Installing Linux on the Nintendo Wii!

hello everybody and welcome back to another video now in today's episode we're going to be taking a look at the Nintendo Wii everybody's favorite Nintendo console from 2006. and we're going to be screwing around with it today because we're going to attempt to install Linux on this console that's right now I figured this was pretty appropriate because it was a year ago this month when I did the PlayStation 2 Linux video using Sony's official PS2 Linux kit this method we're going to take a look at on the Wii here is certainly not official at all this was not a Nintendo sanctioned thing and it's only thanks to the work of some people in the Wii home brewing community that were even able to do this in the first place so yes if it wasn't already obvious you have to have a home brewed Wii with boot me installed and then you're also going to need an SD card and a USB flash drive the two things to make any Homebrew project successful at least in theory anyways but yeah let's go ahead and swap over to my computer and we'll get started with this alright so getting Linux installed on the Nintendo Wii is actually relatively simple and I'm going to kind of walk you through that process here there are a couple of distros that you could use Believe It or Not we've got white or wheat perhaps if you're pronouncing it like the eyes and we but whatever whites blight and x white now the difference between these is uh what they're based on so white Linux is based on Deviant and blight Linux which is down here under third party distros is based on gen 2. we're going to be using x white for this video because it is white Linux with a GUI it's got X included as well so we're just going to use that for this video but theoretically you could use any of these three with the installer which is the far easier method of installing Linux on the Wii you could go through the method of manually installing one of these other distros if you would prefer to do that or just with white Linux or blight Linux or whichever one that you want but it's definitely quite the uh ordeal that you have to go through here and they made this installer to just make the process a lot easier so we're going to be taking a advantage of that now it should be noted that all of this info is is really old over 10 years old okay you saw like from the date here on which was at this page here uh this version was released in 2008 2009 so this stuff is like pretty old but I did come across this post over on GBA temp that was posted in 2020 that is a guide on how to get x white Linux running on the Wii and get Wi-Fi working which is pretty great we're going to try that out later on in this video as well now you need to have a home brewed Wii with boot me installed if you don't have a home build a Wii I'd recommend going over to we dot guide and following along with the tutorial here once you get the Homebrew Channel and boot me install then you can come back to this page and you have to download a couple things from this MediaFire link there's 2.7z files in here and one of these has to go on your SD card one of them has to go on your USB flash drive so we're going to start with the SD card which should look something like this we're going to grab the SD card card or the apps.7z file right here and all you gotta do is go into your apps folder on your SD card go into the apps folder in here and extract this folder into the apps folder on the SD card and that's all there is to it this is the installer that we will run from The Homebrew Channel now going over to the USB drive which I have nothing on we're going to open up the White full linux.7z file and just extract everything to the root of the USB drive and there we go so what we have to do now is take the USB drive and SD card out of our computer put them back into the Wii and we have to open up the Homebrew Channel go through the installer and then once we're done with that we have to take the SD card out of the Wii put it back into the computer download this elf file it is a pal file but the guide says it doesn't matter apparently and then we have to replace the PPC boot.elf inside of the boot me folder on the SD card with that file and then rename it ppcboot.elf and that will allow us to from The Homebrew Channel hit the home button select launch boot me and it will then boot into Linux so let's go ahead and try this all out and see if it works alright so we've got the Wii hooked up and everything set up the SD card USB drive plugged in it's important to note that the USB drive has to be plugged into Port 0 which is the bottom USB port or the right one if you've got the console standing up so we're going to go into the Homebrew Channel here and we should have our single installer right here we're just going to run that and click load now at this point you have to plug in a USB keyboard to the other USB port so let me grab that and so it says right here it will erase the contents of the SD card inserted so make sure you don't have anything that you don't want to lose on it so we're going to say yes and it says please don't remove the SD card nor any USB storage device as the installer use the following Source media and we can pretty much go with the default options here it defaults to 256 for the recommended size of the fat partition that's fine with us we're just going to do that and now we get another warning box that says if you continue all the existing data in the SD card will be erased so we say yes and now it's untiring so everything looks good so far it is mentioned in the tutorial that this will take a while so just be prepared [Music] and the screen just went black but the console's still on should I hit a key on the keyboard sure let's do that oh okay I just went to sleep but yeah so far on the timer or the stopwatch rather we are about eight minutes