DSLinux – Linux for the Nintendo DS

I made a few small contributions to this a long time ago. Nice to see that the website is still up!<p>Probably the most interesting feature of this project was how it handled memory. The DS only has 4mb of ram. And there is no MMU, so swap isn&#x27;t an option. But the gameboy cartridge port has 32mb of address space mapped to the bus. And there are homebrew&#x2F;piracy cartridges that fill that space with 32mb of ram. Which is great, except that the DS can only write to the cartridge port on 16-bit aligned addresses. And almost all software will assume that 8-bit aligned writes will work. To make use of the expansion memory the developers ended up creating a patched GCC that would convert any writes to unaligned locations to an appropriate read, 16-bit write, and set of shift operations.

I recently did a deep dive into DS homebrew. Some cool stuff - a Yugioh calculator, mp3 player, port of Doom. In particular, I just love the hardware of the DS Lite or the DsI - it feels great in 2023, and the symmetrical screens are amazing when holding in vertical mode reading an ebook or playing Hotel Dusk. It also has one of the best pieces of software ever for learning Chinese, ‘My Chinese Coach’ - there are additionally two more (at least) homebrew software packages that focus on Chinese, such as DS Zhongwhen.<p>DS is very underrated - so many great games, and it’s an emulation dream. All without being too powerful, and having ‘realistic’ graphics that just drain battery life.

The Wikipedia article listed on the website was deleted as &quot;non-notable&quot;. Here&#x27;s an archive of it though: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20170708075915&#x2F;https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;DSLinux#cite_note-2" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20170708075915&#x2F;https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipe...</a>

What a nice surprise to see this on the HN front page! I was involved with DSLinux for several years. I maintained nightly-ish builds that I hosted on my website. I don&#x27;t think I ever contributed any code, as my C and system programming skills were still rudimentary at the time, but I did a fair amount of testing and helping people in the community.<p>I sold my Nintendo DS since then, but I still have somewhere the Supercard that I would use to store and boot Linux, which looks like this: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wiki.gbatemp.net&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;File:SuperCard_CF_V2.jpg" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wiki.gbatemp.net&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;File:SuperCard_CF_V2.jpg</a><p>Most of credit for the amazing work that made this possible goes to a few individuals, in particular Malcolm Parsons (pepsiman), Stefan Sperling (who later became an OpenBSD developer), and Amadeus: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;dslinux.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;ContactingDevelopers.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;dslinux.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;ContactingDevelopers.html</a>

It&#x27;s not <i>exactly</i> the modern equivalent, but owners of a modded Nintendo Switch can dual-boot with a few different Linux images: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wiki.switchroot.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wiki.switchroot.org&#x2F;</a><p>Since it&#x27;s based on the official (albeit outdated) Tegra drivers, you can run a surprising amount of stuff on it. I got SkiFree working in Box86 and called it a day.

Interestingly, based on some of the same uCLinux work as another story on the HN home page right now:<p>789 KB Linux Without MMU on RISC-V<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=37822082">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=37822082</a>

Back in high school, I used to go “war driving” on my bike around my neighborhood with DS Linux running on an M3 cart. Almost forgot this existed; thanks for sharing, this was a fun memory to dig up. I still have my DS and my M3 cart but the SD card with my old build on it is long gone.

I remember being 11 or so and installing this homebrew onto my DS...<p>I had NO IDEA what Linux was at the time, but DSLinux helped me deepen my interest in computer science.<p>So, thanks to the creators, and everyone who contributed code.

This was my gateway into Linux! I&#x27;m grateful to whoever decided to bundle the BSDgames [0] and Frotz [1] packages, for sparking a lifelong love of text adventure games and interactive fiction. Imagine my surprise as a little kid poking around the bin directory, typing &quot;advent&quot; into the prompt expecting a simple advent calendar application, and instead getting dropped into a whole other world [2]...<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wiki.linuxquestions.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;BSD_games" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wiki.linuxquestions.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;BSD_games</a><p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;davidgriffith.gitlab.io&#x2F;frotz&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;davidgriffith.gitlab.io&#x2F;frotz&#x2F;</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Colossal_Cave_Adventure" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Colossal_Cave_Adventure</a>

I remember looking into this a couple months back because I wanted to SSH into my server from my DSi, just for the lolz.<p>I wasn&#x27;t too invested in it, so when the wifi didn&#x27;t &quot;just work&quot; I gave up, but I&#x27;d still love to get SSH working on that some day.

also of note is a port of the inferno operating system to the ds, which makes for a rather nice platform.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gamebrew.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Inferno_DS" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gamebrew.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Inferno_DS</a>

As a heavy Linux user myself, I was wondering what kind of functionality you would gain from running Linux on a DS (aside from the obvious learning experience and “because you can”). I found the FAQ[0] answers this nicely.<p>Basically, it boils down to anything you can do on the command line within the resource constraints of the DS.<p>Would love to hear any DSLinux users who would be willing to share stories about cool functionality they were able to achieve.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.dslinux.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;DSLinuxFAQ.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.dslinux.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;DSLinuxFAQ.html</a>

I could never run DSLinux, I was in eighth grade and couldn&#x27;t afford the RAM pack (just used a pirate card for games). But I printed out all of the documentation at the school library and read it until I pretty much new it by heart, and that became my introduction to Linux.<p>I can&#x27;t remember if this was before or after I managed to inadvertently install (!?) Knoppix on my sister&#x27;s school laptop, but my passion for Linux was there well before I had the means to run it myself.

I did a stream about this on twitch. Someone uploaded it to YouTube. Trying to find it<p>Aha: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;mTo8yb6q4Lw?si=LAchs9gVSHRONxn2" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;mTo8yb6q4Lw?si=LAchs9gVSHRONxn2</a>

I love the idea of Linux on a Nintendo DS, but the name will cause confusion with this: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.damnsmalllinux.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.damnsmalllinux.org&#x2F;</a>

Tried it on my New 3DS XL. There is a single .NDS build so starts perfectly with TwilightMenu++ <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;dslinux.org&#x2F;builds&#x2F;dslinux.nds" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;dslinux.org&#x2F;builds&#x2F;dslinux.nds</a><p>The problem is the touch keyboard is unusuable. Most likely because of the NDS v 3DS screen resolution difference, it&#x27;s impossible to type on it. Took me a couple of minutes to type &quot;root&quot; but never managed to hit Enter :D

Every once and a while I get the urge to run this again and host a webpage from it.. sucks this device lacked a lot of IO and the wifi stack is so weird

I&#x27;ve a few DSi in a drawer somewhere... My first question was whether I can turn them into a k8s cluster