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First Linux live CD designed for the Sony PlayStation 3

lists.alioth.debian.org — Takeshi Yaegashi has announced the release of what appears to be the first Linux live CD designed for the Sony PlayStation 3: "I've released Debian live CD for PlayStation 3 which also integrates the Debian-Installer in a single ISO image." The CD boots into a GNOME 2.14 desktop environment complemented by a small selection of other useful software

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  • schestowitz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11That beats the nags about installation difficulties. Also, since the hardware is always identical, the Live CD is guaranteed to work fully. No repartitioning or anything...
  • JayD16, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6If it has vlc player on it, or anything else I can easily throw media files at I'll be sold. I hate to have to convert everything to mpg.
    • conwayblue, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6The ability to play my xvid files is the only thing keeping me on the fence for the ps3.
    • alx242, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@conwayblue:

      That should work in Linux on the PS3!
  • SystmBetatester, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11i do believe gentoo had the first linux live cd for ps3.
  • sulf, on 10/12/2007, -16/+4Can anybody tell me the point of running Linux on the PlayStation3? It is obvious that it cannot use all the power that the hardware provides.
    • PhoneJack, on 10/12/2007, -1/+17Because you can.
    • jakey, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4There are quite a few open source media center applications which would be perfect for viewing HD content on the PS3, not to mention emulators, web browsers, weather reports, etc.

      I can't wait until something like Xbox Media Center is released for the PS3 (or 360, who cares as long as it can play back HD video without stuttering).
    • JonXP, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3You can use actually all the hardware aside from the videocard. So for computationally intensive tasks, scientific simulations, and people who are just curious and want to experiment, you have a cheap Cell based platform to work on.

      This would excel for a video encoding box, btw.
    • SystmBetatester, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5well for the average joe, using the ps3 as a computer might be a money saver if the only thing you do is read email, chat a little, and obviously play ps3 games. ps3 is the obvious choice for your 'do it all' machine.
      for the rest of us we dream about emulating other consoles, loading legal backups, or maybe even using the 300watt beast as a server while not playing games.

      the real underline reason for linux on ps3 is so sony can avoid the 'no tax on computers' int he uk which sony tried to pass on the ps2 but uk believed it to be nothing more then a video game console with 'sony computer entertaiment' name on it. this is sony's way of getting by that.
    • marsianman, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Sure, at the moment you can't access all the power, but give the Linux/homebrew community/Sony some time and I am sure there will be drivers for stuff like WiFi and the video card. Once that is done it should become easy to use it for streaming HD media. I don't think Linux for the PS3 in it's current state is all that useful, but I am betting on its future being bright.
    • sulf, on 10/12/2007, -20/+4@PhoneJack
      If you do a lot of stuff because "you can" you should probably get a life or a job.

      @jackey
      I guess it's great to view HD content on a 640x480 screen.

      @JonXP
      Videocard is the most important piece of hardware in PS3. If you are really serious and want to develop scientific applications, you should probably get a specialized system from your employer. Anyway, regular x86 PCs are far ahead of PS3 by the dollar/MIPS(FLOPS) ratio.

      I will probably get dugg down by the fanboys, but face the truth: use things for what they are intended to be used for. If you want a gaming console, buy a PS3. If you want a generic computer, you buy a PC. If you want to develop scientific applications, ask your employer to supply you with the necessary hardware and software. I've been using Linux as my primary desktop and server OS for several years, but I see absolutely no use in Linux on the PlayStation.
    • se1zure, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6"but I see absolutely no use in Linux on the PlayStation"

      ... then don't put it on the ps3 that I'm sure you own *cough cough*
    • EruLabs, on 10/12/2007, -2/+15@sulf
      Simply not true.
      My Opteron (144) outputs around a quarter the points in Folding at Home as that of the broadband engine on my PS3. One is running Gentoo 64 AMD64 and the ps3 is using the new PPC64 arch release live CD copied to the PS3s internal disk. Sonys SDK will be so much fun, not to mention the fact that the PS3's 8 core PU CAN (I repeat) CAN be used FULLY (yes, ill repeat again) FULLY by the Linux Kernel. Sorry buddy, no x86 processor will give you 2tflops and the ability to play with multiple RISC processors - not AMD, not INTEL, and not IBM unless you buy a server class Cell for about 8x as much as a PS3

      @PhoneJack and Sulf
      Because we computer scientists have been given a supercomputer that not only plays all my rad ps1 and ps2 games, it plays all my new rad ps3 games as well as being a endless coding hobby! Oh and ill note I just got back from renting a few blueray movies. And no, not 480i, 1080p on my desktop moniter (HDMI to DVI cables: 7$). Oh, what, 360 has good graphics? aww...
    • kday, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12@sulf

      "If you do a lot of stuff because "you can" you should probably get a life or a job."
      Come on now. Everyone has a some free time to work on their hobby projects. You don't have any hobbies outside of work? If so, you should probably get a life.

