http://www.osnews.com/story/13983/Sony_PS3_to_Ship_with_Linux_Support Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2009, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Thu, 09 Jul 2009 21:11:50 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif http://www.osnews.com http://osnews.com/thread?104671 http://osnews.com/thread?104671 The words "ship" and "support" do not mean the same thing.

Edit: Oh, they fixed the title.Edited 2006-03-15 17:07 Wed, 15 Mar 2006 16:51:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (TechniCookie) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?104672 http://osnews.com/thread?104672 I am still surprised about the Linux on PS3 announce. It's hard to believe Sony is doing that move...It does not fit Sony's agenda at all.
I will be one of the first happy buyers if Linux on PS3 comes true. Wed, 15 Mar 2006 16:55:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (peskanov) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?104675 http://osnews.com/thread?104675 Yes, where exactly does it say "ship with linux"? All I see is "support linux" as in they may release another kit like they did with the PS2. There is a huge difference.Edited 2006-03-15 17:00 Wed, 15 Mar 2006 16:59:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (jwhazel) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?104676 http://osnews.com/thread?104676 You beat me to it; I saw the same hype months ago.

(looks like they fixed the title pretty quickly, now it is more correct)

Something I would love to see would be Sony reaching out to a distribution and asking them to come up with a customized distro specifically built for the PS3. The PR would be great for linux in general, and since the hardware would be controlled (a la Apple) it should be pretty easy to make a distro "just work" on the machines. I can't imagine any distro maker turning them down, because they would be getting market exposure in a ridiculous number of homes.

On Sony's side, they would be able to market the PS3 as a full-bore PC instead of just a console, and would probably sell more units that way.

I highly doubt it will happen, but it would be nice. Wed, 15 Mar 2006 17:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Flatline) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?104679 http://osnews.com/thread?104679 The PS3's hard drive "will be 60GB big, be completely upgradeable, and support Linux OS" plus "will act as a home server and allow users to store various forms of media to be pulled up elsewhere."

It's not clear to me if this means runs Linux or works with Linux (in some capacity). Wed, 15 Mar 2006 17:04:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (KenJackson) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?104683 http://osnews.com/thread?104683 Perhaps they should change the title again. Several news sites (but not the one which is linked here) are stating that Linux will be installed on the PS3 HD.

From gamespot:

[UPDATE] The SCE president also told the crowd that the PS3 would use a 60GB 2.5" hard disc drive (HDD). A slide show during the presentation said the HDD would will be loaded with the Linux operating system versus Microsoft's Windows OS. The show also said it could be used as a "home server" and be directly connected to the Internet, and be full "upgradeable." Wed, 15 Mar 2006 17:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (TechniCookie) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?104687 http://osnews.com/thread?104687 Digi.no (norwegian) wrote some info about PS3 with preinstalled linux-distro on harddrive..

Sony, GPL, yeah right..
Guess time will show Wed, 15 Mar 2006 17:26:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Axentrix) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?104705 http://osnews.com/thread?104705 Latest release date for the PS3 is now November...in Japan.

Resentful gamers will blame the exorbitant price of the forthcoming PS3 on it's morphing away from being a dedicated game machine to a multi-media device

Perhaps a revolt will ensue.

Indeed, all does not appear well at Sony. Wed, 15 Mar 2006 18:02:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Harald) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?104712 http://osnews.com/thread?104712 If you had any illusions of the relevance of the Dreamcast 360 yesterday those illusions should be gone today.

The race for next gen dominace has finally begun between Sony's PS3 and Nintendo's Revolution. The only thing missing is the price of the Rev. E3 is going to be insane with Sony and Nintendo going head to head with their nextgen games.

The 360 is completely dead in Japan. It is floundering in Europe. Last month the 360 only managed to sell 160k units compared to 300k PS2s from Sony. To make that clear, Sony's six year old console is outselling the 360 2 to 1. And the trend is down for monthly sales of the 360 each month. The console is only selling to the most hardcore of former Dreamcast/Xbox owners. The claims of the 360 being sold out everywhere are getting more and more silly. Every major retailers has had 360s of both variety in stock for all of March.

The days of throwing billions at the Xbox project are over up in Redmond. It is time for them to seriously start thinking about knifing the baby.

