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PS2 As PC
Dark Paladin writes: "What if Sony and AOL stopped whining about Microsoft's dominance on the desktop/entry into the console market, and actually did something about it? Here's an article from The Gamer's Press about how the Playstation 2 could be used as a killer Linux box, and what might happen to the PC world if it happened." It's the same sort of speculation that leads people to wonder why the X-Box shouldn't be the basis of a fine GNU/Linux machine. (Strangely, it places Linus in Holland as well.)
Honestly, I think Sony has realized they can have the best of both worlds. They can capture market from the X-Box for the hobbiests, while still making a profit. How?
Easy. Because, really, how many people are going to buy a PS2 and not buy games for it? ;-) Especially hobbiests who want to write their own little games: these are the ones most likely to want to check out all the hottest new titles too. Mass publication will still be limited to those who have contracts with Sony. Sony might even come up with minor distribution deals for the hobbiests (more money).
People who buy it as a set-top box for email and web browsing (who are also likely in the minority, judging from other similar set-top box sales) will probably have kids, and these kids will probably push to get games, too.
Sure, there are exceptions, but it would be highly unlikely that Sony hasn't done the math, or is following a route that won't still be in their best interests. Even if this route will cause them to lose some profits, it's likely that they'd lose even more to competitors if they chose not to.
To summarize: the game market doesn't go away. Just the opposite, they enlarge their market by stealing customers away from the competitors. Sony may be only acting in their best interests, but in this case, I think everyone wins.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Yes, they have. Linuxgames.com has a one-line note from an nVidia developer stating that Linux won't be left out of the nForce.
Improvise, adapt, and overcome.
I think it was a PS2 model 60. A pretty decent machine for 1992.
:)
I guess I should have resisted
What's unfortunate is that the same market penetration problem needlessly afflicted Dreamcast. Too many binary-thinking fanboys pledged allegiance to PS2, and Saturn created too much ill will with developers.
The premise still works. It did back in the '80s, when everybody had C64s, Atari 800s, and Speccies. The only difference between those systems and game consoles were the keyboards and "mass" storage device connectors. I know quite a few people who used their C64 only for games. Then GEOS arrived, and GeoWrite became their first word processor.
It can still work today. Now that PS2 has settled in, the "shortage" has ended, and hasty PSone ports are giving way to real limit-pushing titles, there's enough market penetration to start using those USB ports for something besides Unreal Tournament.
As much as turning a PS2 into a "full-fledged" PC sounds like a killer app, something as simple as Sony's Movie Shaker, a simple video editing package, would be even better. Insert Movie Shaker disc into PS2. Connect digital video camera to i.LINK port. Edit movies with a Dual Shock controller! Add a USB keyboard, and titles are easier. Doesn't matter if the disc boots Linux, Win CE, QNX, BeOS*, or a VAX emulator. It just works. And people raised on Atari 2600 and NES would never picture a game console doing something like that. Now that's a killer app.
*: Assuming Be didn't give it's last dying gasp in the time it took me to type this.
We're not scare-mongering/This is really happening - Radiohead
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X is not a memory hog. X looks like a memory hog because the system accounting charges the RAM on the video card against the X process. X applications use shared memory to store (and sometimes leak) bitmapped images, and this memory is also charged against the X server. On my very fully featured X server, X takes up about 5 MB of system memory, plus it gets charged the 32 MB or RAM on my video card, possibly twice. If I turn off a lot of the extensions, X uses even less than 5MB. This is perfectly acceptable and the reason people were able to run X on 8MB 486s in 1993.
The first thing that I'd do is install Bleem.
-Waldo
That is, only if they're aimed and geared properly for that market. I tend to believe most parents would have an easier time forking over $300 for a PS2/XBox over a PC, especially if that PS2 came with a module to allow basic internet/WWW interactivity (including e-mail) and basic functions like word-processing. For the success in this market, however, it is imperitive (in my mind) that these are extremely simple and intuitive with an attractive "movie-like" interface, or non-techies will be just as lost as with PCs.
I tend to forget this like most others, I assume, but there are PCs in the homes of something along the lines of 5-10% of the world's population, if not less.
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Linux: The world's best text-adventure game.
What happens when chipsets like the nForce only cost a few bucks (this will eventually happen)?
This will empower things like Tivo and DVD players and even TVs with great gaming abilities. The Microsft tax will NOT be useful for these devices. So why isn't there a REAL movement for putting Linux into these things? The world WILL need it sooner or later.
I'd like to see it sooner.
Imagine an open console spec for all manufacturers to use as they please...
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The PS2 is a game console first, which means it's got a lot of limitations built in. Games are used to these limitations right off the bat, as they'll take the tradeoffs for a very limited compatability problem-- if it works on one PS2, it'll (usually) work on all.
First off, game programmers (of which I am one, and I've got a development box for one of the top name consoles this Christmas at my desk at work) always gripe about lack of RAM. However, we're used to it.
