When [Reit Tech] wanted one thing to do with an previous Nintendo Wii, he turned to Google. When the AI overview informed him it couldn’t be used as a server, he had his mission: show that clanker mistaken. It already runs Doom, so what else is there to do?
In fact mustn’t that arduous: Linux has been accessible on the Wii for years now. In reality there are a number of; he settles on “Arch, btw”, after making an attempt Debian, Ubuntu, and even NetBSD. “In fact it runs NetBSD”– however NetBSD didn’t work along with his USB community adapter, which is unfortunately as predictable because the {hardware} operating NetBSD.
OK, it’s not vanilla Arch; it’s the Wii-Linux Continuation Undertaking, primarily based on ArchPOWER fork that compiles Arch for PPC. Because the younger YouTuber was stunned to find, regardless of not being a PC or notably highly effective, the Wii has a PowerPC CPU. (He could be youthful than the console, so we’ll give him a cross.) Wii-Linux couldn’t run the USB adapter both (applicable apologies had been supplied to NetBSD), nevertheless it seems the interior Ethernet adapter was accessible all alongside.
As a file server, python-based Copyparty labored flawlessly, however the rust-based Minecraft server he picked was not notably usable. A bit optimization would repair that, since you possibly can serve Minecraft from an ESP32 and the Wii completely has extra horsepower than that. Likely he may have loaded a web-server, and proved Google’s AI abstract mistaken, however the iPad-induced ADHD all of us endure from today kicks in, so he settled for posting a screenshot of another person’s weblog, hosted on a Wii from NetBSD. So the LLM was mistaken from the get-go, however the tour of “what home-brew loaded OSes nonetheless work in 2025” was actually academic.
We may hunt that weblog Wii-based weblog down for you, however we’d be reluctant to hyperlink to it anyway: whereas the AI abstract is mistaken, and you need to use the Wii as a server, that doesn’t imply it makes a good one. We’d don’t really feel the necessity to inadvertently DDOS some poor unsuspecting shmuck’s Nintendo, so we’ll allow you to try to discover it your self.
Simply be warned that each one of this Wii hacking might not relaxation on one of the best of foundations.
