Anyone did try Linux on PS3 ?

[Tiago]

If this is a repeated post delete it please.....

Hi,
did anyone tried to put Linux on PS3? i read somewhere that Linux Yellow Dog is available for PS3, and it works just fine.

All you need is a USB Keyboard, USB mouse and the dvd of Linux.
It works like a PC and it works good, they say that it is very impressive with a great performance.

So what happend after you install Linux? Does the PS3 boot to Linux? Do you have a menu? PS3 games run under Linux or you boot without Linux?

Is there a winuae for Linux..?... will it run on PS3? That would be very very very interesting !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Harrison]

I've not got a PS3 yet myself, but many people have said how well Yellow Dog Linux runs on the system. Other distros already in use on the PS3 include Ubuntu, Fedora Core 7, Gentoo, and Debian.

The installation and access to the second OS is through the PS3's XMB menus so for games and all standard PS3 functions nothing is different. Any installed second OS runs in a hypervisor restricted rsx access mode. This means that these OSs are actually running on top of the standard PS3 XMB OS and their access to the system hardware and it's functionality is restricted to only allow access to features Sony wish access to. This is to help restrict hacking of the main OS and hardware.

And yes there is a version of UAE for Linux and it runs very well on the PS3.

In case you didn't know WinUAE is the windows version of the original Amiga UAE emulator that is actually developed under Linux.

The huge advantage of Sony officially allowing a second third party OS to be installed on the PS3 is that it opens up the PS3 for homebrew developers to use, without it compromising the actual system for games piracy. I think Sony really thought this through this time and did a good thing here because for homebrew games, applications and emulation most coders are going to be happy using a distro of Linux on the PS3. And it's directly supported by Sony and free!

[Tiago]

Well being able to install Linux it's one of the big arguments, i would buy PS3 for that, and for games sure... but still a big expensive as told in other topics.
But if it gets down.... hummmm

But is it only yellow dog Linux? Or there are other distributions like Red Hat, or Suse?
Can you imagine... for that price you get a fantastic game console plus blueray plus a high performance "computer" with Linux and WINUAE !!!!!!!!!
I start thinking that the price is not so big.... if i didn't have a pc i wuld defenetly think about PS3....

[Harrison]

With second OS support the PS3 is definitely looking like a much more universal home entertainment and computing system in one. As you say, Blu-Ray playback, combined with PS3 gaming and full Linux OS use is a great set of features and starts to make the PS3 actually look very cheap.

[Tiago]

With second OS support the PS3 is definitely looking like a much more universal home entertainment and computing system in one. As you say, Blu-Ray playback, combined with PS3 gaming and full Linux OS use is a great set of features and starts to make the PS3 actually look very cheap.

Yes,
i search a litle, and i found that You can put Linux also on PS2, but you need a cable to connect to a tv, for same reason the install for PS2 need to be pluged to a monitor. After instalation it will work on tv. There was a pack, with a HD, network, cable and Linux. It is/was expensive. But you can buy the cable and linux for 25 euros.... but the performance is quite lower.... for sure....

But for PS3 you dont need to buy anything, you have the HD, the network, cables, you just need to download a ISO of Linux yellow dog from your Pc and create a DVD.

Is there anyone with PS3 around that could install Linux......? Does anyone want to do that?
I would love to have a report about how Linux handles.

[Harrison]

With the slim PS2 you can use an external USB harddrive as standard. And as long as the PS2 is chipped you can just download the Linux distro for it and install it. There are a few different OSs out for the PS2, but I've not tried any yet.

[Teho]

Well, I've been having a lot of "fun" today. I've managed to install Ubuntu on my PS3, though not without some difficulties. And I've managed to test E-UAE on it, also not without some difficulties. That is, once I'd launched E-UAE it was running fine, it was getting to that point which was a little painful.

First off, that article linked to earlier skips the entire installation process of Ubuntu, which didn't help much. There were a couple of things I would've liked to know, such as why the hell the installation constantly froze at 15%. More than a little annoying, as each time you have to reboot the system from the CD which takes ages, and running the OS from the CD while installing is very slow. In the end, I found another guide which mentioned this, and detailed what to do to avoid it. Namely, shut down all non-essential processes and services to free up all system resources. This was also very fun and time-consuming, considering that shutting down some of the processes will bring the entire OS down, and when it comes back up everything you've stopped has started up again! Aarrgh!

After a lot of trial and error there though, finally the installation succeeded. So now it was time to get E-UAE running. Easy to get the files over to the PS3 right? Just transfer them across the local network, right?

Eh.. no. I've literally struggled for hours to get Ubuntu to communicate with my XP box, without success. The nearest I got was that Ubuntu did actually see itself and the XP machine on the network, but only spat an error when trying to connect to it. The XP machine never once found Ubuntu on the network at all, but had no problems connecting to itself over the network. Ubuntu connects to the internet well enough (am actually posting this through that right now), so I've no idea at the moment why it wouldn't work. (I did use the right protocols and firewall settings as far as I can tell). So in the end I ended up using my external HD to transfer over some files to test with. But am still bloody annoyed that I couldn't get that to work.

Once done though, E-UAE ran just fine. Relatively. I did use the WIP4 version, as I couldn't see the WIP3 anywhere on the homepage. And it kept crashing on me. First I was running a demo and thought I'd open the system monitor to check how the CPU was doing. That brought the OS to a screeching halt. Once up again, I opened the system monitor again before running E-UAE. And was pleased to see that Ubuntu obviously uses two of the cores, not just one. There's still five more available to it though! But it could perhaps be that it actually uses them and just has no way of visualising it. Anyway, running Pinball Dreams this time, emulating a 68040 AGA machine to see if the CPU would break a sweat. And it didn't. Neither core went far above 50% for long. Saw one top out at 70% but didn't see it go any higher than that. However, E-UAE dropped dead again before it was done loading the game's menu. But at least it didn't take the OS with it this time.

So, it seems to me that there is no problem running UAE speedwise, but there's definitely some stability issues here. But that could perhaps just be the buggy WIP4 version.

So what next? MAME?

[Harrison]

Linux is never that easy or user friendly to get working, which is the main reason it hasn't become a home OS for novices to use. But once things are setup correctly it is usually more stable than any other.

It is often mentioned how unstable WIP4 is so hopefully WIP3 will work much better. (if it can be found)

MAME would be cool to see running on the PS3. But I think we will see the true power of the PS3 once the system has been modded and developers can start writing native emulators for the PS3 hardware directly.

[Tiago]

Well well, i was away the weekend, and i am reading now all this new posts,
Great job Teho!
Yes maybe is buggy version.

About about linux? Does it work fine? Can you read Mp3, images, can you access the Web?

[FOL]

Linux is never that easy or user friendly to get working, which is the main reason it hasn't become a home OS for novices to use. But once things are setup correctly it is usually more stable than any other.

It is often mentioned how unstable WIP4 is so hopefully WIP3 will work much better. (if it can be found)

MAME would be cool to see running on the PS3. But I think we will see the true power of the PS3 once the system has been modded and developers can start writing native emulators for the PS3 hardware directly.

WIP3 can be found by scrolling down, or changing page on news page.