Most unix/linux desktop/workstation applications are *NOT* programmed with a concern for memory. [Embedded applications are a completely different area, but most linux coders are not working on that.] Virtual memory has always been an option for traditional unix development, so the big RAM hogs like X, gcc, and web browsers just run a little slower on older boxes.
On the other hand, the PS2 has 32MB RAM, and I highly doubt there'll ever be any virtual memory. If you want to use the HD (which'll be in maybe 5% of PS2s, tops), programmers will have to explicitly manage all RAM and swapping. That's a huge paradigm shift from traditional unix desktop/workstation programming, which is where 99+% of linux types work on.
32MB of RAM on the PS2 isn't gonna be enough to drop X on it, in my opinion, let alone a ported browser. A ground-up rewrite with a stripped down custom-built GUI (Qt, even though that gives some people the fits) is the only reasonable solution. Plus, the resolution of a TV is just plain lousy. No beans about it. People aren't going to want to use it for reading stuff for long.
Next, there's the market for addons for game consoles has historically been *very* limited. In the games business, one rule of thumb I've heard is that you can assume that maybe only 5-10% of customers will have any peripheral (ram, input, bolt-ons like the Sega 32X) not bundled with the box. Unless Sony sells a PS2 with a HD and a keyboard, you're talking about a very niche market here.
Finally, as I mentioned above, there's a different programming mentality between console game programmers and desktop/workstation types. Game programmers are used to precalculating, preconverting, doing as much work as possible to code and assets long before it gets to the console.
We do not develop on a console, for that console-- we don't run gcc on a PS2. gcc is one of the really bad offenders in assuming it's got as much ram/virtual memory as it wants. We run gcc on a host PC, and use that to cross-compile code. Same with all the art tools, sound/music, etc. There's a ton of work needed to get things done, and consolers are optimized for gameplay, not development.
Shipping a PS2 with "linux" on it means that they'll have to axe gcc (and lots of other development tools, I'm not singling it out), as there's no realistic way they're going to run on the PS2, building for the PS2. Is unix without a compiler really unix? In my mind, nope. I want the power to tweak out anything on my system, and run what I write. Consoles can't do that.
Nathan Mates
I've heard of other devices using similar schemes. I remember reading (as a Slashdot quickie, perhaps? Maybe ~12 months ago? not sure...) about a Eastern European hospital using an Atari 800 as a data acquisition/display device.
Also, I witnessed first-hand a bicycle shop that used an NES cartridge to aid in wheel adjustment. There was a sensor thingamabob that would measure the true-ness of a wheel as it spun... the sensor thingamabob was connected to an NES cartridge which was plugged into an NES (obviously) that displayed the results on a TV screen.
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I don't think you understand the point of the article. The idea is that if AOL & Sony want to combine efforts they can make an idiot-proof version of linux. One with just email, web browser and a link to connect to AOL. That's it. Think kiosk.
So if you want to play a ps2 game just start it up with a ps2 game in the tray. Want to browse or send email? Just pop in that in that AOL CD/DVD. This disk would boot linux, but who would know?
Something about Sony's Linux PS2 is puzzling me. Has the manufacturing cost of the PS2 come down enough yet for them to make a profit on the consoles alone?
It's well known that in the console world, Sony, Nintendo, et. al. subsidize the cost of their consoles by charging a royalty on every game sold. When the PS2 was first announced in Japan in late 1999, the people at the Microprocessor Report predicted that both the EE and the GS (the PS2's CPU and graphics chip respectively) would cost Sony about US$350 each to manufacture.
It's also well known that over the 5 year life of a console, die shrinks with the chips eventually bring the console's manufacturing costs down below the console's retail price. Has this happened yet?
If not, don't expect Sony to be making their Linux PS2 widely available (I think only ~4000 were made).
Actually, not really. I know of one company that's developing medical software that uses the PS1 as the platform. TV screens are cheaper than monitors. PS1s are cheaper than PCs. And once the software is in the CD tray, the thing never has to be opened again.
;-)
Replacing or upgrading the software just requires a reburn and a few stamps for postage. Of course, these are just clients to a much larger machine somewhere nearer to the IT department.
How they input patient information with that crappy gamepad, I'll never know.
Dancin Santa
On the other hand, this looks like a great way of killing Microsoft's X-box: buy lots of subsidized units and put Linux on them, populate whole Beowulf clusters with the things, and otherwise go hog-wild at Bill and Steve's expense.
--
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
"Linux can be scaled down and implemented with a simple GUI that hides the guts of the system completely."
In fact, I'm teaching spending July trying to teach senior citizens how to use the Internet, and I hope to find a cache of old 486 machines I could load Linux on and give to them as "email machines". I'm hoping to configue them to boot right into a web browser or email client, depending on user needs. Speaking of which, can anyone recommend a really easy to use web browser or email client for Linux? I know it sort of defeats the purpose of the OS but if I can't make it easy, I'll have to use freedos (freedos.org). If you have any thoughts, you know how to email me...
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feints within feints, wheels within wheels