Slashdot Log In
Emulation Explosion On the PS3 Via Linux
Posted by
timothy
on Mon Mar 09, 2009 02:24 AM
from the like-your-very-own-time-machine dept.
from the like-your-very-own-time-machine dept.
Marty writes "The PlayStation 3 has recently seen an explosion
of releases of emulators and games for the Yellow Dog Linux distro for PS3;
once you have installed Yellow
Dog Linux you then have the ability to try out MAME,
SNES, Amiga, Dos,
Commodore and Atari
emulators (that's the tip of the iceberg) and such games as Quake
2, Duke Nukem 3D, Hexen 2 and Alephone. Time to start installing Linux on your PS3?"
Related Stories
Firehose:Emulation Explosion on the PS3 via Linux by Anonymous Coward
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
Oblig. (Score:5, Funny)
I now feel somewhat happier.
No (Score:4, Informative)
1. First of all, there are more options for PS3 then YD including Gentoo, Ubuntu, Fedora, and others.
2. Access (due to Sony scared of people making good games for PS3 Linux for 'free') to the RSX (graphics card) is very restricted. A few firmware revisions ago it was accessible but of course that gets fixed. And without the latest firmware, you cannot play certain games.
The PS3 is a flop anyway. If you want to emulate these mentioned systems, you are way better off with a PC, Xbox 1, or Wii.
Re:No (Score:4, Informative)
Flop? I don't think that word means what you think it means.
PS3 has made money. It might not have caught on like the creators hoped it would or like the PS2, but it is slowly getting its market share.
It isn't a huge success story but I'd hardly call it a flop.
Parent
Re:No (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know. When the company claims that a product is still for "early adapters" two years after it's release...that's almost flop-worthy.
Parent
Re:No (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:No (Score:5, Informative)
No, PS3 has not made any money and it may never make any.
http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/IR/financial/fr/index.html [sony.net]
Sony videogames division in the past three years (PS3 era+R&D, including PS2 and PSP):
2006 ===== 75 (positive)
2007 = -1,969 (negative)
2008 = -1,265 (negative)
2009 ===== 51 (positive)
Total 2006-09 === -3,108
(in million US$)
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=111003 [neogaf.com]
Parent
Re:No (Score:5, Interesting)
I haven't been keeping track of consoles much, but I can imagine that being true, from how many kids I've (dismayingly) heard talking about their XBoxes. Also, many kids and adults (a niche market which Playstations have traditionally been strong in) have gone with Wii.
I've definitely do idea on the veracity of those figures. BUT, even if they've lost a ton of money on PS3, there is perhaps still light at the end of the tunnel for Sony. They based it on Cell, which is designed to scale easily. If that really happened in practice, and if the PS3 didn't bypass all that and just use the raw power without the scaleability, then it should be a relatively simple process to make a PS4, based on their existing, mass-producible tech, but with a few more Cell chips on the bus.
Parent
Re:No (Score:5, Insightful)
The one thing I hate about console-proponents is that they exist. Each console has its pros and cons. Just because you bought a PS3 instead of an Xbox 360 or Wii does not make you better than someone else. AFAIK, nobody is paying you to advertise for Sony either.
Parent
Re:No (Score:5, Informative)
Remember, some of us actually have REASONS for picking a particular console!
Parent
Re:No (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Wow, Guess That Makes The 360 A Massive Failure (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Why do they always forget Freespace? (Score:5, Informative)
I cry everytime people don't remember the hardworking folks over at the Freespace SCP when it comes to Linux gaming....
http://scp.indiegames.us/ [indiegames.us]
and
http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php [hard-light.net]
for more info.
Over a million posts in their forum debugging an amazing game.
from the like-your-very-own-time-machine dept. (Score:5, Insightful)
Most of those programs worked on the PS3 day one. I am not aware of what makes this a new development.
What explosion? (Score:5, Insightful)
Please name an emulator which works on the PS3 today and didn't in 2007.
"Explosion" implies that there are many such emulators, and that they all showed up recently. In fact, I don't know of any at all, and it's hardly an "explosion" for a Linux system to have access to a bunch of common Linux packages. What next? "Emulator explosion on the Eee" headlines because my specific Eee has access to more emulators than it did when I bought it?
Re:pist frost? rly? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Linux on PS3? (Score:5, Informative)
Linux on PS3 clusters, used for scientific computing, is a huge success. Sony openly supported Linux from the start on their console with precisely this sort of work in mind.
Get off the couch and go do something productive.
Parent
Re:Linux on PS3? (Score:5, Insightful)
You're missing a very valuable piece of information here, which is that anyone that openly supports Linux on their platform deserves praise. Sure, it's annoying that they abstracted away the hardware, but STILL. They are trying to protect their IP (gawd, did I really just say that???), but instead of locking it down to the hilt, they provided abstraction and gave us Linux anyway. It's hard to complain about. Given time, that hardware abstraction will probably be bypassed for good - of course it will be after the PS3 is past it's prime, and despite the sales numbers, the hardware itself definitely has a few more good years under it.
No - I won't open fire on Sony on this one. I really wish they would license the ability to get direct hardware access for a reasonable price for homebrew, but I won't hold my breath.
Parent
Re:Linux on PS3? (Score:5, Insightful)
but why? why put yourself through the trouble of making it run, when you could run Linux on a computer way easier and keep playing games on the PS3?
This is the fucking problem with geeks today, and why the dot-com boom ruined the tech scene.
Why? Because you fucking CAN! There doesn't need to be a point. It's INTERESTING, and you can learn about a new system by doing it. Hell, maybe you'll even find a way to unlock the graphics hardware instead of waiting for someone else to do it so you can just download the patch and be all l33t.