and and we're halfway done so that's not I mean 16 minutes if it actually ends up being like 16 20 minutes that's not too bad [Music] thank you and there we go we're done it didn't even take 15 minutes uh so that's pretty great so we're going to hit OK to reboot the video console all right and it said that it was copying over a PPC boot.elf file so I'm wondering if we even need to copy over the version that was mentioned in that guide we're going to see because it said you can launch it right now from The Homebrew Channel so let's just try it and see so the SD card has had the installer wipe so nothing's going to show up here but we're going to press the home button and go down to launch boot me and we'll see what happens yeah it's booting and it just ejected the disk which is interesting but yeah here it is it's starting the desktop manager so I wonder why the guide said that you needed to copy over that other elf file and by the way this is all done off the SD card you don't need to have the USB drive plugged into the Wii anymore so I've plugged a mouse into the other USB port and yeah let's view the about information so we'll go about xfce and this is a version four copyright 0206 and yeah xfce 4 version 4.3 0.99.2 but yeah I mean here it is we've got the dock down here we've got our icons on the desktop we've got our multiple desktops up here we have this which I don't actually know what oh that's a restoring hidden Windows okay our hide windows and show desktop all right and yeah so let's try to go this right here is the menu which we can get to just by right clicking on the desktop as well so this is the web browser it looks like although it says it failed to execute default web browser input output error we're going to try in a minute here to get Wi-Fi working and I'm wondering if the other PPC boot.l file has something to do with that I'm not sure but I mean clearly we're here booted into Linux with xfce running just fine without that other L file so the default one seems to work fine for for that purpose but yeah so we've got terminal here um let's view our apps let's see what we got so editors we've got mouse pad and Nano got a few net tools there oh we've got Opera too okay well that's super nice can we launch Opera yeah it doesn't uh does not appear to be launching which sucks but we also have Let's see we got programming we got python bash and Sh uh sound we've got some sound stuff but yeah you've got a few things in here uh various tools we've got VLC which is pretty nice can we launch that you know I wonder could you put a DVD in and like play like does it does it recognize the disk drive I'm sure there's a better solution for playing DVDs back on the Wii with like some other Homebrew app but I'm wondering if like if it even recognizes the disk drive here alright so quick jump cut here because I wanted to just talk a little bit more about this PPC boot.elf file that I was mentioning earlier because as it turns out there is a very good reason why we have to change out the file with the one that the text tutorial guide mentioned and that's because the installer we used installs version 2.6.27 of the Linux kernel but the latest version of the Linux kernel that was compiled for the Wii at least through this project was 2.6.32 and that's the version that is contained in the elf file that the text guide points to it's known as the mini kernel preview 5 and it contains some enhancements over previous versions notably it has experimental support for the Wii's DVD drive and updated support for the Wii's Wi-Fi adapter so I went ahead and copied over that file to the SD card and replace the existing one and even though the text guide claims it doesn't matter if you use a pal or ntsc version of this file I just got the ntsc version because it was there and we're on an ntsc console so it just seemed like the right thing to do but anyways with all of that said let's go ahead and jump into the Homebrew Channel again and we will launch boot me from here and get back into the Linux environment and then we'll go through the process of trying to get Wi-Fi working and we'll see if the web browser decides to launch this time because it wasn't launching before for whatever reason both Opera and whatever default or browser that it had and yeah every time it starts up it tries to eject whatever disk is in the drive of course there's nothing in there now so it's not going to do anything but yeah here we are so we're going to immediately I've got the text guide pulled up because it does go through a series of terminal commands you have to run to uh get the Wi-Fi adapter working so we're going to try that out and see if that is doable but first let's just try to launch the browser again and you know see what happens so what browser is this it's just called a web browser um I'm gonna guess well this is xfce though yeah I don't know but yeah it says input output error and we go to we go to apps here and go to net and we go to Opera I wonder what ice weasel is is this a web browser yeah iceweasel web browser so that is that is another web browser oh there we go it's starting up look at that this looks like it's Firefox based yeah this is definitely Firefox based it's Mozilla 5.0 right here and yeah let's uh let's just minimize this for now the guide tells us to completely log out of the account we're logged into now and then just log into the root account I wonder what account we're logged into though because we didn't make an account or anything I guess there's some other oh I don't want to shut down the Wii okay shut down canceled you can log in all right so so we gotta log in as roots and the password is white w-h-i-i-t-e and there we go so now if we type in um I was gonna say start act but I don't believe it is startax oh it is look at that the tutorial says to type in start xfce4 but start X