Sony’s PS3, scheduled to be released near the end of this year, has been slated to have a hard drive that will support and will even include preinstalled Linux. This could be a breakthrough event not just for Linux but also for other alternative operating systems as well. The PS3 will almost certainly sell millions and millions of units, providing a unique opportunity for people to try something that would be more difficult on their regular computer.
It has yet to be made public exactly what version of Linux will be preinstalled, what that will look like, and how that will fit in the scope of using the PS3. It seems likely that the PS3 will load similar to the PS2, giving the user a simple hardware browser – and that the hard drive OS would be loaded from there. Regardless of how they implement it though, the very fact that a flavour of Linux is going to be preinstalled means that it should be relatively easy to replace it with another version of Linux and potentially even other OSes that can be eventually ported to the PS3 hardware.
If you’ve ever used an alternative operating system, whether free or proprietary, you’ve probably had issues getting your hardware to work properly. Even the most valiant attempts at supporting hardware is bound to miss some sort of configuration that the development team didn’t expect, and this leads to often complicated workarounds due to lack of manufacturer co-operation or even outright hostility. As a result you can never be certain that Linux or BeOS or FreeBSD will be as smooth as something like OSX is, because with OSX, Apple controls the hardware and so their software knows exactly what drivers to ship on the CD to support the hardware they sell. Simple.
With the Sony PS3 hardware, this will provide alternative OS vendors a similar opportunity to what OSX offers to Apple hardware right now. It will be a stable platform with known hardware, and if they can ship a working Linux implementation this means that the specs will be open enough that any operating system that desires to can probably also be ported to run on this machine with little fuss. The PS3 will be a good platform for many years, so it won’t be the moving target that supporting PC hardware often is – only one driver needs to be implemented once instead of having to keep up with the crazy treadmill and a thousand vendor choices.
Right now with my current operating system, Ubuntu Dapper, many of the components are built generically so they will work with a variety of hardware that I will never use. Each time it boots my OS does a check to see what hardware is installed and configures itself accordingly. This is a actually good thing for a computer operating system, and it allows me to do neat things like swap the hard drive out and put it in a new machine which still boots perfectly fine on the new hardware (providing that it’s supported by Linux of course). Packages are compiled for supporting even the ancient Intel 386 processor, while I use a much more modern Pentium 4 chip. This all changes if an operating system decides to target the PS3. They can compile packages directly for the Cell processor, support only the video card that ships with the PS3 and support it well. Things that can be hard with alternative OSes like Bluetooth and WiFi can be simplified because there is only one choice for each one – even if a driver must be hacked up there is the advantage of everyone having the same hardware it will reduce the duplication of effort that multiple drivers would force. The PS3 is a standard platform which will greatly reduce the complexity of hardware support – so OS developers can focus on making the software perform on the known hardware as best as possible instead of having to deal with crazy contingencies.
It must be said that the PS2 also supported Linux even with a Sony supplied CD, and it was hardly the revolutionary reaction that I predict could happen with the PS3. The difference is that the PS3 comes with a hard drive preinstalled. This means that unlike the standard PS2, with the PS3 you won’t have to constantly swap CDs around or run the OS off the CD as if it were a LiveCD. The PlayStation is a gaming device, and why would you want to run a non-gaming OS if you had to keep swapping out the CD to do anything fun with it? But if you can run it off the hard drive, this means that you can seamlessly use the device for both gaming and general purpose computing uses. Additionally, high-definition video support will help display text better especially in combination with the digital displays that are becoming more common for in high-end media centres.
I encourage developers to plan ahead in order to take advantage of this opportunity – funded Linux distributions like Fedora, Ubuntu, SUSE, Mandriva, etc. should do their best to get development kits for these machines (if they haven’t already) in order to be prepared for the launch later this year. If executed properly, and there seems no reason why it can’t be done properly, the PS3 could be the first time that even the most non-technical people can safely install and use an alternative operating system such as Linux without encountering any problems. The holy grail.
About the author:
Ryan Thiessen is a programmer and free software enthusiast living in Seattle, WA but insists that despite this he is still as Canadian as hockey and poutine…
I encourage developers to plan ahead in order to take advantage of this opportunity
I encourage people to plan ahead and BOYCOTT this device. Sony has played us for suckers, and if you can control yourself, understand that your money talks louder than your voice. These are the same people that introduced a rootkit on your Windows machines and then said you shouldn’t care. The same ones who used the MediaMax rootkit also that made its way into the Pentagon. Don’t buy PS3! You’ll be funding evil and willingly giving up your freedom and privacy!
To be fair, this is from SCE, not the same division of Sony that provided us with the Rootkit fiasco.
I mean, really, what’s the better alternative here, Sony or Microsoft? (Well, there’s the Nintendo Revolution, of course, but that will have its own niche and is not directly competing against the Xbox 360 and the PS3).
