Linux on my DVD player

Mike Matthews

It's probably a *very* minimal CPU running the DVD player in conjunction with a DSP chip for the number crunching and a tiny amount of RAM. Whatever sort of CPU it is (if any) it almost certainly lacks an MMU and other bits required to run a full-featured O-S like Linux.

Besides that, I-O is going to be a problem. There'd be only a small amount of ROM or (if you're lucky) Flash RAM to store the O-S and no easy way to attach a hard drive---so no place to store your apps. I doubt the few buttons on the front panel of a DVD player would subsbreastute for a keyboard and mouse, so interacting with the system would be difficult at best. Never mind other sorts or I-O.

Even if you could get Linux running in there, then there's the issue of video drivers. I can guarantee you the chips used to drive that display are nothing like the ones used in PC graphics cards, so Linux would need drivers for the (probably proprietary) graphics system used by each different model of DVD player.

In short, a portable DVD player is nothing like a full featured computer. Running Linux on one is just not going to happen.