7 years of Linux on Playstation-foo hardware.

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7 years of Linux on Playstation-foo hardware.

Postby CronoCloud » 02 Jun 2009, 08:21

Paul knows this, since he did it too, but I've been running Linux on Playstation hardware since May 29th of 2002. Yep, I'm one of those people who have the PS2 Linux kit, and until the middle of last year, just a short time after installing YDL on my PS3, it was fully functional. No, you can't have my RTE disc, it's a collectors item. I learned a lot via Linux (for Playstation 2), it was my first exposure to Linux, just like YDL on the PS3 is some users first exposure to Linux. I pretty much use the same software setup, if I ran it on the PS2, I've probably run it on the PS3. A few notes:

PS2 LInux and YDL are Red Hat based distros which made the switchover very smooth.

regex on PS2 Linux and YDL acts POSIX, even though it's a GNU regex. Don't know why, since I know very little about regex, but it tripped me up on both machines when I installed a menucolors patched nethack. Had to use the POSIX version of the menucolors settings.

I hate the default RH DIRCOLORs in the terminal, only found out how to change them a few years after owning the PS2 LInux kit, I used the same change on YDL.

I also replace that awful awful Darkblue with Dodgerblue in my .Xdefaults.

YDL telnet does NOT use 8 bit mode by default, unlike telnet on PS2 Linux, so if you connect to nethack.alt.org, your alt-keys won't work to replace the # commands. You fix that by adding -8 to your telnet command.

I'm lazy and still haven't got around to installing a newer version of the Gimp. I actually use the Gimp quite a bit and prefer the newer UI in the 2.4+ versions that I actually installed on the PS2, but as I said, I'm lazy.

I never was able to get a version of Abiword more recent that 2.2.foo running on the PS2, which was a shame. Oh, they'd compile just fine, but quit with no error messages at startup.

Could I use youtube? Not directly, though I could use that youtube.dl script to download the flv's or mp4's and watch them with ffplay. I did get a swfdec version going, but it had the same color issues the unpatched for PS2 version of Links2 did.

Paul did the Firefox and Thunderbird builds for the PS2 LInux community, which means we all loved him. GTK1 enabled though, not GTK2, because that way they'd work on a fresh install since only GTK1 was included. The worked pretty well, except Thunderbird got slower and slower and bigger and bigger, that's why I switched to claws-mail.

If you wanted GTK2 on the PS2 Linux kit you had to compile it from source. Which means I know how to compile me a new GTK2 if Gimp 2.6.foo requires it. One of the secrets is to always use the newest freetype you can. cairo and pango are picky that way. because if you don't your pango won't have the cairo backend compiled and installed which means your GTK2 configure itself will fail.

Anyway, It's been 7 enjoyable years of Linux for me, thanks to SCEfoo

Ron Rogers Jr. (CronoCloud)
CECHE01 PS3 (MGS4 80GB Bundle) without OtherOS and with an upgraded 320GB HD
Running Fedora 23 on a Compaq Presario CQ5320F upgraded with a Phenom X4 and GT640
Vizio E221A1 22" 1080P TV with HDMI, using 1080P over HDMI
PSN ID: CronoCloudAuron
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Re: 7 years of Linux on Playstation-foo hardware.

Postby ppietro » 03 Jun 2009, 00:43

Yay-foo!

Thanks for posting your PlayStation Linux reminiscences. That was a very enjoyable read.

I'm still have one of my PS2s set up as an Apache web server. It's super stable, and I think it only draws 25 watts. :D

Interesting side note. PS2 Linux was a Red Hat derivative based on Kondara/MNU Linux. http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kondara_MNU/Linux . YDL Linux is a Red Hat derivative based on CentOS Linux. :D

Cheers,
Paul

P.S. And - no - you can't have my PS2 Linux discs either. :P
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