Even so, it’s profit and gain for Sony. The options are Microsoft (who are constantly improving in contribution back to the community, and on standards adoption) or — get this — don’t play video games? How about getting some exercise?
Nintendo has a nice kit coming. Most people own a PS2, which won’t phase out THAT quickly, there’s the 360, and then there’s your PC. I wish that it weren’t so “mandatory” for gamers to upgrade unstoppably, because Sony deserves a big fat failure.
We like the PS2 at home, we like the PSP and we will be buying the PS3 too the day it comes out. There is no “evil” in Sony, just like there is no “evil” in any big corporation (corporations are made from people like you and me). It’s just business, as usual. People who say that the X or Y corporation is “evil” just because at some level some stupid manager made a mistake and approved a deal or not, they are crybabies who just hate the successful and always cheer for the underdog. And when the underdog eventually becomes the No1, they start hating it too (see: Google). No real logic in anything there.
And besides, the Sony-Music is not the same as Sony-PS3. Just like with Intel and Motorola too, different departments are _extremely_ different than other departments of the same company. Saying to boycott PS3 and the whole *great* engineering department there just because some specific manager at Sony-Music screwed up (and not the whole Sony Music), is screwy in itself. Sony has not dissapointed with their PS line, so I don’t see why you ask people to punish the employees of that department for sins that another, completely independant, department did.
Just because the corporation is under the same name “Sony”, doesn’t mean that they are not independant of each other.
Edited 2006-03-20 18:05
There is no “evil” in Sony, just like there is no “evil” in any big corporation (corporations are made from people like you and me). It’s just business, as usual. People who say that the X or Y corporation is “evil” just because at some level some stupid manager made a mistake and approved a deal or not, they are crybabies who just hate the successful and always cheer for the underdog. And when the underdog eventually becomes the No1, they start hating it too (see: Google). No real logic in anything there.
There’s the evil of corporate culture. Small companies tend to be flexible and experimental and aren’t constrained as much by needing large profits.
Google started out as the search company friendly to open source and with results unbiased by advertising. Now they openly push their own Windows-only software and have tons of Google Ads everywhere and Google sponsored links and they lost alot of the trust they had built up. From a business standpoint it makes sense, but from a community one, it stinks.
When the underdog becomes number one, it’s usually because they’ve dumped the community in search of profit.
I suggest we stop this conversation because it’s off topic to the actual article. However, I will tell you that anything you said does not make google an evil company. It just makes them more professional and responsible to their shareholders. And as long as this is not unlawful, then Google (and any other such company) remains a non-evil company. They would be evil only if they were selling body parts via their ads, or they were killing execs of competitive businesses. But they aren’t.
>When the underdog becomes number one, it’s usually
> because they’ve dumped the community in
>search of rofit.
As long as this “community” are not shareholders, then they did what they were supposed to do.
Causing pain and suffering (loss of a trusted search engine, etc) for selfish reasons (power or wealth) falls under the Wikipedia definition for evil.
So they’re “evil” (in a relative sense) to the original community, and perhaps not evil to the new community, but it’s hard to put much good faith into a company that will drop their loyal userbase over money (even if it’s a good business decision, although even that’s questionable if it generates bad press).
Being lawful doesn’t prevent you from being evil (as any good D&D player knows
.
> Causing pain and suffering (loss of a trusted search
> engine, etc) for selfish reasons (power or wealth)
> falls under the Wikipedia definition for evil.
Google is in no way obliged to provide a trusted search engine to anyone. You could use the same argument to say that everyone is evil because they don’t give you lots of money (for the selfish reason of spending it themselves), thus causing you the pain and suffering of having to work. You are taking the search engine for granted, which is nowhere near reality.
> Google is in no way obliged to provide a trusted search engine to anyone.
No they’re not, but no one likes bait and switch.
What you said is essentially true, however, the Rootkit fiasco is only the most obvious and most wide reaching of the different things Sony has done. (And hence why it’s the one that is usually mentioned.)
There have been a number of other incidents with Sony which weren’t publicized as much because it didn’t affect as many people.
For example… Sony has been accused of creating problems for developers for the PlayStation 2. This includes smaller developers like Working Designs. (Which is now out of business, some would say its Sony’s fault not theirs.)
While some of the others may be difficult to associate with the division that handles the PS2. The previous example can be associated with them. Even if the problems aren’t their fault, for some of us, they have apparently driven away (or possibly killed off) the companies that produced some (or all) of our favorite games for the PS and PS2. That does produce a strong reason not to look favorably upon the PS3 and PSP. Both because of their business practices (should they indeed be at fault) and because a number of these companies (and in at least one case the employees of a failed company) are putting an emphasis on Nintendo and Microsoft.
Of course… I don’t support boycotting them. I just don’t see them as a company which is purer than any of the others and is possibly making some grevious errors. But some people may look at their history and see reason to do so.
