Playstation 3 to run Linux?

[heavyness]

welcome to the what will be the most hacked system ever. kinda scary, once the hackers get in, i'm sure there top priority will be to emulate the data so you can copy games directly onto the hard drive and play without a disc...

either it will work great, or be a complete nightmare.

i like this quote...

"We're not going to equip [the PS3 with] a HDD by default, because no matter how much [capacity] we put in it, it won't be enough."

i wish every company took that approach with their products.

"we were going to put seat belts and air bags in the car, but if your driving 99mph off a cliff, it won't help, so we are not bothering"

come on Sony, at least give us a small HD so we can save games and use it until we buy a bigger HD.

[animateddave]

i'm sure there top priority will be to emulate the data so you can copy games directly onto the hard drive and play without a disc...


Whats the big deal about that? I mean people download and burn ps2 and xbox games to dvds and play them everyday.

[heavyness]

Whats the big deal about that? I mean people download and burn ps2 and xbox games to dvds and play them everyday.

umm, its illegal.

[thomaspecht]

yeah, but were's the big deal?

j/k ;)


isn't sony selling a linux kit for the current generation ps2 as well? i remember reading about something like that. anyway, enough of this supercomputer crap. it's yet another console like numerous other models released in the past, not the best thing since sliced bread.
give us games worth playing and it'll make the ps3 a piece of hardware worth owning. who cares about specs (or running linux on it??)...

[enygma]

isn't sony selling a linux kit for the current generation ps2 as well? i remember reading about something like that.
Yes they did sell them. I have a Linux kit myself. I think they discontinued north american kits though because of lack of sales.

[darktding]

sounds like a cheap renderfarm coming up in the horizon....

[enygma]

It would seem that way, however, I think what has been mentioned in other threads is that the Cell processor doesn't handle branching very well, which is what raytracing does a lot of. This would in the end make for a nice renderfarm, but raytracing performance would falter due to architectural inefficiencies.

You're more than welcome to stick with reflection and shadow maps though... :D

[animateddave]

umm, its illegal.

Yes, well obviously but thats not the point I was making. When you said "welcome to the what will be the most hacked system ever.", it makes me think that you're saying that once you ps3 gets a harddrive the games will start getting pirated. My point is as far as pirating is concerned is that the harddrive makes no difference. PS2 games are getting pirated now and PS3 games will get pirated when they come out. The only difference I can see the harddrive making is maybe getting around needing a mod chip.

[PhilOsirus]

How could you copy games that are around 30gb to 60gb? It will cost more to buy HDs or whatever else you need to do so in the end.

[Bonedaddy]

I am... confused. How does this help them? Sony's been the hardest core proponents of the locked-down system, with proprietary formats, and now... Linux? Huh? Do they want independent developers... or... what?

So confused as to what their gameplan is.

[heavyness]

PS2 games are getting pirated now and PS3 games will get pirated when they come out. The only difference I can see the hard drive making is maybe getting around needing a mod chip.

exactly. one step closer means X amount of more people wont buy games because they can dl or copy the games. i've seen some huge bittorent files out there. and whats stopping someone from renting or gamefly'ing the games, copying it onto the hd, and then return the disc?

what system was it were you didn't need a mod chip to play a copied game... oh yeah, Dreamcast.

[MCronin]

Putting Linux on th PS3, giving away development tools and documentation for PS3 Linux and for their hardware doesn't compromise their game protection in the slightest, and won't make a PS3 running Linux anymore hackable than one that is not. The system runs it's own OS and the games are designed using that OS and with certain assumptions made about available resources. When you boot the machine with Linux, you are running a differrent OS than the games require and cannot really do anything with a PS3 game. You can't run it in Linux, you probably won't even be able to read the disc because the kernel won't support the filesystem the game disc uses. Add to that, I'm sure Sony will have hardware protection in there which will be undocumented.

Not saying it will be impossible to hack a PS3, just that running Linux on it is not going to help anymore than your current x86 PC running Windows will. I can guarantee you will need a hardware hack to run PS3 pirated games even if you have PS3 Linux.

