So with the thanks of people on this forum I've managed to get Xebian native working on a old xbox and running pretty much everything I want. A steep learning curve but good to get my head round Linux and start to understand it a little better.

I know it's not supported so much anymore (Linux on Xbox 1) and so intalling packages that wont break my install is a real problem. Currently using Sarge repros as suggested that anything etch and higher is likely to break my install.

I'm currently trying to get FFmpeg working amongst a few other things like flickrfs but I'm now running into road blocks as they usualy require higher versions of things like libc6 or libfaac. I'm guessing if I added some lines to my sources list for etch I'd probably be able to find these missing packages. But I don't want to ruin all my hard work of getting Xebian running so well now.

Is there a list of what packages from etch might break my system/not back compatiable. Or I guess is there an alternative to getting some of these packages like libc6 and libfaac to work. Is it worth upgrading to kernel 2.6? I've seen in another thread on here it's possible with a supplied .deb package on a native install but I might lose the graphics driver?

For what it is worth, Google "apt pinning"

@ldotsfan

Not exactly what I'm after but still pretty handy to know and might help finding packages.

You could always backup your Xebian install and rollback if necessary. How big is your console's hdd? Do you know how to use dd and nc commands?

You can use a version of this: http://www.xbox-linux.org/wiki/Hard_Disk_Backup_HOWTO
to backup to local hdd if the hdd have sufficient space and the partitioning scheme supports it.

The nc syntax can be found here: http://www.xbox-linux.org/wiki/Creating_a_...t_Hotswap_HOWTO, that stores the hdd contents offline.