If Sony doesn’t punish its divisions for unethical behavior then that they’re different departments doesn’t matter. Rewarding bad behavior is unproductive. It’s easier to simply refuse to do business with a company that engages in such behavior than to expect them to divine from the earnings of each division whether their behavior is palatable to its customers. One can play games with boycotting specific Sony products, but they aren’t going to get the message. They will chalk it up to piracy, labor costs, weakening economies, or anything else they can think of to mitigate responsibility for their own actions. If you want to change Sony, clearly the voice (more specifically a collective media-attention-worthy voice) is more powerful than your own wallet. If on the other hand you simply are repelled by their intentions on a broad spectrum of issues not purchasing their products at all is not a sign of “rooting for the underdog” or any other patronizing nonsense.
However you look at Sony, it is impossible to say that they are pro consumer. Look at the way they artificially limit the ability to play multiplayer on the PSP, if you bought GTA from North America, you will not be able to play it via wifi with your friends who have a European edition of GTA. Look at they way they treat homebrew software on the PSP. Why can’t they offer an open flexible system with open user and application interaction, why do so many people have to jump through countless hoops to get the software working on the hardware they spent their hard earned money on? Why the hell do you have to use some stupid format converter to get you songs running on your hardware? When you buy a PSP, it does not belong to Sony and it shouldn’t have the right to dictate to you how you want to use your hardware.
I agree that the concept of ‘evil corporations’ is quite debatable and often incorrectly used, but that does not justify what Sony does. Please do not call the Rootkit incident a simple mishap by one individual manager, I have no information about Sony Music’s organizational structure, but I am pretty sure that most managers knew what was going on. How would you explain the fact that in order to remove their stupid rootkit, you had to go through a cumbersome registration process to get access to a temporary download location? Such tactics don’t seem very pro-consumer to me.
Sony’s attempts to limit our rights go on and on. The rootkit incident is not isolated. Consider their DRM mechanism in their upcoming Blu-Ray disk, didn’t they want players to be permanently connected to the net, so that Sony could auto upload new DRM mechanisms and block any firmware flashing? What sort of attitude is this, you bought the player and Sony has no write to interfere with how you use it. They even manipulate game publishers, why does RockStar always release GTA for PC last?
My hate for Sony has nothing to do with their position as a market leader (I would even go as far as questioning their position as market leader; a more suitable title would enemy of the consumer), I am sick of their attempts to tell me how to use my hardware.
Of course, you can say that all these things are unimportant for you average consumer, but then don’t hide behind the “Sony (the part that makes gaming hardware) is good! All you commies are just jealous of Sony’s success!” State clearly and openly that you don’t care about the freedom to use your hardware and that you are ignorant and couldn’t care less about the anti-consumer policy of Sony.
I apolagize if this sounds like a rant, but I hate when people fail to be objective about Sony’s stand on consumer rights.
Edited 2006-03-20 19:23
There is no “evil” in Sony, just like there is no “evil” in any big corporation (corporations are made from people like you and me). It’s just business, as usual.
While overall I agree with your post, I must voice disagreement with this. It depends on whether you would consider destructive behavior as “evil” or not. The concept of evil can be quite vague, and perhaps you do not consider destructive behavior as evil. However, many people will and in that context it is quite possible for a large corporation to be evil in the sense that it can commit destructive acts. ITT in South America, Coca-Cola in Colombia and Esso in Nigeria are good examples.
I’ll conclude this off-topic parentheses by saying that, while it’s true that corporations are made up of people like you and me, they are more than the sum of their parts. Corporations are entities of their own, and larger ones are often controlled by no one in particular, but rather by institutional structures that can do pretty destructive (or “evil”) things, despite the people working for them being actually quite nice.
I suggest the documentary “The Corporation” as an excellent exposition of this phenomenon.
Being concerned by the increasing power of multi-national corporation is not being a “crybaby”, it’s simply having a social conscience, and it’s quite logical. I just think that in this case Adam misses the mark, as you correctly pointed out yourself.
Sorry dude there can be no righteous indignation if you swing a Microsoft bat at Sony, even with the rootkit.
Then don’t. This isn’t about Microsoft; I couldn’t care less. I’m certainly not endorsing them.
I’m just saying don’t use Sony.
Even so, it’s profit and gain for Sony.
But not the same division. You want to punish those who thought up the rootkit, not those who make consoles. Sony is far from a monolithic company and its divisions are often at odds from one another.
The options are Microsoft (who are constantly improving in contribution back to the community, and on standards adoption)
Really? Such as?
Seriously, I don’t agree with you here. Both companies have their evil side. For Sony, it’s Sony Music, and for Microsoft, it’s the OS and Office divisions.
or — get this — don’t play video games? How about getting some exercise?
Who said you can’t do both? Have you never heard of DDR? How about doing exercise some of your free time, and playing games in some of your free time? It’s up to everyone to do with their time as they want, and not for you to decide how they should spend it. In other words, your argument is pure and utter BS.