Sony is about to put Linux as the centerpiece of 120+ million consumer's home media servers over the next four to five years. That's gotta sting up in Redmond.

With Microsoft finally out of the picture, we are about to enter a golden age of console gaming with the PS3 vs Rev and DS vs PSP.

Wonderful. Wed, 15 Mar 2006 18:26:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (MediaSex) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?104713 http://osnews.com/thread?104713 "Resentful gamers"

Uh, the release date for the PS3

Move back two to three months in Japan.
Stayed the same in the US.
Move FORWARD in Europe.

Outside of Japanese console buyers, who else is supposed to be 'resentful'?

"Indeed, all does not appear well at Sony."

The look of terror in your eyes when you wrote that must have been priceless... Wed, 15 Mar 2006 18:29:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (MediaSex) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?104716 http://osnews.com/thread?104716 Latest release date for the PS3 is now November...in Japan.

The latest word is that it will be a worldwide launch in November. As far as the price goes, I doubt that it will be priced higher than $399. Wed, 15 Mar 2006 18:39:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (rbenchley) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?104719 http://osnews.com/thread?104719 Actually reports say that Sony has said it won't be less than 50,000.00 JP YEN, which converts to about $426. Wed, 15 Mar 2006 18:47:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Indech) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?104720 http://osnews.com/thread?104720 [quote]On Sony's side, they would be able to market the PS3 as a full-bore PC instead of just a console, and would probably sell more units that way. [/quote]

Also that might be benefical to them, as exporting "PC computers", rather than "consoles" to certain countries would be cheaper to Sony (If I'm not wrong, I think UK is like that). Wed, 15 Mar 2006 18:52:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (malkia) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?104721 http://osnews.com/thread?104721 [quote]Actually reports say that Sony has said it won't be less than 50,000.00 JP YEN, which converts to about $426.[/quote]

Could you provide a source, please? I'm interrested. Wed, 15 Mar 2006 18:55:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (malkia) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?104730 http://osnews.com/thread?104730 GamerReports mentions it here: http://www.gamersreports.com/news/1746/ Wed, 15 Mar 2006 19:18:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Indech) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?104739 http://osnews.com/thread?104739 The PS/3 has a 1GB link. Plug the ethernet into your local PC and the PS/3 into your monitor. Now run XGL on the PS/3. PS/3 is rumored to already having something like EGL on it. The PS/3 becomes your xserver and the remote clients are the apps on your desktop PC.

I don't even care if the PS/3 comes with Linux on a hard disk. It would be super if its boot ROM could load the OS remotely (from the PC you have it plugged into) and run in diskless mode.

Stop buying expensive video cards your PC - use your PC/3 as a video card.

My back of the envelope calculations say that this configuration is fast enough to run OpenGL based games. 1GB is plenty of bandwidth, latency is most of the problem. Wed, 15 Mar 2006 19:45:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (jonsmirl) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?104743 http://osnews.com/thread?104743 It's not that strange there will be Linux for the Play Station 3. IBM knows that for any 'supercomputing' type computer to succeed, it must run Linux as well. Hence IBM has already developped the software needed to run Linux on IBM. IBM is Sony's buisness partner, so in essence, Sony going with Linux instead of something proprietary means a free OS with lots of capabilities (or at least avoiding the costly proces of developping their own kernel that does half of what the Linux kernel does already, and safely, and semi-efficiently). Games developped for the PS3 need very specialised hardware (basically the kind of hardware that is in the PS3..) so any software running on the cell being GNU is no problem at all with respect to fears of reverse engineering.

In fact, if it were in theory possible to run PS3 games on non-PS3 devices through reverse-engineering, Sony wouldn't mind, since they're probably going to lose badly for each PS3 sold. Some estimate the first run to cost around $900 to produce (soure: http://money.cnn.com/2006/02/23/commentary/game_over/column_gaming/... ) mainly because of the Blu-Ray drive. Sony will have to make it's money via it's software licenses, of which they traditionally have boatloads (being the only console producer which has to intentionally limit the number of available licenses).