Now we've got all these lazy pseudo-geeks running around like "Oh, Linux on the PS3 is stupid, why not just use a PC?" and "Oh, pattern-recognition technology in video cameras is stupid, why not just use a bar-code scanner?" etc. Not sure if it applies to parent poster here or not (either way, shame on you, parent) but this is a result of all the people who went to school for computer science because it was the "hot new thing" and you could "get rich and retire when you're 30!". Now we have clusters of lazy, jaded nerds who resist change and new technology because they had a hard time leaning what little they know in the first place.
</rant>
Parent
Re:Linux on PS3? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Linux on PS3? (Score:5, Funny)
Dude, I would so love a Beowulf-Cluster of Linux Grandma powered toasters. Grandma would get her exercise. I would be able to start my toaster from my cellphone. Everyone would get toast. There could be toast preference presets that auto adjust with biometrics, I could sell my toast data to Google Trends and eat it too. EVERYONE WINS WITH GRANDMA POWERED LINUX TOASTERS!
Parent
Re:Linux on PS3? (Score:5, Insightful)
I have seen what you loathe happen over and over again before .com. Your conclusions are too hasty.
Certain percentage of geeks simply matures and "doing cool stuff" is not enough. Or maybe it is exposure to actual, non-academic, world of software development where cool ideas tend to work out as dumb waste of time.
If you have your pet project, it also has to be useful. It needs to be something worthy your time when not with family/working. It ideally should give you job-translatable skills (haha). And you definitely do not want to reinvent wheel or spend time making someone elses reinvented wheel working.
More on topic:
Installing Linux on PS3 is easy. Installing emulators on Linux is easy. Its nothing to write home if you do both. Hell, its wasted time if you do it because you could be actually look for those hidden hardware gems instead making videos of you playing Mario.
Parent
Re:Linux on PS3? (Score:5, Insightful)
Um...
Why are you blaming this on the dot-com bust exactly? I can and should be as jaded as anyone else. I worked for a dot-bomb, and I've even since started, run, and failed at my own business.
I don't think this has anything to do with dot-com, and everything to do with a trend that's been going on for a LONG time now: each generation is lazier than the last. The last generation had mortgages and homes, this generation didn't know the work involved and presumed buying a home was and should be easy, greedy people accomodated, and here we are: trashed economy (I'm over-simplifying of course). There are kids straight out of college (I'm only 10 years out myself!) that my wife administers at work, and their expectations of what they should have and be able to do while on business time is ridiculous. They're LAZY. I was and still am lazy to a degree, but it's as though they saw my lazy and took it to a whole new level.
I'm not saying every single person coming out of college right now and for the last 3 years is a useless pile, but it's a trend that is going to continue - the next generation is going to see how lazy THIS one is and take THAT to a whole new level. The economy getting trashed like it is might be the best thing for us. Once upon a time, people were encouraged to grow gardens in their yards for food, to go out of their way to work not just for themselves, but the betterment of everyone around them. I would hope it doesn't come to that again, to people living in Hoover^H^H^H^H^H^HBushvilles, etc, but dang it - we all need to become less lazy.
How does that translate? Well - "Linux on the PS3 is stupid, why not just use a PC?" really translates to "That's too much work, I can just use a PC instead." LAZY.
Being a really good geek - I don't care what area of technology or science you work in - requires a desire to learn. You soak up new information like a sponge, and you're always looking for new information. The desire to hack something at it's core comes from that desire for new information, along with a healthy dose of ADD usually. ;) OOOH! New! Shiny!
But hey, I'm talking like the old man here, and I'm 31. I've been in my career for almost 13 years now - did some of my time while still in college. If I'm talking this way about 21, 22, and 23 year olds now...woooh boy. My own niece and nephews, the oldest is soon to turn 12 - they're laziness just oozes from their pores. I'm sure I didn't appear much better to my parents, but the way they demand that everything be given to them without any work being required - it's not a value my family has bestowed upon them that I can tell. It's a societal trait.
Parent
Re:Yay. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sony locked it down with a firmware update. My biggest complaint about Sony is they're not very friendly to homebrew game developers (not that any of the console makers are).
And seriously? "It'll look stupid compared to someone running MGS4?" Is that REALLY supposed to compare? You don't find it in the least bit awesome that you can get all your favorite old games (that you own already, obviously) on your HDTV with a wireless controller? Are you really saying that the PS3 would be better if it did less? What kind of geek are you?
Parent
Re:Sweet! (Score:5, Insightful)
"Only" 256MB RAM? Accurate or not, what do you think we're emulating here? The SNES had a total of 256 kilobytes of RAM, with cartridge ROMs topping at 6MB. Quake 2 ran on a Pentium/90 with 16MB.
The PS3's specs might be a problem for a Windows box that demands half a gig for OS overhead, but Linux isn't supposed to have those problems.
Parent
Re:Sweet! (Score:5, Interesting)
Listen, I've tried PS3 linux before, I know what the hardware is, and I know what the limitations of PS3 linux are. These have not changed (apart from the bluetooth thing), and these are not bound to change. ie: the 2nd half of memory will always be basically useless, and the RSX will never be fully accessible from PS3 linux.
So effectively, there is no hope PS3 linux will get more useful than it already is, which is how it was when I checked it out. I've been running it for a few months which was about a year ago, and back then it broke 3 times on firmware updates. How you would know better how much time I spent with it eludes me...
If you don't believe what I'm saying about PS3 linux: go ahead and try it anyway, I couldn't care less, not my PS3, not my spare time. Just find out yourself how terrific it works and how much I'm trolling here. Don't see why I would be trolling about PS3 linux on Slashdot anyway but hey, some people here obviously feel better screaming troll all the time.
Parent