Nintendo has a nice kit coming. Most people own a PS2, which won’t phase out THAT quickly
Actually, Sony may be prevented from selling new Dualshock controllers due to a patent held by a company that belongs in part to Nintendo.
The Nintendo revolution is nice, but it won’t be in the same league. It will try to innovate gameplay, but won’t try to be the Entertainment home center that Microsoft and Sony are vying for.
there’s the 360
See my comment above. If you’re going to advocate a boycott of Sony, you’ll have to provide convincing arguments against a boycott of Microsoft.
and then there’s your PC.
With the exception of FPSs and RTSs, PC gaming sucks.
I wish that it weren’t so “mandatory” for gamers to upgrade unstoppably, because Sony deserves a big fat failure.
It’s not a question of mandatory, it’s a question of the possibilities offered by more powerful machines (such as better physics simulation and better streaming for game elements). Of course that doesn’t mean better gameplay, but it doesn’t mean worse gameplay either (it has little impact, in fact). It just mean nicer looking, sounding and feeling games, and those all enhance the player’s experience.
Sony Music deserves a failure, therefore you should advocate a boycott of Sony Music CDs. That way you’ll fit the punishment to the crime and send a clearer message (and you may have a chance to be effective – you’d never get a complete Sony boycott).
Wow.
I am a supporter of Open Source (and Linux, in particular), but I would not even consider jumping in a Microsoft thread to make a huge “boycott this!” post.
As for the article, it is interesting that Sony ‘may’ be putting Linux out with every unit sold. However, 99% of the people using a PS3 will be gaming, not playing with anything under the hood.
Might get the word “Linux” a bit less unfamiliar to a more general population, though.
I don’t see this as being that big of a deal. It’s not like the PS3 will be running GNU/Linux to even the extent that the Dreamcast ran Windows CE (i.e., the web browser and less than 1% of games) — GNU/Linux on the PS3 is going to be a toy that a very few people who bother reading the instructions play with for five minutes in the console’s life.
Don’t buy PS3!
I expect this beast, the PS3, to cost too much when it becomes available too late this year.
Here’s what I am asking myself: What need is a PS3 running *nix/*BSD/Haiku/etc. gonna fill? The video cards on our PCs are a lot more powerful than the ones on the PS3. Same for the overhyped CPUs (CELLs don’t make good Desktop CPUs). Third, PCs aren’t limited like PS3 consoles.
Homebrew? The PS3 will end up with Emulators and DOOM ports like every other cd-rom loading consoles that have had their security layer cracked. Media Center? The PS3 will probably have an integrated one.
Holy Grail… But of what?
Do you know anything about how the cell processor works?
“The video cards on our PCs are a lot more powerful than the ones on the PS3”
“Same for the overhyped CPUs”
“CELLs don’t make good Desktop CPUs”
Dumb people should stay out of console hardware and tech discussions.
Go spew your garbage on teamxbox.
You meant dumb people like Steve Jobs?
You’re forgetting that as soon as the rootkit’s existence was discovered, Sony recalled all cds that shipped with it, and offered refunds. To me, that’s indication the head honcho’s didn’t approve either (even if post-facto), and that maybe they just didn’t know. I wouldn’t be surprised if the person responsible for the rootkit is in charge of a fish-tinning factory on some remote Japanese island now.
You’re forgetting that as soon as the rootkit’s existence was discovered, Sony recalled all cds that shipped with it
Um, no they didn’t. That was only after the public backlash. Their first response was “the average user doesn’t even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care?”
As soon as? Wow, the memory fades quick doesn’t it?
Their rebates weren’t worth the full values of the CD’s. They gave you a lossy rip of a CD in exchange IIRC.
I encourage people to plan ahead and BOYCOTT this device.
Why? I’ll rather buy two instead to fill the gap that will be created with your thinking:)
Go for it. Wo – you’ll really prove me wrong, won’t you? You’ll also be out about 2000 dollars.
Go for it. Wo – you’ll really prove me wrong, won’t you?
Did I even tried to prove you something??? I need one PS3 at home and one at second location.
And… You’ve really proven something with your baseless comment:) “Sony evil, Sony rootkit enforcer” C’mon, get serious
You’ll also be out about 2000 dollars.
But, if 2000$ are well spent, it is good for me, ain’t it:) …but it will be much less than 2000:)
If the rumors of how much the PS3 will cost per unit to make are even close to true, making it so easy to put your own OS on it, let alone linux, is BAD for business. They expect to sell units then make their money back on games, yet they are selling a device so powerful for so cheap, that it will draw tons of geeks to buy JUST the unit, and not accessories or games. They will be hurt by this.
I doubt it will hurt PS3 game sells as much as you believe. As long as Sony plays their warranty policy as I suspect they probably will, by disallowing service for modified units, I believe we will see that many people throw out any plans to mod their PS3.
On the same note, if the warranty covers this area, I will far more than likely be breaking my warranty.