In case people are still in disbelief: Sony actually released Linux for the PS2. See: http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2002/03/21/linuxps2.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PS2_Linux

And it will release GNU/Linux developper tools for PS3 as well:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Play_Station_3#Software_Development_Ki...

Sony does not fear GPL.

Take note that it's speculated Sony did this (and will do it again) because tariffs in the EU are supposedly less heavy for personal computing systems than entertainment systems. By providing Linux and a harddisk option, PS2s were able to be sold as if they were PCs. Note that I don't know the fineries of this or wether it's true, but I vaguely recall trusting the source.Edited 2006-03-15 19:53 Wed, 15 Mar 2006 19:47:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Ronald Vos) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?104756 http://osnews.com/thread?104756 Basically they get free operating system with tons of applications. Many people (including me) will buy PS3 as a gaming machine and workstation. Wed, 15 Mar 2006 20:18:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (agentj) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?104757 http://osnews.com/thread?104757 Ronald Vos: In fact, if it were in theory possible to run PS3 games on non-PS3 devices through reverse-engineering, Sony wouldn't mind, since they're probably going to lose badly for each PS3 sold.

Given their history, they would mind it. Sony sued Bleem into the ground and bought Virtual Game Station from Connectix and got rid of it. (Both did PlayStation emulation) Granted... That was in the past and they might have changed. However, I wouldn't count on that. Wed, 15 Mar 2006 20:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Deletomn) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?104765 http://osnews.com/thread?104765 With Microsoft finally out of the picture, we are about to enter a golden age of console gaming with the PS3 vs Rev and DS vs PSP.

Indeed... A golden age with a duopoly.

As if that wasn't bad enough one of the companies doesn't have that good of a history. (Hint: Sony Rootkits)

As if that wasn't enough, profits appear to be going down for a large number of game companies.

Should I go on?

I personally can't view this as a golden age. Wed, 15 Mar 2006 20:27:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Deletomn) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?104776 http://osnews.com/thread?104776 But then Sony is going to lose loads of money, if thanks to the linux set many people (like me) would buy the PS3 just to use the linux distro and (maybe) play MAME and the rest of the emulators, these people are not going to benefit Sony buying games and they will never recover the investment.

People are hard at hacking the Xbox 360, with that amount of memory and that CPU it is a beast in terms of tech specs (in par with the PS3 I estimate), but I don't like playing videogames, if one day Linux runs well in the XBox360 Msoft is going to die, so many people buying it just as a computer and Msoft losing money for each sold console.

Instead I think Sony is going to put that high price to the PS3 knowing that many people may be buying it as a computer instead as a console if the linux story is true.

And this linux distro may be very limited in terms of access to the full potential of the hardware (as in the PS2 Linux kit) . If a linux distro gets the full power of that kind of machine I would make a Linux game for PS3 and avoid hiveng to buy an expensive licence to Sony. Wed, 15 Mar 2006 20:45:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Bjorg) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?104787 http://osnews.com/thread?104787 Bad news for Sony. It's been reported that PS3 will cost close to $800 to manufacture; which means that Sony will lose its shirt selling that box into a $400 market. Furthermore, it has been delayed until November 2006. Which means that Xbox360 will have a 20M install base fore PS3 even ships. If you seriously think that Sony is positioned for success, you better reduce your narcotics intake.Browser: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.01; Windows CE; PPC; 240x320; HP iPAQ h6300) Wed, 15 Mar 2006 21:22:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (tomcat) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?104788 http://osnews.com/thread?104788 you need to be reminded that PS2 also supports linux, it was sony's plan to report the PS2 in customs office as a personal computer, in that case the taxes in europe and elsewhere are smaller than for gaming / entertaining industry.

in any case, PS3 + linux is a good idea, and i think that it will make microsoft pulling their hair when it comes out, even if it is late. Wed, 15 Mar 2006 21:26:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (JernejL) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?104793 http://osnews.com/thread?104793 Games developped for the PS3 need very specialised hardware (basically the kind of hardware that is in the PS3..) so any software running on the cell being GNU is no problem at all with respect to fears of reverse engineering.