[Man]

Not saying it will be impossible to hack a PS3

now that's one thing you can be sure of. there's a 99% chance of them doing that, even if it takes some time. here, people managed to modify [in order to play pirated games] gamecube just this year. ps3 will take even more time, but it's probably going to be done.

[Hazdaz]

sooooo, it's not going to come with a HD, and yet still cost around $450?!?

http://www.chumptastic.org/images/blog/ralph.jpg [Ralph Wiggum]Coo-Coo![/Ralph Wiggum]

I think I am going to choo-choo-choose an XB360 instead.

[thorn3d]

A $450 PS3 with Linux is not my idea of a cheap render farm. I'm not saying i'd ever want to use a PS3 for rendering, but I'm curious as to why anyone would... at that price point, you can basically build a real machine.

thorn

[Hazdaz]

A $450 PS3 with Linux is not my idea of a cheap render farm. I'm not saying i'd ever want to use a PS3 for rendering, but I'm curious as to why anyone would... at that price point, you can basically build a real machine.
I agree with you, but I think the thinking behind this idea is that for $450, your not going to build the fastest machine for rendering (even if ya skimp on the stuff that isn't important for a render farm), but with SONY's hype-machine in full effect, people want to put their hands on this "supercomputer" for rendering... and if that was really the case, then $450 would be a crazy good deal.

[Titus]

You don't need a HDD to have Linux running on a PS3 (or any computer), if the console comes with ethernet then a thin server can be implemented.

[Geta-Ve]

You know what.. if PS3 will be able to handle any HDD that would make it a HELL of a lot easier for us to just go buy a 100/200gig drive when it comes out.. easy peasy..no?

as per linux.. i dont see the problem as its already done on the ps2..

[kraal]

not to jump on the pirate ship but studies show most people that own game systems are too lazy to deal with pirating.... most people that pirate games for individual use would not of bought the game or the system if they were not going to pirate

[UrbanFuturistic]

Putting Linux on th PS3, giving away development tools and documentation for PS3 Linux and for their hardware doesn't compromise their game protection in the slightest, and won't make a PS3 running Linux anymore hackable than one that is not. The system runs it's own OS and the games are designed using that OS and with certain assumptions made about available resources. When you boot the machine with Linux, you are running a differrent OS than the games require and cannot really do anything with a PS3 game. You can't run it in Linux, you probably won't even be able to read the disc because the kernel won't support the filesystem the game disc uses. Add to that, I'm sure Sony will have hardware protection in there which will be undocumented.Yes, but of course, only haxx0rs use Linux and it's mandatory piracy motivator an' it's a cancer an' it's unamerican, Billy Gates and his mate Steve "Barmy" Balmer sez so so it must be true.

I do so love it when people apply actual logic.

regards, Paul

[Beamtracer]

It makes sense that the PS3 runs on Linux. I don't think any other OS is up to the task.

Really. What other OS could possibly do it? PS3 uses the Cell processor. As far as I know, only Linux will be running on it.

Sony can ride on the coat tales of IBM who's pouring huge bucks into Linux for Cell. I think it will be great!

[tozz]

As far as I can see this can only lead to good things. Just imagine people coding software for PS3 for all different kind of tasks, like the XBOX is now. We'll all just have to wait and see :)

[KayosIII]

welcome to the what will be the most hacked system ever. kinda scary, once the hackers get in, i'm sure there top priority will be to emulate the data so you can copy games directly onto the hard drive and play without a disc...

People can already do this on XBOX (you can't play live though once you have done this)....

Just because there is Linux running on the machine does not mean that it will be much of a target. however I don't want to get into the whole hackers vs crackers things.

[KayosIII]

Could be interesting....
Expesially if content creation tools get ported and take full advantage of the SPU's...

Those are 2 big ifs....

[StephanD]

Is there really an advantage in using Linux on their chip rather than on your PC?I would think not.


Will it support a standard PC monitor or will I be restricted to my 700X pixels TV?