It won’t hurt game sales. It will hurt their profit margin, because for everyone unit that is sold that will be used as a “PC”, they lose that amount of money.
Only if someone else would buy it, meaning it only matters if the supply is significantly smaller than the demand for the device. Since the number of units that would be sold is trivial, it basically doesn’t matter. Whether it remains unsold by the retailer or sits under a linux user’s television, it’s still not selling any games for Sony. On the other hand if the tiny group of people that would spend several hundred dollars for a novelty platform on which to run linux buy them, they’re far more likely to make a $60 game purchase on an impulse than they would be if they didn’t already have the console. The same thing goes with Blu-Ray movies.
There’s been one thing I’ve been wondering about all of this…
So far all I’ve noticed (and maybe I’ve been too bust and reading too fast) is that it will use “Linux”. But has there been anything about what software the PS3 will be running besides Linux? I mean… Linux itself is just a kernel.
While that is a bit exciting. That isn’t what people usually think of when they think “Linux.”
sappyvcv: …that it will draw tons of geeks to buy JUST the unit, and not accessories or games.
If it is just a subset of Linux as people know it. (Or otherwise hampered) Then I don’t think Sony will have to worry much (if any) more about “geeks” than they do now.
>So far all I’ve noticed (and maybe I’ve been too bust and reading too fast) is that it will use “Linux”. But has there been anything about what software the PS3 will be running besides Linux? I mean… Linux itself is just a kernel.
They’ve basicly stated that besides gaming etc. you can run Linux from its HD. I’d think that it means that they support some generic booting from HD and try to make sure that you can’t run pirated games from that environment.
You know that people will write new distros to runs specifically on the PS3 hardware though.
sappyvcv: You know that people will write new distros to runs specifically on the PS3 hardware though.
True… But aren’t there distros for just about every console made recently? Like there was one for Xbox, the Dreamcast, etc… So if Sony does just use the Linux kernel (or otherwise hampers it), it won’t really be much different from how it normally is as far as I can see.
The difference is that it would be easier to put your own linux on the PS3, and possibly legal as well.
sappyvcv: The difference is that it would be easier to put your own linux on the PS3, and possibly legal as well.
I’m not too sure about that. I mean with DRM and if they close source the bootloader, the drivers, require a special compiler, etc… Sure you’d have the source code to the kernel, but without the rest of it they could potentially pretty much force developers to start all over. Of course… It depends on how good of a job they do locking it down.
Also… Sony has a history of frowning on things like this too. Just look at homebrewed games and the PSP. Sony pretty much likes to keep things “mainstream”. They throw little gadgets at the rest of us (like the Linux kit for the PS2) every so often, but they don’t seem like what we do overall.
Also… They might have Linux on it just so they can throw another “buzz word” out to try to impress people and to look “anti-Microsoft”.
If every person willing to buy a PS3 to run linux on it did so, it wouldn’t be a blip in the overall sales in NYC by people looking to play video games.
They expect to sell units then make their money back on games, …
According to lore, a very early multi-tasking OS at MIT was plagued with students finding ways to crash the system for fun. So they added a “crash” command that did just that. It took all the fun out of it, so everyone stopped trying.
Along the same line, maybe Sony sees all the excited effort being expended to get Linux to run on Xbox and figures they can take the wind out of it by just showing how to do it. They may hope we all lose interest.
They expect to sell units then make their money back on games,…
I’m not sure that this maxim applies any more. Sony may instead be doing experience curve pricing. That’s where the first units cost $800 to make but the last ones cost $200, so by selling them all at $400 they still make money. Experience curve pricing is commonly used in the semiconductor industry. I also think that the component costs of the PS/3 are being overestimated by the press.
Another issue that is often over looked is fixed versus variable costs. It only costs a couple of dollars to make a P4 CPU, the rest of the cost is recovery of R&D and building the fab. Alternatively, Sony could be doing variable cost pricing for the PS/3 and relying on other uses of the factories to pick up the fixed costs.
It is a completely arbitrary decision on how to assign the fixed costs of building a blue ray drive plant to the drives produced in the plant. Sony may choose to assign none of the fixed costs to the PS/3 drives and all of the fixed cost to standalone retail drives. Just because costs are commonly allocated on a per unit basis doesn’t mean that they have to be allocated that way.
Even if you know all of the variables it is still difficult to say what something really costs. For Sony the only thing that matters in the end is if corporate revenues consistently exceed total corporate expenses.
You may be righr, but my point is that they are making it slightly harder on themselves to turn a profit by doing this.
They can put the Linux kernel on the device, then have it refuse to accept any programs that aren’t digitally signed by a Sony-approved vendor.
We’ll need to wait and see whether their intent is to provide an open or a closed platform. If it’s a closed platform, then it doesn’t matter much what is inside the locked box.
will the ps3 be GPLed ?
If that is a serious question, let me answer it.
