Got kernel 4.4.302 working in the first place
    - Very knowledgable about the inner workings of the Wii

- Alexander Baldeck / "kth5"
    - Creator of ArchPOWER
    - Helps fix bugs from time to time
    - Allows Techflash to use a VM on a POWER9 system for building ArchPOWER packages

- "Foxlet"
    - Main Void Linux handler
    - Expert at all things userspace
    - Runs the Void Linux PPC project, which was previously used by us, and we actively help with
    - Showed us how we can get more than an old Gentoo tarball from 2010 working

- "Tech64"
    - Creator of HelpMii and ConfigMii
    - Tester
    - Funny guy

Special thanks
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- Owen Rummage / "n1xn0v4"
    - Owner of NixLabs, the server provider we use
    - Generously gives all hosting and compute space for free, as we are a sponsored project
    - Helps out with the actual project work occasionally here and there
    - Great friend