I recently read on one of the PS3 forums that Linux will be the default OS of the PS3. It’s a popular notion, probably only exacerbated by the fact that Mr. Kutaragi said that they might ship it on a HDD for the PS3. But that doesn’t make the big “L” OS the default OS. For example, Sony shipped it as an add-on kit for the PS2. But the PS2’s OS certainly didn’t start with the letter ‘L’. As a matter of fact, the PS2 didn’t have much of an OS at all to speak of, from what I understand.

But the PS3 does have an OS, and it’s not the big ‘L’ either. And it’s not Mac OS X either. It’s Sony’s own prorietary OS, from what I understand. It just doesn’t make sense to use a general purpose OS as a gaming console’s OS. There’s too much gunk in there that’s not needed, cluttering up disk space, memory, and processing power. Maybe a stripped-down, highly modified and targetted version of a general purpose OS, like the Xbox 360 is supposed to have. But that’s not Sony’s decision with the PS3. (However, my source may be wrong. Please correct me if this is the case.)

But that doesn’t mean that the PlayStation 3 can’t run operating systems beside its own. It can run any OS that is ported to the PS3 hardware. This will probably included Linux, of course. And man it would be cool if it also included Mac OS X. While theoretically possible, I somehow doubt it. 🙁