No, just because something runs on, or is written for, Linux or other GPL software, doesn’t automatically mean that the whole product being offered must be GPL. I can install and run UT2004 on my Linux box, yet the source is closed for the game. There is no sharing of code.
Now, if someone made a game that made use of some GPLed libraries, then they would potentially be obligated to open up portions of their code, depending on how they used those libraries and so forth.
Check out http://gnu.org for more information, or take their quiz at http://www.gnu.org/cgi-bin/license-quiz.cgi for soem tough questions that have seasoned Open Sourcers scratching their head and guessing.
(Edit for typos… sigh)
Edited 2006-03-20 19:38
if it comes with a good SDK for developing “independent” games por the PS3. That would be great!
The homebrew scene is amazing, but with the lack of good SDKs it’s harder to make some nice looking things.
Some kind of independent games channel distribution would be really great too. Without the need of a publisher. The possibilities are endless.
This gets a great big wait and see if it ends up being useful comment from me. Sony can easily put Linux on the box and then restict it so that it is esentially worthless. We just don’t know if this is being done as an added feature or European tax dodge.
If Linux ends up being useful I will buy multiple boxes to use for both purposes, games and Linux.
I wonder if this will enable homebrew game development on PS3? It would certainly look that way, as long as Sony’s custom distro includes a proper OpenGL layer and a halfway decent 3D accelerated X11 system.
Its likely going to just be the kernel managing all the hardware for the games etc, and a small media-center ish front end.
I would think putting something like Ubuntu on that would be pretty stupid. Its a game console, not a computer. Its meant for 100+ million people.
Its gonna be simple, used to manage media and games. Sony, who locks out PSP homebrew like its cat and mouse every firmware revision is not who I expect to somehow allow for free development on PS3 unless it is locked down from mixing it with any media itself.
They are the most paranoid media company around.
I dont know any more than the article has taught me, but who says that the linux that will come with the PS3 will be a desktop operating system? I would imagine it will be a media centre of some kind.
What Sony does with their preinstalled Linux is not really the point — the point of my article was that if they are putting Linux on there, other people should be able to put their own software on there as well. I imagine that most people who use their PS3 won’t ever even boot into Linux at all, that it will be an entirely different aspect of the system from the game playing parts.
I seriously considered getting the HDD kit for the PS2 when that was available (just to play around with) but I soon found out that it’s limited RAM (32MB) made it pretty slow for general use. The HDD kit for the PS3 is looking pretty attractive.
Edited 2006-03-20 21:03
but where are other vendors? Sega , Atari, Amiga? They have nothing to offer. Still, there are a lot of diferent CPUs, SH5, MIPS64, Arm8 . Do you wonder? Only MS / Sony. I do not think it is something we should celebrate. It is pathetic and shows a crisis.
However from the software side,PS3 is a good target for different OSs. And if you want just another target for OSs, VIA has also something to offer and is very open. But we need more diverse consoles with powerful processors. Do not forget Genesi and possibly Troika. And we are waiting Sparc for the masses. But we need more diverse and exotic CPUs. This is the celebration of computing. Not Sony/MS dominance.
This is the celebration of computing.
Hey, I like that. It’s not same ol’ same ol’, it’s a celebration of the diversity of hardware, just as this site is a celebration of the diversity of OSes.
I can bet you that people have already forgotten and forgiven Sony’s indiscretions with the rootkit scenario. Sony is too big a company with a lot of really high quality gadgets and technologies that appeal to a lot of people. Dont forget that Sony is a global company and they have a HUGE presence everywhere especially in Asia. They wont care about DRM and so on because most people over there want the coolest technology, I mean look at their cell phones for example.
PS3 will definitely be an interesting platform. It remains to be seen how easy it is to develop quality software on it. The hardware at least is impressive. I for one am looking forward to getting one and seeing what advances Cell processors will bring to computing.
Sure there was rampant piracy on the C64 and most of the hardware available for it came as add-ons through nonstandard ports but, like it or not, the C64 was the best selling single model computer ever.
The Cell may not seem to be as fast as an Athlon 64 but it’s full of tricks that those SPEs combined with the DMA-style memory access will make up for. This looks like a hacker’s computer all over again only with DRM for the Blue-Ray disk drive.
What remains to be seen is if the DRM will affect more than just movies (which is likely) then the piracy won’t be as rampant.
If people can’t spend 200 hours trying to get Linux on their new console what will they do with it? Play games?! Personally, I think we should boycott Sony for taking this enjoyable experience away from them!
Come on Sony, make it hard, give them a good ride! New consoles don’t come but once a year!
In case you have no sense of humor: It’s a joke.
Its all very well having linux for Playstation, but will we end up having a kernel, chocked to the brim with properietary modules, then coupled that with the lack thereof of support for hardware?
I mean, its all very nice having “linux on a disk’ but if the modules are proprietary, and thus, the kernel state remains static in development – that is, at the mercy of whether Sony can be bothered maintaining it, we might as well not even worry about linux being available.