works too and yeah so now we're logged into the root account and we've got this tips and tricks thing that came up it doesn't look like there are any tips or tricks in here but anyways let's go to terminal here and let's begin by typing what is our first command we have to change directory to the uh home slash we and we gotta run dpkg Dash I star Dot d-e-b all right so that's finished we gotta change directory back to the roots now we gotta run a tar command thank God for being able to press tab to auto complete and now we have to run Nano to edit a configuration file Etc network interfaces and this shows you how rudimentary that this is because we have to type in the SSID and password into here then we gotta get out of that we want to say yes Save Right to that and there we go so yeah there's no like uh you know Network search program or interface of any kind in this like is there anything in settings for Network like there's the settings manager okay you got keyboard mouse file manager display okay well we can change the display settings at least uh there's only one uh resolution that we can pick from 320 by 240. but yeah there's nothing in here about you know network uh so let's just see if we are on the network let's try to open up that browser that actually opened up which is here under uh net iceweasel and let's hope that well actually I guess we could just go to terminal here and try to run a ping unknown host that is not a good sign you know I wonder do I wonder if we gotta restart that would that would actually make sense failed to bring up wlan0 oh gosh okay so the Wii account is the default account that it makes okay ping google.com unknown host all right so we're Force powering off the Wii again because I have just temporarily changed my Wi-Fi network to use WPA and WPA2 instead of just solely WPA2 keyword is temporarily so we're going to try this again once the network comes back online and we will see if it's just the security protocol that's causing the issue but again the we can connect to it just fine without it being set to WPA and WPA2 but I'm guessing maybe we Linux is is not that way I was thinking of trying to use the Wii's ethernet adapter because I have one of those because I've tried to do Network stuff on the Wii before you guys may remember back in 2021 we tried to use some third-party web browsers on this thing and that failed in utter disaster but as a result of that I I have a the wheeze USB wired Network ethernet module I don't know why I just made that too long yeah uh I have that but it doesn't specifically mention that that is supported on the Wiki page about this at least from what I've read but we can try it anyway because I've got a network switch right here that we could hook this up to and honestly I much prefer ethernet for everything because it's just so much more convenient and uh of course when you have access to easy access to an Ethernet Jack okay it failed to bring up ET failed to bring up WLAN zero done oh my God really really maybe I entered the password wrong or something oh I think I see the problem this is supposed to be WLAN one apparently and it's supposed to say I face WLAN one instead of WLAN zero so maybe it's not even a WPA2 issue but okay so we're going to get out of that yes we want to save yes we want to write to that file okay okay that's looking good authenticating so now I should be able to terminals come up here let's ping google.com oh there we go six yes let's go we're online people oh my gosh that is beautiful all right so let's go back into Apps here let's go to net launch that ice weasel web browser uh we're gonna start new session yes I know the last session closed unexpectedly that may have been because we force powered off the system and let's try to go to google.com not DOT CM not google.cm well that also works but google.com of course you know this is a super freaking old web browser so it's not going to be able to display modern Pages properly so you know Google's displayed in this like 2006 mode here but I don't know you want to do a search we could search for uh Michael mjd this will probably bring up the mobile results page that usually always happens uh yes continue that's fine yep there we go we're not going to be able to go to YouTube at all on this thing but we can try well that answers that so we're just gonna go to the old note gosh it's always good to see the old nap so let's try to go to hey that's appropriate nintendo.com let's go to nintendo.com in 2008 and see what they were up to back then it looks like it's displayed this page relatively well um so it looks like Wii music was coming out around this time experience we experience Nintendo DS Kirby Superstar Ultra Man World of Goo oh my gosh that was a pretty fun game I played it on the Wii first I think it was a download on the Wii Shop Channel I think it was we wear um and then I ended up getting it for uh PC later on like many years later actually Nintendo's holiday 2008 we speak Channel Club Nintendo Morrison oh gosh remember Club Nintendo Wii remote jacket accessory offer it's back when that was going on 2008 was actually the year that my family got a Nintendo Wii yeah we kind of got it we didn't get in 2006 when it first came out as much as I wanted it back then but we ended up getting it a couple years later which uh which was pretty great and uh gosh it was it was a pretty fun console just to be able to like mess around with there's so so much stuff to do on it it just seemed like a whole new world at the time but yeah so that is web browsing we're online which is great I actually want to go to the package manager too because that was in here under apps uh tools I believe I don't know was it under system yeah here it is so we'll launch the package manager because I want to see what's in here we gotta type in the root password okay I'd be curious