How to Turn a PlayStation 3 Into a Linux PC 276
MahariBalzitch writes "Popular Mechanics shows step by step guide on how to install Ubuntu Linux on a PlayStation 3 and still keep the PS3 gaming functionality. Now I just need to get my hands on a PS3." Not bad specs for the price, either, since Blu-Ray players still aren't cheap. And though the article calls the procedure "somewhat complicated," it's a lot simpler than was installing Linux from floppies not so many years ago.
On what planet is this 'news'? (Score:5, Interesting)
"Somewhat Complicated" (Score:5, Interesting)
In some respects, it seems exactly like installing Linux from floppies.
In the olden days, you swapped the boot and root floppies; here you swap the hard drives, which indeed is somewhat complicated, as in "I wouldn't trust my grandmother to do it right" (not grandfather, though!).
As for the rest... OK, I am one of the few people in the universe who actually read documentation, but nevertheless... a page-long manual, illustrations included, makes the procedure somewhat complicated?
Indeed, Linux has come a long way if not being able to simply pop a CD and install on anything, incuding a toaster, makes the install procedure "somewhat complicated".
Not bad specs, with one exception: (Score:5, Interesting)
On the 360 side, hobbyist developers have a different set of trade-offs. You can write games C# using XNA Game Studio, 512mb shared memory, and even get hardware acceleration (some of the demos are quite impressive). On the flipside, there's a $100/year membership and fat chance of ever running linux (in any official capacity at least)
PS3 Linux Media Center (Score:5, Interesting)
I currently use an Xbox 1 with Xbox Media Center installed, but it's starting to get long in the tooth since it doesn't support HD resolutions.
Although the GPU is restricted from access when in Linux , the CPU on the PS3 is plenty strong still as I understand it. Is there a way to install Linux easily on a PS3 so that it can be an easy to use media center comparable to XBMC?
I've seen reference to the fact that such a thing is possible, but is there an ISO I can just burn or install and have it work? If not, why not?
Re:Not bad specs, with one exception: (Score:4, Interesting)
It's kind of ironic (suspicious?) that you can pirate 360 games way easier then you can run homebrew/Linux on it.
Re:On what planet is this 'news'? (Score:5, Interesting)
As it stands, researchers already have access to play around with the Cell SPEs, and can do enough that there's no need to break it for their own needs. The general hobbyist who wants all the other stuff tend to not have the knowledge and resources to break in, and install linux, and thus no one has done it. Not a bad tradeoff, the research community gets to use the PS3 to play with Cell processors (helping IBMs goal of encouraging Cell development), and the hacking community has far fewer resources available to break the system, and less demand for it.
Phil
Re:PS3 Linux Media Center (Score:1, Interesting)
one of the most energy inefficient "PC's"... (Score:4, Interesting)
http://www.choice.com.au/viewArticle.aspx?id=106346&catId=100245&tid=100008&p=5&title=Computers'+energy+costs [choice.com.au]
Re:On what planet is this 'news'? (Score:5, Interesting)
1) Wifi access is not only available but works out-of-the-box with Yellow Dog Linux
2) Bluetooth access works fine and with only a tiny amount of work the Sixaxis controllers work as Bluetooth joysticks, and get picked up and used for stuff like Dosbox (old two-player dos games with Sixaxis joysticks sitting on the couch with your 47" LCD, anyone?)
3) Full access to the six special coprocessors, only access to the RSX chip is restricted
It runs fine at 720p and I have had Age of Empires II running just fine via the wireless connection to a Win98 harddrive image loaded up with qemu.
It's great.
Re:On what planet is this 'news'? (Score:5, Interesting)
To use PPC apps, you don't have to "compile them yourself". This is Ubuntu. All you do is apt-get install them from a source package.
Re:On what planet is this 'news'? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:On what planet is this 'news'? (Score:5, Interesting)
The cell does have a PowerPC core in it, but it's not the same as the PowerPC that was used in Macs. It's considerably stripped down, and as such isn't that great for general-purpose computing.
I have been considering putting linux on my PS3, but only to tinker with the SPE cores. It's otherwise a really poor linux system.
Anonymous Coward (Score:1, Interesting)
LINUX MCE
http://www.linuxmce.org
Total media center, game center, home automation and security center, asterisk telephone conole, everything... including LTSP built-in (might be able to play games in other rooms of the house too)?
Hey - Linux MCE is GPL software... so, if anyone wanted to do a custom distro of LINUX MCE, this PS3 platform might be a winner.
Gromacs on a cell? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Not bad specs, with one exception: (Score:2, Interesting)
Go read this [gamasutra.com] article on GamaSutra real quick.
Slashdot isn't the place for any positive information about the 360. It's rather silly, because for any up-and-coming game coder, it's probably not a wise one to ignore or spit at.
Re:On what planet is this 'news'? (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't think so. I think it's all Sony. They just don't want you doing other things with their baby while you could be playing games, and buying games, and providing Sony with licensing revenue.
The PS3 is dramatically cheaper than any other Cell platform, so it's still interesting to "researchers", just not the ones at the best-funded and thus best-equipped universities. But out in the real world, without an ivory tower up one's ass, cheap supplies still spur private research.
The point is that the PS3 is an inherently limited platform and without graphics access it's just a strange-architecture PC with horribly slow graphics and 256MB RAM, which is just barely adequate for websurfing but which for example is really not enough to run OO.o smoothly, let alone Inkscape. Arguably the Xbox is more useful - neither the PS3 running Linux nor the Xbox will help anyone view HD video, but the XDK for the Xbox is running around and if you're willing to write or port Windows software you can put whatever you want on it... which is how we run XBMC.
Re:On what planet is this 'news'? (Score:3, Interesting)
The reason your h264 files won't play is because they use the wrong container format. You can easily convert them in less than 60 seconds. (Try mkv2vob)
Re:With ease (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.gromacs.org/content/view/25/ [gromacs.org]
I wouldn't bank on that, it gets almost Double the processing done on a g5 with a slower clock than a high end p-4. you might have wanted to look into that before you put your foot in your mouth. according to wikipedia the SPE in the ps3 is clocked to 3.2 ghz.
"Linux Pentium 4 1 Intel 8 3000 1024 10176 2280 1353 164 3045 357 0.95"
"Apple G5 PPC 970 1 IBM 2500 512 15309 4177 2213 175 5069 544 1.74"