From Slashdot : eldavojohn writes “There’s bits and pieces of information floating
around that revolve around ‘Iwata Asks’ interviews on Nintendo’s
website. What I found interesting was the tidbit about the updatable
operating system: ‘Wii is the first system from Nintendo that we can
continue to be involved in (via operating system updates) after the
customer buys it. This means that Wii will greatly expand and diversify
the ways in which people will enjoy games in the future.’ The Wii is
reported to operate on top of a proprietary form of the Linux kernel,
although there are already efforts to make a GNU/Linux for the
console. So, the answer to the age old question is that it already runs
Linux.”
See Slashdot link for original article, comments, and other links.