P3 would be a nice workstation, but at the same time, if it is crippled, its going to be a waste of NZ$700 or what ever the cost.
Its all very well having linux for Playstation, but will we end up having a kernel, chocked to the brim with properietary modules, then coupled that with the lack thereof of support for hardware?
I mean, its all very nice having “linux on a disk’ but if the modules are proprietary, and thus, the kernel state remains static in development – that is, at the mercy of whether Sony can be bothered maintaining it, we might as well not even worry about linux being available.
Pure conjecture on my part, but I’m guessing IBM is doing the heavy lifting with getting linux running effectively on cell and Sony’s just playing along, I seriously doubt it will resemble a desktop-optimized distro.
There will have to be proprietary binary modules, at the very least for the graphics controller, but that can be managed similar to nvidia’s method with the kernel wrapper. Not ideal but not an obstacle either.
I suspect that at the end of the day this will simply be a built in platform with some home-entertainment oriented apps. The majority of people using them probably won’t even realizing they’re running linux.
Linux as an OS will probably be officially unsupported, but no doubt a community will spring up around it with Sony’s unofficial sanction and support. I think it’s a smart move on Sony’s part, even if it’s a gesture. It gives the box added flexibility, and attracting tweakers to a platform can be a safe way to increases it’s value.
I highly doubt this will be the revolution though that people are making it out to be. I also doubt the proprietary games will run under linux. But it’s a positive gesture none the less. It might be fun to hack around on, but I can’t see it becoming a replacement desktop system.
But like I said, pure conjecture on my part.
Pure conjecture on my part, but I’m guessing IBM is doing the heavy lifting with getting linux running effectively on cell and Sony’s just playing along, I seriously doubt it will resemble a desktop-optimized distro.
But that would be IBM; quite frankly, IBM couldn’t give a rats razoo what you ran on their hardware, as long as you bought their hardware and their ‘global services kool aid’, they’re happy.
The problems I have is the fact that Playstation 2 Linux was a complete fast; bugger all memory (32MB) – the default kernel was chocked to the brim with proprietary modules, so it was difficult to get 2.4/2.6 up and running, and worse stil, there was no DVD player functionality.
The problem with Sony, they’ll add proprietary hardware, refuse to release the specifications, and as a result, we’ll have a very nicely tuned Linux kernel but beholden to Sony on releasing up to date kernel releases.
HOWEVER, if Sony released the full specifications for their hardware, which allowed anyone to port their operating system to their hardware, then sure, I would have no problems, but having had a look at the half assed effort they did with PS2, I’m not particularly optimistic about the future. Sony, prove me wrong.
Sure, Nvidia GPU is a seperate issue – Nvidia can release updated modules as required, but for the rest of the machine, Sony has no excuses for not release the specs.
Edited 2006-03-21 10:55
it was sony as a music distributor that did that…
this is sony as a hardware distributor.
yes, its a bit crasy. but so is the story that sony sued itself indirectly. (mpaa sued a hardware group, and sony was/is a member of both)
if only sony would do the smart thing and spin the music and movie stuff off as a seperate company with no ties to sony, and then tell their drm requests to get lost…
Edited 2006-03-21 04:05
It’s almost as if a rootkit comes pre-installed
The bad is that Sony will be able to restrict, filter, and modify any data that enters or leaves the machine in whatever way they see fit. The good news is that it will be very easy to get alternative operating systems and drivers running on the machine, and John Carmack even says that the PS3 has the potential to be a platform like the Amiga, depending on how Sony handles it.
Don’t expect any favors from Sony though, especially when it comes to DRM (it’s the BlueRay DRM that’s responsible for the PS3 release delay I’m told). However, the PS3 is an extremely compelling hardware solution for many things, such as a render farm, or a really smart dumb terminal.
PS3 will have hardware copy protection for games and movies. Anyone will be able to run whatever they want, but game/movie data will be decryptable only by the dedicated chip(maybe Cell itself). Authenticity of blu-ray drive will probably be checked so you can’t emulate or fake it by streamlining content from drive, not to mention inability to clone blu-ray disks. Even though modchips are good for Sony in terms of PS3 vs. X360 war as piracy is what made PS2 popular, but not good for profit (if people pirate games while hardware is underpriced, it generates huge losses).
This is in contrast to X360 which is closed as sh*t (not much usable with few games that are out – at least they got oblivion now…)
IMHO next GTA (PS3 exclusive 6 months ahead) will sell more consoles than all X360 games together.
He he!
The Amiga to tech enthusiasts is analogous to The Beatles for rock and pop fans. It seems the PS3 has a pretty good chance of ‘being the new Amiga’- at least I would like it to be. If Carmack says so it MUST be true- don’t pretend you know more
The Amiga 1000 was so special because when it was released it was so far ahead of all the other home computers. If the Cell benchmarks I’ve heard are true, then the PS3 could be up to 120x faster than my Athlon XP- 250 gigaflops versus about 2 – that’s a big leap (yeah, I know my box isn’t exactly state-of-the-art)!