A) Games running on GNU/Linux can be just as closed and arcane as games running on any other system.
B) PS3 games won't be written for GNU/Linux, Cell or not. NetBSD runs on the Dreamcast and the GBA, but no Dreamcast or GBA games were developed for NetBSD. Wed, 15 Mar 2006 21:36:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (eMagius) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?104799 http://osnews.com/thread?104799 Linux homecomputer users are a niche, people who would use PS3s for their homeservers would be an even smaller niche compared to the other millions of consoles.

And I wouldn't buy a PS3 with all it's power just to run MAME..

Either way, a PS3 sold is still a source of potential revenue. Productioncosts will go down, and anyone with a PS3 in house will have to face some temptations in regards to buying games.

BTW, making your own games will be possible, but you will probably not be allowed to sell it. Wed, 15 Mar 2006 21:47:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Ronald Vos) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?104803 http://osnews.com/thread?104803 Yes, I am agree. The "temptation" point is very valid, I was about to add that would finally buy/rent some game.

But about the niche think on about this. If PS3 is a powerful linux machine many people would buy it as a:

Server
Render station (farm)
Workstation
Hobby computer
etc...

mainly in developing countries, even more now that linux is catching speed. Think about the latest advances as XGL/Compiz, even other eye-candy, openoffice starting to be mature enough to be used for small business, things like Automatix, etc... Wed, 15 Mar 2006 21:55:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Bjorg) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?104824 http://osnews.com/thread?104824 err, they released a linux kit for PS2. hardrive, linux distro, keyboard and mouse. sadly it was online order only...

im tempted to think what can be done with this and mythtv Wed, 15 Mar 2006 22:55:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (hobgoblin) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?104828 http://osnews.com/thread?104828 As per the report here http://www.gamespot.com/news/6145972.html Sony will release the PS3 sometime in November 2006. Sony has opted to not use Microsoft for the OS as the PS3 will use a Linux OS. What does this mean for PS3 purchasers? Well one can presume from the Sony report that it will mean not only more games ported to Linux but also PS3 customers will have a game console system that does more than simply play games. Depending on pricing and included options Sony's move to use Linux could make the PS3 a better purchase decision for consumers than Microsoft's XBOX 360. Wed, 15 Mar 2006 23:12:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Dark_Knight) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?104844 http://osnews.com/thread?104844 and it plays games too? Thu, 16 Mar 2006 00:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Sphinx) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?104931 http://osnews.com/thread?104931 Normally I don't have a huge interest in consoles; I like tweaking games locally and dealing with all their hassles (things "just working" is boring ). But I must say if everything they propose goes through, I might be interested in getting a PS3.
If the hard drive is relatively open and easy to upgrade, it'd be cool to throw on a desktop Linux distro and use the PS3 as a main home machine. For even $500 a cell processor and all the fixings is a steal.
Hopefully they don't cripple it by making it very difficult to "mod" the base system. Thu, 16 Mar 2006 05:06:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (situation) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?105044 http://osnews.com/thread?105044 "The PS/3 has a 1GB link. Plug the ethernet into your local PC and the PS/3 into your monitor. Now run XGL on the PS/3. PS/3 is rumored to already having something like EGL on it. The PS/3 becomes your xserver and the remote clients are the apps on your desktop PC. "


Uhhh... That would be a 1 Gbps link. Ethernet 8GB/sec isn't really a option for the PS3. So, you're only getting ~120MB/sec. If you're running HD (1024 x768) your are going to hit about 90MB/sec. Then there are those of us who have monitors that run at 2000x1400. There's no way you are going to shove that much data down a single 1Gbps pipe. Thu, 16 Mar 2006 14:48:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (tbcpp) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?105045 http://osnews.com/thread?105045 It has standard 1Gb/sec Ethernet. I miss typed the B. Thu, 16 Mar 2006 14:52:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (jonsmirl) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?106138 http://osnews.com/thread?106138 very proprietary?....Open Source....very proprietary. Seems strange. Mon, 20 Mar 2006 21:38:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (NixerX) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?106338 http://osnews.com/thread?106338 I believe that embedded Linux is the underlying OS on the PS2, and the PS3 will likely be, as well. This just makes sense, then, to include the full Linux OS on the machine to enhance it's capabilities. Tue, 21 Mar 2006 13:04:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (ruel24) Comments