to see what uh shows up in here so we've got a bunch of categories 3D chess uh yeah let's get 3D chess why not Mark for installation I wonder how much of this stuff would like work on here this needs to be like way smaller this box here on the bottom let's resize that maybe oh can it not be resized any more than that oh it can't oh that's annoying really oh that sucks so this is how large that the package like selection window is uh or part of the window anyway so let's see if oh my gosh you know what if is on here oh we can just search from here let's do that there we go all right so we'll mark that for installation to be installed so we should have 3D chess and all the stuff it needs all right that's fine for us and let's let it download hooray so we've got now on the Nintendo Wii the question now of course is can we actually open it up welcome to the 2.2 and the window is too freaking large it goes off the screen so we'll have to uh minimize or not minimize but like restore it there we'll hit continue we gotta do the same thing here for proper uh installation the folder named uh game 2.0 needs to be created okay um I I want to like get to yeah continue 128 megabyte tile cache size it looks fine to me oh boy look at that splash screen wow [Laughter] oh my gosh it's actually working I I actually I shouldn't jinx myself it might crash oh boy oh my gosh here it is everybody so if you've ever asked yourself huh I'd I'd wonder if you could run on the Nintendo Wii well the answer is yes you absolutely can uh through this really convoluted and uh just something that you should never like there's no reason to do any of this there's far better ways of running but it is I mean I I have to say it is pretty cool that we've got it running on the Wii here so we'll make a really basic 420 by 300 file that's fine and we'll just I don't know yeah it's so with the resolution being so low we can't even fit everything on the freaking screen um what do we want to do fill with a color gradient yeah that that sounds good to me and let's maybe draw some stuff on it let's maybe uh let's go here and get a larger thing and and do this and maybe select the different uh color let's maybe get a nice like red going on [Music] mjd uh and I don't know you want to like fill something up I don't know why I'm asking you guys as if you could tell me what we're doing um let's maybe uh get a blue here and hit OK and let's maybe uh fill that up yeah that looks that looks amazing okay so we're gonna save this utter Masterpiece let's just do it as a XTF image that's fine lovely absolutely lovely okay so that's that's the package manager you saw there's a decent amount of stuff in there that we could install and that's web browsing the other thing I would like to answer is can we put a DVD into the Nintendo Wii that has a video file on it I've copied one of my video files over to this DVD and you know formatted it properly to where you can put this into a DVD player and it'll play so let's pop it in and first off let's just see if anything comes up on the desktop but I am going to open up VLC the drive doesn't appear to be doing anything there's no activity going on so let's open up VLC [Music] and we have GM player on here too and we could try that okay and let's go to file open disk let's just go with the defaults and hit OK and play we've got no Drive activity drive is not doing anything now it did mention this had there was experimental support for the Wii's DVD drive and it didn't say anything about playing like DVDs through VLC I'm just trying this out but it's definitely not looking good here device name what was it device name DVD device to use um yeah I don't even know I don't even know what that would be I mean nothing is showing up on the desktop here if we go into file system yeah we got nothing in here oh and also of note when you put a disc into the wheeze drive you can't hit the eject button that does not do anything when you're booted into Linux here so I don't think we can even eject the thing we could try the other media player here oh boy does this remind you of something uh so let's um let's go here and can we just right click okay open play DVD fail to open DVD one okay well that ain't good so yeah it's looking like uh the DVD drive may not have been fully supported at this point but still this is pretty freaking awesome like let's be real I mean just getting Linux working on the Wii by itself is pretty cool but getting it on the network that's even better so this experiment was a total success and I'm really happy that everything actually went right for once I mean of course you could say that the DVD thing something did go wrong of course it's an mjd video gonna happen but I'm definitely really happy with this and uh yeah it's just it's just pretty cool that people actually took the time to to get Linux working on the Wii even though you know there's no real practical reason for this other than just to say we did it and it's cool so yeah that's gonna wrap it up for this video guys I hope you enjoyed this one if you did be sure to give it a thumbs up get subscribed all that good stuff and as always I want to thank you all so much for watching and I will see you in the next video [Music]

Channel: Michael MJD

Views: 308,822

Keywords: video, michaelmjd, mjd7999, game, review, overview, apple, microsoft, unboxing, tutorial, windows, how-to, mac, os, operation, system

Id: mrdR43-sqKs

Length: 25min 34sec (1534 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 07 2023

Reddit Comments

[u/itouchdennis]

thats pretty cool, if I was a kid and I had no PC, but maybe had a console, this would be a great solution for me.

[u/KlutzyEnd3]

I ran it once as well. Video support is lacking though...

I still love Marcan's journey to insanity trying to get Linux running on a PS4:

https://youtu.be/QMiubC6LdTA