Yellow Dog Linux

I was wondering, not having installed YDL on my PS3, just how fast is the PS3 for running Linux?

I assume the applications need to be specifically written to take advantage of the Cell CPU?

Part of me is curious just how more cost effective it is to use a YDL PS3 as a video editing workstation, compared to buying a higher end PC/Mac to run the popular video editors.

On Linux I am only aware of Cinelerra (sp?) which as I recall was "good enough" although not by any means the cutting-edge of video editing (compared to say Final Cut on Mac).

I am interested in what will happen when the PS4 is actually released, but since it's not backwards compatible with PS3 games I'd think many may hold on to their PS3s for a while.

8bitsofascii wrote:I assume the applications need to be specifically written to take advantage of the Cell CPU?

Yes, they do, and unfortunately there are very few programs out there that take advantage of the Cell's SPEs.

8bitsofascii wrote:Part of me is curious just how more cost effective it is to use a YDL PS3 as a video editing workstation, compared to buying a higher end PC/Mac to run the popular video editors.

With the limited RAM and no hardware accelerated video I wouldn't even consider it as an option. Even an older G4 PowerMac with decent RAM would be a better choice.

I see. Interesting, thanks for the insight. I hadn't thought about the RAM.

I also did not know PS4 was not backwards compatible.

Not that I ever tried but I *think* the PS3 can run PS/2 games.

The other night I was just musing that maybe PS3 with YDL can act as a server farm for Xgrid* with the client app running off a Mac and farming out the processing to such servers, using specific coding for the Cell to optimize. That could allow some of our lower end Macs to do high end stuff on the cheap.

* now surprisingly deprecated by AAPL. dunno why.

8bitsofascii wrote:Part of me is curious just how more cost effective it is to use a YDL PS3 as a video editing workstation, compared to buying a higher end PC/Mac to run the popular video editors.

I actually wrote about something like that here:

viewtopic.php?f=19&t=8464&p=41921#p41921

Cheers,
Paul

8bitsofascii wrote:Not that I ever tried but I *think* the PS3 can run PS/2 games.

Only the first generation of PS3s had PS2 emulation built in. They dropped emulation starting with the 40 gig North American model.

Since then, Sony has released PS2 games on PSN, but they are not using hardware PS2 emulation, per se, like the launch consoles did. Instead, rumor has it that they are PS3 binary recompiles of PS2 games - although no one knows for sure.

Cheers,
Paul

Interesting tidbit! Thanks for the info.