Have you installed Linux on the Sony PS3?
Filed under: Gaming, Sony Playstation 3 | By: Daniel
Posted on: October 28, 2007 | 10 Comments
I keep meaning to install Linux on my Sony PS3, but I have just not got around to it yet and now I want to more than ever following the news yesterday about playing PC games on the Playstation 3 via Linux with Game Streams.
Have you installed Linux on the Sony PS3?
This would open up so many more options for my PS3 that I think the time has come to jump in and install.
Before I do, please let us know your thoughts and experiences with Linux on the Sony PS3.
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Yeah, YDL is definatly worth the install. Once you get used to the software and GUI it’s actually pretty good.
Yes.
Installing Linux on your PS3 is a breeze, I’ve heard good things about YDL. I have experience installing fedora core and Gentoo. I don’t suggest gentoo for inexperienced people.
Installing Linux on your PS3 is in fact easier than installing Linux on your PC. With the PS3, all of the hardware has drivers built into the kernel, this means no messing with _any_ drivers to get things working. Additionally, while running under a hypervisor, you have unrestricted access to the CELL processor and most of the hardware including networking, making it much more attractive to programmers than Microsoft’s XNA for the XBOX 360 (You have to pay for it, can’t use C++, can’t use networking, must fit into their framework, etc…).
There is one major drawback through. As of now, there is no widely 2D/3D accelerator for Linux on the PS3. It’s underway but is not intended for inexperienced end users. This means it’ll make your PS3 great for browsing the web, working on documents, playing music, etc. But, if you want to play Doom 3, or Unreal Tournament (both available in Linux) Don’t expect more than 1/10th of a frame per second.
To sum it up: If you want a Linux PC to play new games on, your PS3 is not the right choice. If you just want another computer that’s hooked up to your new shiny plasma TV or something, then go for it.
Keep in mind, whatever your choice of distro, you will need the PowerPC 64 version. Find a guide specifically for installing it on your PS3 and follow the instructions closely.
Good luck.
I installed YDL so I could watch DIVX movies but to be honest unless you are a Linux Geek and I mean that in repectful way - you have no chance with linux AKA YDL.
I tried Ubuntu and a couple of others but YDL is the best.
Wireless doesn’t work in YDL so you need to have the Cat5 plugged in so YDL will connect to the internet
I still have YDL on there but I never use it, maybe when Gamestream kicks off for Linux I may find it useful again.
I have installed YDL, Fedora Core 6 and 7 and a little less common distro called XFCE. Fedora Core 6 and 7 are the best installs regardless of what people say about YDL - I paid for a proper YDL service and to be honest there are too many bugs and differences in the distrubution to make it worthwhile.
If you have any intention of developing Cell based code, then simply DO NOT use YDL - you will just end up chasing around setting up extra env variables and be a complete pain. The SDK will not natively install on YDL either. Even from application aspect, and so forth, there really isn’t a good reason to use YDL. People will point out the nice user interface, well please try out FC6 or FC7 because they have equally nice interfaces. And if you want to spend a little more time installing, but want a speedy and nice looking interface then try XFCE its extremely lightweight, and on the PS3 performs very well.
The Linux on PS3 is not really of any major use for games. What itis interesting for though, is things like uPNP server, or Apache server :), or even a DB Server
Client side, it can do docs, gimp and so forth but on FC6 or 7 or YDL you will find it quite slow and not overly useful. XFCE is margainly better (due to the lower overhead of mem usage) but its not something you would use often.
At the moment, Linux on PS3 provides access to one of the most powerful CPU’s around - the Cell. This is its primary purpose, and if you want to get in and tinker with it, Go for it!! You wont be disappointed, its an amazingly high performance chip. If you want to use it as a generic OS.. you may find yourself having problems here and there.. uts usable, but not ideal.
I have installed Linux on My PS3.
It works fine a s a computer in the living room.
I first tried Yellow Dog Linux (YDL). It ran fine. Web browsing, email, and web serving was fine. Watching videos was good too. I happen to use Ubuntu on my G4 powerbook, and it runs a lot faster than the PS3 with YDL. I decided to put Ubuntu on the PS3, with the XFCE window manager. It is a lot faster than the YDL. I also got wireless working fine in ubuntu too. I upgraded to Ubuntu 7.10 from 7.04, because the 7.10 install would not work directly.
I think it would be kind of fun for someone to install Linux on the PS3, even if you’ve never saw Linux before.
Its pretty easy to install, and doesn’t break anything.
The real question is? Why have a PC capable of playing PC games in good quality only to stream them to the PS3? What about lag? You would also need a keyboard and mouse for linux and for game streams. Its just better to play your PC games on your PC. The Ps3 will not make Bioshock look any better if thats what your thinking
I was tinkering at the weekend, I have previously has bad experiences with Yellowdog and Ubuntu on PS3, so decided to stay with what I know, Gentoo.
Gentoo works really well on PS3. I got it running last night with the latest 2.6.23.1 kernel, which is much improved over the kernels shipping with the other distributions. I also boot my kernel directly, rather than using kexec/kboot, and it massively reduces boot time (~15seconds to the XLogon prompt).
Oh. I should point out, that IBM and Sony both use Fedora Core, as does the Barcelona SuperComputing arm (developers of the Cell SDK). So if you want the most complete PS3 compatibility development wise for PS3 use what they suggest (read the readme.txt in the Cell SDK’s).
Other distro’s are generally patched to suit. Whereas the FC7+ versions are the development platforms being used - on Mercury systems and PS3’s.
I try but i couldn’t understand the dumb steps so i gave up installing Linux on my 60GB PLAYSTATION 3. I have a lot content on my hard drive so if i try again i will lose my entire life content.
I installed YDL a week after a got the PS3.. Too be honest I found the PS3 a much better frontend media box than a Linux server/workstation. My current setup is a Cheap PC running CentOS and Mythtv (3xDVB-T tuners) and the PS3 as the playback frontend via uPnp on a gigabit network. The PS3 has the BEST mpeg2 playback.
However now that the PS3 is such a critical part of the living room kit, I’m thinking of buying another so I can play in my den. I think as the price of the PS3 fails it will become a more acceptable Linux server.