Taellik wrote:The $300 Sony is cattle prodding you to spend to buy a slim PS3 would be better spent buying a netbook or nettop PC with Ubuntu linux with more timely support, more memory to use, reliable HMDI support, etc, etc, etc.
I'd like to speak to this a little, if I may - i.e. Why are you so interested in running PS3 Linux when there is a whole world of x86 Linuxes available that are easier to use, etc.?
So - a bit of background.
I'm a software tester by trade. I spend a lot of time in operating systems as part of my day to day activities.
In my house, I currently have 4 hardware Unix/Linux boxes:
1. Sun Solaris Ultra-SPARC 1
2. PS2 Linux (PS2 dedicated to Linux - my low power webserver)
3. Dual boot computer - Win XP and Red Hat 8 (for cross-compiles to PS2 Linux)
4. Quad boot computer - Win XP, Fedora, SuSE and Solaris x86
In addition, I have a quad-core x86 machine at work where I have at least 11 virtual Linux boxes installed: Ubuntu, Debian, CentOS, Scientific Linux, Fedora 9, Fedora 10, Fedora 11, OpenSuSE, OpenSolaris, gNewSense and GNU Hurd.
Phew! That's a lot of Unix.
But - it's actually down from the amount I used when I worked in the Unix Test Lab at WRQ. Then, I also had IBM AIX, Digital TRU-64, HP's HP-UX, Sun Solaris, Silicon Graphics IRIX, and a plethora of Workstation Unixes from Sony, Casio, and NEC.
So - yeah - I love Unix. I love Windows, too. Heck - I just love computers. (and -
I love lamp?)
One of the things that helps me keep myself interested in computers is running in environments where I don't necessarily feel comfortable. Game Console Linux is a great way for me to do this.
Currently, I run Linux on my Dreamcast (Hitachi SH4), PS2 (Emotion Engine - mostly mips), and PS3 (Cell - mostly PowerPC). Mostly, I run it on my PS3. The PS2 just runs as a low power apache webserver nowadays, and the Dreamcast was more of a proof of concept.
I learn a lot of things running these Linuxes. I started doing PS2 Linux builds of Mozilla - and later Firefox - very early on. I found a number of bugs in the early days of the project where programmers had just assumed x86 - their code was not truly portable. I think I even have a check-in or two in the original mozilla tree to support MIPS architectures. This was good for the overall future of Mozilla; when the time came to do ARM builds of Firefox for netbooks, the work I had done years ago insured the code could be ported.
Sure - running Linux on a game console isn't as easy as running it on a stand-alone computer. But - you learn a lot more about things this way. Low memory computing, working around limitations, a deeper understanding of what it takes to get a mouse and X Windows running - these are all things you learn on these kinds of systems.
As for why YDL? Well - I don't mind running Enterprise Linuxes at home. I deal with cutting edge systems at work all the time. When I get home - the last thing I want to do is what I do at work. That's why all of my home boxes are Win XP, instead of Vista or Win 7. Tried and true - that's what I'm looking for.
The inability of my YDL to run cutting edge software doesn't bother me - that's what I have all these Windows boxes for. Instead, I just wanted a comfortable Linux where I could quietly work on projects that interested me - Yellow Dog on the PS3 matched that to a tee. In addition, you could really get to the bottom of code - since it "just worked" on x86, that holds no interest for me. I want to see it break and then get it working.
I did mention I'm a software tester, right?
Also - I used Yellow Dog years ago at the Unix lab at WRQ. We had a
Power Computing Macintosh Clone that we loaded an ancient version of Yellow Dog on. We also had an
IBM Carolina series computer in the lab that we ran LinuxPPC on.
(Sadly, I believe that LinuxPPC ended when the main developer passed away. That left Yellow Dog as the only PPC torch bearer for a long time.)
So - yeah - I'm going to keep using my PS3 for Linux for a while. Currently, the DNS spoofing seems to be serving my PSN needs okay. I split my my time about 50/50 between GameOS and OtherOS; this will probably be my usage pattern for the near future.
As for future plans? I'll probably discontinue buying Sony games. I have an Xbox 360 - I'm expecting to roll that into rotation for my primary gaming platform going forwards. I'll probably buy a stand-alone Blu-ray player and transition the PS3 into a Linux box/PS2 upscaler. (Oddly enough - the usage that most folks claim nobody buys a PS3 for....)
Cheers,
Paul
P.S. Oddly enough - this is the third time I've written this post completely from scratch. I'm using Win XP + Google Chrome to post it. I had been using Win XP + IE 6, but every 10 minutes, the browser would go "back" one page, and dump all of my text. I'm guessing it was because I was hitting some keystroke that made the browser go back. Sheesh!