Wii Linux
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It's Linux on the Wii, but it's actually modern, and (soon) works well!
What works and works well:
- Booting to a command line
- Running various command line apps
- Wi-Fi
- USB
- SD Cards
- Terminal graphics output in either 480i/480p
- Booting from MINI
- USB Gecko (serial console in GameCube memory card ports)
- KGDB - Linux kernel deugger, works over USB Gecko
- USB Keyboards
- Using a portion of MEM2 to boost the total usable memory count from 24MB to 74MB
- Swapping to any USB/SD disk to increase the total ""memory"" count to theoretically any number
- Bluetooth using bluez
- The framebuffer
- Xorg
What works if you ignore the obvious problems:
- Booting from HBC (Homebrew Channel) under Starlet IOS
What doesn't work at all:
- The DVD driver
- Anything that uses Java (memory issues, refuses to swap, but in fact now it crashes)
What's not known yet:
- When did IOS-based SD Card support break?
- Does the gamecube_defconfig work on the GameCube?
- Does a Wii build work on the Wii U's vWii?
Links
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- Official Discord Server
- Install Guide (TBD, ask Techflash until it's done!)
- Wii Linux developers blog See progress updates and generally what's going on here.
- Latest build's rootfs (.tar.xz, extract to the root of your SD/USB device's ext4 partition) here.
- Latest build's (kernel 4.5.0) SD Card files (.tar.gz, extract to the root of your SD Card's FAT32 partition) here.
Specialized (already included in the above)
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- Latest build's (kernel 4.5.0) loader.img (raw file, put in gumboot on your SD Card's FAT32 partition) here.
- Latest build's kernel (4.5.0) modules (.tar.gz, need these for Wi-Fi primarily, extract to rootfs) here.
- Latest build's raw kernel (4.5.0), put this as a file named v4_5_0.krn in the gumboot directory on your SD Card's FAT32 partition here.
- Wi-Fi Firmware (.tar.gz. extract to the root of your USB disk) here. See the LICENSE
In-Development versions
It's highlight likely that these versions will have serious problems.
It's recommended to NOT use these.
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- Latest build's (kernel 4.20.0) loader.img (raw file, put in gumboot on your SD Card's FAT32 partition) here.
- Latest build's kernel (4.20.0) modules (.tar.gz, need these for Wi-Fi primarily, extract to rootfs) here.
- Latest build's raw kernel (4.20.0), put this as a file named v4_20_0.krn in the gumboot directory on your SD Card's FAT32 partition here.
Legacy versions
You shouldn't need these, but they are kept around for historical reasons
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- Latest kernel 4.4.302 SD Card files (.tar.gz, extract to the root of your SD Card's FAT32 partition) here.
- Latest kernel (4.4.302) modules (.tar.gz, need these for Wi-Fi primarily, extract to rootfs) here.
- Latest build's raw kernel (4.4.302), put this as a file named v4_4_302.krn in the gumboot directory on your SD Card's FAT32 partition here.
- The archive - really old versions, and superseded releases of the current versions
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 4.5.0 working
- "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
- "Foxlet"
- Main Void Linux handler
- Expert at all things userspace
- Runs the Void Linux PPC project, which is used by us, and we actively help with
- Showed us how we can get more than an old Gentoo tarball from 2010 working
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