Sony say the hard drive will be removeable, but I can’t see it being very easy to upgrade from the 256MB RAM it come with. I understand the XDR memory in the PS3 is supposed to be super-speed compared to the 360’s 512MB, but more memory would’ve been nice- using the PS3 as a video editing device would’ve been cool- IF they’d left firewire on it (as with the original PS2). I would’ve certainly been willing to give up one of the USB or ethernet ports for iLink.
It’s already been mentioned that the PS3 uses nvidia graphics and so we’re guaranteed that at least the accelerated 3D graphics driver will be a closed source module but I’d be amazed if that was all. Not only did you not have access to the optical drive under PS2 linux but you were very restricted as to what monitors you could plug into it- your monitor had to support a pretty rare feature called ‘sync on green’ so what are the chances of us being able to use a standard SVGA display with the PS3?
I agree with the general consensus on here about Linux probably getting used to host a media centre environment but no-one can deny that sooner or later we will see a fully-fledged linux OS on the PS3, whether Sony provide it or not.
As for the ‘evil companies’ debate which has took over this thread, I’d like to see someone name an electronics company that isn’t “evil” i.e one which manages to produce its products from sustainable resources in an eco-friendly manner- there are non.
Some of you may be asking “What does this mean for consumers?”. Well with Sony deciding to use Linux instead of a Windows based OS it will lower cost of purchasing the system. It also means game developers that have contracts with Sony will be releasing more games ported to Linux. The third point is that the system will use Linux which means the code should be viewable for inspection thus making any concerns over Sony hiding a rootkit not an issue.
As for comments made in the article I dissagree with one specific point the author made in regards to the Linux kernel support for devices. The reason the Linux kernel does so well with consumers is because of it’s wide support of hardware and allowing plug & play. Stripping the kernel to only detect the default hardware that comes with a Sony PS3 is only limiting the consumer on upgrading hardware later. The author made this seem like a good thing and even referenced Apple’s similar business practice. Well this is a direct contridiction to what the Linux community is about and that is providing flexibility as well the freedom to choose while keeping cost low.
Also I hope none of the OSAlert readers here didn’t misunderstand the authors comment “similar opportunity to what OSX offers to Apple hardware” Apple does not make hardware, they put components together from other manufacturers to make their systems. The current goal of Apple is to use Intel processors which are readily available from other vendors. The difference being that Apple is using EFI instead of a software BIOS to boot the system. Other than EFI the components are generic, meaning anyone can build a similar system. Well there’s one other key difference in that Apple locks OSX to systems they sell where as you as a consumer have the flexibility to install a Linux distribution or Windows with out such restriction on other vendor systems (ie: Dell, HP, GamePC, etc).
Most consoles don’t use OS’ and the ones that do use a very stripped down version (Xbox) and others (Dreamcast) use it only for a few games. Also the fact that Xbox uses NT didn’t actually mean more ported games for the PC despite the fact that it basically is the same hardware. So just because Sony said Linux is going to be on the hard drive it really doesn’t mean a whole lot except marketing speak. It especially doesn’t mean more games for Linux anyway anymore than consoles using a PPC derivative means more games for the PPC Mac. It doesn’t even mean the games will run under Linux on the PS3.
Although on the surface it sounds like a good thing for Linux as more exposure is better than less I could probably bet that most people won’t even know or care about it.
On another almost unrelated note just because it may have Linux on it it doesn’t automatically mean that it will be easy to put your own distro on it just like it’s not so easy to put windows on a mactel. Though for various reasons this should be painfully obvious.
If I’m wrong I’d be the first to admit it but from what limited information I have on it that’s what my opinion is. I’m not quick to believe marketing talk.
Edited 2006-03-21 20:37
Smoke,
Re: “Most consoles don’t use OS’ and the ones that do use a very stripped down version (Xbox) and others (Dreamcast) use it only for a few games. Also the fact that Xbox uses NT didn’t actually mean more ported games for the PC despite the fact that it basically is the same hardware. So just because Sony said Linux is going to be on the hard drive it really doesn’t mean a whole lot except marketing speak. It especially doesn’t mean more games for Linux anyway anymore than consoles using a PPC derivative means more games for the PPC Mac. It doesn’t even mean the games will run under Linux on the PS3.”
“Most consoles” is not what Sony is planning to offer consumers with their PS3, ETA November 2006. The system will include a hard drive with a Linux distribution installed. What Linux distribution will be used has not been announced by Sony at this time. As for the games well since the OS is Linux then that means the games will be natively ported to Linux, not running on Wine. As for what games you can expect to see I’ve included some links that will give more information on that as well specifics on the upcoming PS3.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_3
Gamespot News: “PS3 to come with HDD standard” http://www.gamespot.com/news/6146269.html
Edited 2006-03-22 07:05