Anyone did try Linux on PS3 ?

[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.

[Teho]

Sorry FOL, but I just can't find it there. There is only the WIP4 when you scroll down, and the 'older versions'-link only has final versions, and not the WIPs. I'm sure I can find it if I search the web a little though, I just couldn't be bothered yesterday.

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

Linux seemingly works just great. I haven't gotten to test it that thoroughly yet though. But there are a couple of video and audio clips present after you install, which played just fine for me. It does seem that you can't access the PS3 partition of the HD which definitely sucks, as that's where all the audio, video and images are stored.

Linux sees the CF/MS/SD card readers and there is a Bluetooth service running. But I haven't tested how they actually work yet. USB ports definitely work of course, as you need to use a USB keyboard and mouse. I've been using Logitech's wireless PS3 keyboard with touchpad which also works fine, since it's not bluetooth but uses a USB IR receiver.

Ubuntu also comes with Firefox installed, and it also works just fine (but not as fine as Opera, of course ). I didn't have to set up anything, Linux found my router and was connected from the very start.

The only thing I had problems with was networking with my XP box, as I mentioned earlier. I'm going to look further into that, but if I can't get that working I can't see me using Linux all that much, as it's too much of a hassle to move files over there otherwise. I don't want to store too much on that partition as it is either, as it's only 10GB. Yes, Sony's HD format tool stupidly does not let you choose the size of the partition. It's 10GB or none at all. You can choose to give the PS3 OS 10GB and the rest to Linux instead, but all in all it's pretty silly to not let you define the sizes yourself.

But even if I could, I wouldn't want to store entire file collections on it anyway. I definitely want to just stream them across the network, or copy across the ones I want whenever. So unless I can get the networking going, I probably won't be using the Linux install very much for anything worthwile. It will be fun to experiment a little with it though.