The Linux (for Playstation 2) kit is now accepting pre-orders on playstation.com for North America. The kit will allow people to run a fully functional Linux environment on their Playstation 2 computer entertainment systems. If you are a developer, you can also install the SDL gaming libraries for the PS2 and port or write your own games for the popular gaming console.
Linux Kit for Playstation 2 Pre-Orders Available
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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The RAM on a Playstation 2 cannot be increased beyond its existing 32MB. Period.
32MB RAM is not enough to do serious work with Linux if you are using a GUI and some concurrently running apps – the system would be way too busy managing the swap file, to say the least.
At first this seemed really interesting but when I found out about the RAM limitation I decided that this probably not much good other than as a toy for hobbyists to play with. The guy over at osOpinion seems convinced that PS/2 Linux could become a standard platform challenger and that Sony should create an awesome new GUI for it and make waves.
I don’t think so.
I agree that the PS2 has limited capabilities, but for those of us who already own the PS2 and are interested in exploring its capabilities farther this is great.
It is not meant to be a replacement for a PC. It is ment for hobbyists. I am looking forward to playing with the Linux kit and seeing what kind of programs I can write for the PS2.
I think that 32Megs is enough if you ignore X (even that can be cut down) and go to the framebuffer. My other machine is a P200MMX with 32Megs of ram running Mandrake with WindowMaker. I haven’t tried to cut it down to size though it’s quite zippy (relatively speaking).
I’d expect a more native distribution to work. Apparently 32megs <em>is</em> enough.
8MB is more than enough for X, Emacs and gcc!
What more can you ask for?
4Mb is enough for X and gcc… 32MB is FAR enough
Ps2 has a datastream focused architecture, if you want to code on it you have to FORGOT the buffer focused approach used on PC.
I hope that the programs bundled in the kit are optimized for that.
Emulation!
That’s what I want to know about! will it be
possible to run the Linux version of Snes9x
on this thing? will PSEmu work? how about MAME?
Those are the questions that really matter! Will
Divx, QuickTime and or Realplayer work? Can I listen
to Mp3s on this baby? Will this Linux Distro (with
a few modifications) be able to make my PS2 into
a portable Multimediagaming machine? Forget the
rest! For those other things I’m certain that it’d
be much cheaper to just get a workstation!
Forget practicality. After all, I sincerely doubt anyone with reason has considered this to be a true, viable alternative to a PC. Regardless of its obvious shortcomings as a workstation, I am really excited by it, for one reason: it will be really, really fun. I put NetBSD on a Dreamcast, just for the sake of it, and it was a hell of a lot less robust than this PS2/Linux setup. Simply being able to run Emacs on my GAMING console will be worth the two hundred some odd dollars price of entry. How cool IS that? A fair amount of people will flock to it too, I predict: look at the amount of effort in putting web servers on God-forsaken boxes, or TCP/IP stacks on LEGO Mindstorms. =) Not to mention those oh-so-enticing emulation possibilities just discussed. It can be argued that it’s a bit expensive, but I think that it’ll certainly be worth the price of admission. At the very least, let’s acknowledge Sony’s doing something rather, well, for lack of a better term, neat.
http://playstation2-linux.com/ for those that are interested.
Why?