Also what kind of competition will it offer against my current 'Cash Registers' RenderFarms?How can they beat that ;)

[KayosIII]

I am guessing standard monitors... The PS2 Linux kit supports standard monitors, but only "sync-on-green" monitors for the install.

The really cool thing about the Cell are the 8 attached DSP units.... These units will let you do a lot of the cool things you can do with a GPU but since they are on chip - it would be a lot easier (and faster) creating something to be saved to file (not just display)

There would be no advantage with applications that are not specifically coded to take advantage of the DSP units (SPU I think is what Sony calls them). But if you were to say write an image editing program to deal with floating point based images I am guessing you would be able to get most filters encoded to use the 8 SPU's and be able to run these pretty much in real time even on quite large files (I wonder If there will be a way to put more ram in a PS3)- . Sound processing would also work really well. As for 3D rendering - I would take the cell more seriously if it was as good with Double precision floats as with regular floats (I am guessing that IBM might release one of these once PS3 is safely out the doors - but it will probably be quite expensive) - If you could live with Single Precision and could find a render engine built from the ground up to take advantage of the CELL then you would have a very fast render platform indeed.

Update: It appears I might be wrong about some of the above - more reading in the following link http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=247821

[PhilOsirus]

not to jump on the pirate ship but studies show most people that own game systems are too lazy to deal with pirating.... most people that pirate games for individual use would not of bought the game or the system if they were not going to pirate

Only a half-truth. They would not buy ALL the games they copy, but since they can copy any games they copy them all even those they would have bought because they ARE gamers and they love to play games so they wouldn't pass on many of them if they could not copy the games, it's not like downloading an app over the internet, they go through many steps in order to be able to copy and play said copied games. On top of that, many make this a side business of theirs as they sell copied games to others who don't want to go through the whole copying scheme, they just get their console chipped and buy cheap copied games from the people I just mentionned. I think it is probably a bigger issue in the game industry than in many others and it's getting a bit out of hand, hopefully the larger formats will make it more difficult for pirates.

[pearson]

This is a marketing gimmick, nothing more. He admits they are doing this just so people will call it a computer. Just like the PS2 was marketed as a supercomputer that everyone would use for CAD/CAM stuff*... :rolleyes:


*the Emotion Engine (PS2 CPU) was supposed to be used in some computers that would be the bestest evah!!! Remarkably similar to what they are claiming with the PS3 and no doubt will again with PS4...:shrug:

[NanoGator]

With only 512 meg of RAM, it wouldn't be that great of render slave.

[martinj]

Is there really an advantage in using Linux on their chip rather than on your PC?I would think not.


Will it support a standard PC monitor or will I be restricted to my 700X pixels TV?



Also what kind of competition will it offer against my current 'Cash Registers' RenderFarms?How can they beat that ;)

The PS3, has support for dual 1080p via 2 HDMI ports. You can cheaply (30 USD?) get a HDMI to DVI converter.

[NickBFTD]

People can already do this on XBOX (you can't play live though once you have done this)....


The same applies to PS2 also.

[maxmaster]

Remember Jaguar 64 from Atari? Some people actually built Jaguar OS for the fun of it.
(I know it is not so useful but sounds like fun)

People like to play with their toys. Besides piracy matter or usufulness of Linux OS running on the machine, it IS fun to tweak those little machines.

There are many Linux distros specially design to run on either XBox or PS series.
(Like Gantoox, BlackRhino etc..)

When PS 3 comes out, I am sure I will have all kinds of pleasure of doing "science project" on my old and tired PS 2. The machine could be reincarnated as a linux machine.

Rebirth itself is great experiment, I think.

[asphaltcowboy]

Ken Kutaragi should just shut the hell up.
Seriously Sony, get someone who doesn't spout so much bullshit.

[Hazdaz]

Ken Kutaragi should just shut the hell up.
Seriously Sony, get someone who doesn't spout so much bullshit.

Why would they get rid of him?? Seems like he is a 'perfect' fit with SONY's hype-machine. :rolleyes:

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