Comments on: Wishlist: PS3 Linux Edition

By: Darrin

Darrin — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 02:12:17 +0000

tom, have you posted that on the yellowdog forums or mailing lists? It could just be a driver or config issue.

By: tom

tom — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 20:00:40 +0000

Hey Everyone,
No luck with the DVD player under Yellow Dog or another Linux. I have tried everything, and scoured the Internet. It looks like the dvd drive is locked under Linux. You can’t read a movie from the drive no matter what you do. You can’t even do a cp /mnt/dvd/VIDEO_TS/*.vob ~. VOB files can not be read. I wonder why no one else is talking about this. The video and the DVD drive are both crippled. You can’t play movies from the drive, or rip DVDs. Very Frustrating.

By: arabek

arabek — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 07:48:40 +0000

Count me in, i was ranting ’bout the PS3 Linux edition for some time now. Talking to my friends, we came to one conclusion:
- full cpu/gpu access (no hypervisor, wich slows down all operations)
- br-rw
- more (or even expandable – for the future) ram.

These three things would make PS3 a perfect desktop replacement. I even know of some Polish universities that bought ps3′s as a Cell enviroment, for computational purposes – it’s still way cheaper than an IBM Blade server

By: nyssen

nyssen — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 04:37:00 +0000

I would like to add this:
from a marketing standpoint, Sony doesn’t want to emphasize that “PS3 = computer” idea

By: nyssen

nyssen — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 04:30:13 +0000

Monolith has one very strong point: they understand the power and creativity of open source software. This box will evolve into something very interesting.

By: Darrin

Darrin — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 16:25:35 +0000

nyssen, good point: Sony loses money on hardware.

However, I bet most of that loss is in overhead (design, building rent, depreciation costs, etc) and not in per unit costs (direct labor and direct materials provided by outside suppliers). If they increase sales volumes, their loses per unit would definitely drop, and if they add the right price premium to an enhanced Linux-centric SKU, they could definitely make those Linux SKUs profitable.

Monlith looks like they make a nice Linux media PC, but I think Sony could mop up that business with a Linux-centric PS3. Look at what the PS3 would offer that one of those Monlith PC’s don’t offfer:

– Blu-Ray. For a Media PC, this is a strong bonus
– A/V: The HDMI 1.3 + Toslink on a PS3 blows away the DVI and integrated toslink on a PC motherboard.
– WiFi + Bluetooth
– Smaller, lighter, quieter, and much more stylish form factor.
– PS3 media functionality is very highly polished and is a really nice complement to Linux functionality.
– Games. Oh yeah: a PS3 media PC doubles as a high-end games console with all the best games.

By: Real Gambler

Real Gambler — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 15:46:21 +0000

IBM is already selling something like what you’re looking for. It’s literally begging to have linux installed : ) Though, since the PS3 is sold at lost, and Blades server are sold with profit in mind, they are more expensive.

Currently, just getting more access to the GPU would already be soooo much nicer. After all, Linux is still a relatively dense core o.s. It could also be compiled expressively for the PS3 with only a few drivers, so overall, the “lack” of memory would not be so bad. Anybody can replace the drive quickly.

By: Henning

Henning — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 12:36:38 +0000

The PS3 has 512MB of RAM, divided into two types. Note that can still store code logic etc in the video RAM if you want to.