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The toddlers only love Mario and their Nintendo Switch, they don't touch the Xbox Series S at all. The interest is totally missing.

Now I thought I'd use the hardware for other purposes. With total shock I found out that Linux cannot be installed on it. So of course different use cases are very limited.

Do you have any creative ideas for what I can use the Xbox Series S hardware for? Are there any exciting projects from the do-it-yourself corner?

With a web search, the only alternative use-case I find is the Media Center. However, I try to avoid DRM as much as possible and therefore have no Netflix and Co subscription.

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    Wait ten years for someone to crack it, because it's a ~$2k computer designed not to do anything else except pay $60 for a game every month and a controller here and there every year or so, and then just a whole new thing in three years and you'll forget all about this. Stop fighting for the winning side, dammit. Trade it for a laptop. I get 5y out of a PC, easy. Service length of a console is 3y by design.
    – Mazura
    Sep 17, 2022 at 19:42
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    While I like the idea of this question, I don't think this is on-topic for our site. There is no definitive answer to this question, and its eliciting subjective answers (Do you have any creative ideas for what I can use the Xbox Series S hardware for?).
    – Timmy Jim ♦
    Sep 19, 2022 at 2:09
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    Procedurally casting close vote per Timmy Jim's comment (to get this into the queue, not completely sure I agree, since I seem to have upvoted)
    – pppery
    Sep 22, 2022 at 22:28
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    I’m voting to close this question because this question invites open-ended discussion, and Arqade is not a forum.
    – Schism
    Sep 23, 2022 at 3:39
  • Which consoles haven't been cracked yet? - In 2022, it's iffy even for a 360, so it kinda doesn't matter. None of them that anyone would still use for anything have been cracked.
    – Mazura
    Sep 28, 2022 at 2:39

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The only purpose of GAMING consoles is to play GAMES, and console manufacturers try to prove that point by heavily restricting what you can do with the hardware.

Sometimes, those consoles can be designed to have multiple uses, but again, only whatever is approved by the manufacturer can go.

The only way you can remove these restrictions is by homebrewing these consoles, so it can run unsigned code and thus make it usable for whatever purpose you want.

However, unlike Nintendo consoles, Xboxes have pretty good security, and as such nobody has found a way to install homebrew even to the Xbox 360 which is more than 10 years old without tinkering with the hardware. I'd doubt that the security was loosened since then.

However, homebrewing was not intended. By doing that, you run a risk of your consoles getting banned from online services by the manufacturers.

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  • The only purpose [is making money.] What can I do with the Xbox Series S? Nothing that M$ didn't pay a whole slew of people a whole bunch of money to make sure that you couldn't.
    – Mazura
    Sep 28, 2022 at 2:32

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