Sam Posted January 17, 2008 Share Posted January 17, 2008 Has anyone here tried linux on PS3? I was thinking of doing it so I can backup games/movies via the bluray drive. The only thing that puts me off is, can you have it default boot into GameOS (XMB) then choose to boot into linux from there? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
metallithrax Posted January 17, 2008 Share Posted January 17, 2008 http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q...earch&meta= Tried any of these links? Maybe they could help Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SnowRanger13 Posted January 18, 2008 Share Posted January 18, 2008 You can only have the boot flag set to XMB or Other (being linux or anything else). In XMB you select Other OS, the PS3 reboots and you get linux's PS3 start page (here you just hit enter to start linux, or a type a little command to set the boot flag back to XMB). So you can't really have it defaulting XMB, but it's pretty easy to switch back and forth. Linux doesn't even load before you can type in the command to switch so it's quick. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Defiantly Posted January 18, 2008 Share Posted January 18, 2008 ^ How well does Linux run on your PS3? Performance wise? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
randomnut Posted January 18, 2008 Share Posted January 18, 2008 Is there only specific distros you can install? Or could I, say, download openSuse and install that? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bl4ck5un Posted January 18, 2008 Share Posted January 18, 2008 Why would you spend ?300 just to screw around with it Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
[bear] Posted January 18, 2008 Share Posted January 18, 2008 Why would you spend ?300 just to screw around with it You spend that much so that it does everything just like that. It's feature packed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lasker Posted January 18, 2008 Share Posted January 18, 2008 Can the PS3 burn dvd's? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SnowRanger13 Posted January 18, 2008 Share Posted January 18, 2008 ^ How well does Linux run on your PS3? Performance wise? See this is where it gets complicated... To make it simple for you, not all Linux by default can't access PS3's Graphics and is slow in the graphics department. Programs can only access part of PS3's processor unless the program was specifically written for PS3's Processor. Complicated version: The Cell CPU has 1 PPC core and 7 SPUs cores, the 1 PPC core is able to run 2 threads at a time so it shows up as 2 processors (much like Pentium 4's Hyper Threading). Nothing will even use the 7 SPUs unless it was specifically written to use them, but when you do you have a LOT of processing power. But programing for the SPUs is fairly difficult. The GPU of the PS3 is almost completely locked off when running any other OS. Sony does this because with full access to the hardware it would be fairly easy to write a OS to copy and play game to and from the hard drive (Since PS3 only uses a 2.5" drive you could only have a 320GB hard drive unless you were willing to have a 3.5" drive sitting outside of PS3 then you could have 1TB.... 1TB would store a lot of games). People are working to get around this protection and have started finding ways in so graphical performance in Linux (and any other OS that ends up on PS3) will greatly improve! With no access to the GPU and no programs using SPUs the performance is ok, good enough to web browse, download torrents, play any 480p video in VLC, and a few other things. Once they finish hacking around the GPU and people start writing programs to use the SPUs you'll see some really amazing stuff. I expect the first programs to fully use the PS3 will be a video player like VLC (VLC already works fine for 480p videos but with some SPUs and GPU access 1080p would be a snap!), or maybe even some media center programs and probably lots and lots of emulators. Is there only specific distros you can install? Or could I, say, download openSuse and install that? OpenSuSE, Ubuntu, Fedora 8, Gentoo, Debian, Yellow Dog Linux are the distros that are known to run. I have only tried Ubuntu so far. This site is all about running Ubuntu on PS3 http://psubuntu.com/ I really want to try Yellow Dog Linux because it's the most offically supported Distro Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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