      "I guess it's great to view HD content on a 640x480 screen."
      WTF does this have to do with anything. As far as I know, their are HD sets and computer monitors that exceed this resolution.

      "Videocard is the most important piece of hardware in PS3. If you are really serious and want to develop scientific applications, you should probably get a specialized system from your employer. Anyway, regular x86 PCs are far ahead of PS3 by the dollar/MIPS(FLOPS) ratio."
      The video card is probably the most important piece of hardware for playing games, but why would the video card be so important for using a Linux Desktop?

      You got dugg down because you come off like a rambling idiot; not because everyone here are fanboys. Also, the PS3 is being used like it was intended. Sony intended on people using their gaming console and/or their Desktop PC. If the PS3 wasn't intended for running Linux, Why the hell would Sony support it?
    • brokekneck, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2 Biggist thing I do that needs proccessor power is rendering. When they get a stable version of linux on PS3..... Maya is getting loaded and I have a 9 core render farm at finger tip for under $1,000. Nuff said.
    • JayD16, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6@sulf
      Wow this is the first digg post I've seen that I utterly and totally disagree with on every aspect.

      Why put it on? Its a toy...I like to toy with toys.

      Any real reason? Well odds are theres going to a lot of fun open source stuff that I wont be able to do on the Sony OS. For one, once the community gets wifi drivers out I can put bit torrent and download movies straight to PS3 and watch it on my TV...seamless.

      I have no idea what you're talking about with the 480 comment...

      For the PS3 the video card is pretty average. The power is in the Cell. Whether that was a good design choice is another conversation but to say that the video card is the man reason to get a ps3 is completely misinformed. Hopefully, with enough pressure, Sony will make some sort of compromise with the graphics card on the PS3 that lets us use it but goes through the PS3 OS so they can reassure the movie industry they are still in control.
    • alx242, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@sulf:

      I you don't see the use maybe you should throw whatever computer you are using out of the window (no pun intended)!

      You can easily make a set-top box media center http://www.freevo.org or http://mythtv.org (emulators, RSS, movies, DVD, image viewer, music ripper/playback, etc...). You can easily get a full-screen fully functional browser (you change the launch of Firefox or press f11)! Play anyone of a thousands open sourced games from http://happypenguin.org. You get a fully functional computer with the added PS3 games...:P

      Your options are pretty much limitless. Being a developer myself I wanna start doing some compiling for the different cores and see how that is done (IBM have already posted how it is done but I wanna try it myself of course also).

      If you haven't understood the benefit of a different OS for this machine you haven't understood why you use a computer. The only drawback is that the GPU driver hasn't seen daylight yet (I don't know if it has been blocked in the hypervisor but I don't own a machine myself yet. Can't anyone do a cat /proc/devices or dmesg so we can see if the gpu exists in some way? I don't trust rumors).
  • neosplasher, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5this is what linux looks like booting up on ps3(4 the people that haven't seen it) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZXcuhJkwx4
    • thecheatah, on 10/12/2007, -3/+0On my ps3, it is no where as close how fast they make it look in that video. They skiped some stuff or something.
    • alx242, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@thecheatah:

      Or they just optimized the boot (easily done via recompile of the kernel or excluding any unnecessary daemons).
  • a0me, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10Linux Live CD?
    Good games are finally starting to hit the PS3!
    • pabster, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Sad, but true.
    • SSCrow, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Now can have a PS3 Linux server!
    • zetsurin, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Where are the good Wii games aside from Zelda by the way?
    • LycoLoco, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1"Where are the good Wii games aside from Zelda by the way?"

      If you owned a Wii, you'd know ;-)
    • JayD16, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I own a Wii...If it didn't come with Wii sports people would be really worried about it. Good thing Nintendo made the right decision.
  • Bobalobabingbon, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Cool *****, making the cd now, and will promptly start it on my ps3 and check it out
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