BlackRhino Linux Now Available for PlayStation 2

Mr. Spock writes "BlackRhino Linux has been released for the PlayStation 2. It's developed independently by xRhino, a middleware developer. Check out the details and download instructions on the official website. A Playstation 2 Linux kit is required to use BlackRhino."

Comments

Re:Nice, but....

[stratjakt]

>> but what's the point of this past that?

You're a coder with an interest in running code against PS2 hardware, or anything other than an x86 for that matter.

It's neat to write some code and get it running on a Sega Genesis, Gameboy, SNES, TG16, or whatever.

This is the first time you've been officially sanctioned by the merciful corporate gods to be able to do so.

why would you want a PS2 Linux Development Kit.

[single_user_mode]

i have seen alot of people buying the PS2 Linux Kit as altenative to a linux based PC, sure you can do it but whats the point?

the reason to play around with a PS2 Linux Development kit is _not_ as an alternative to a PC running Linux. If you want that, go buy a PC. Also, its not really an appropiate setup for learning about 3D graphics, once again a PC is cheaper and easier with DirectX and OpenGL etc.

what it is appropiate for;

1. another 'embedded' platform for hardcore kernel hackers to get intimate with the exotic hardware porting etc. These ppl. may find the black xRhino of interest.

2. the number one reason, is for up and coming game developers to have a better chance getting a foot in the gaming industry. it is a chance to understand and develop for a modern and relevant console...anyone who wants to take it on, should already have a strong grasp of low level C, assembler, 3D graphics etc. for these ppl, the release of the black xrhino is not really so important, as they are already trying to cut the OS out as much as possible ( or using special OS modules eg. SPS2, which open up the hardware to user space) to get as low and and dirty to the hardware as possible.

Reasesn to use the PS2 Linux Kit.

[Yaztromo]

Hi Everyone:

I've been a PS2 Linux kit owner/user from day 1. Some people think that owning and using this kit is silly unless you're a game developer, but I dismiss those allegations as quite incorrect :).

I see two excellent uses of the PS2 with Linux installed on it in my home:

1. The PS2 makes a fantastic media server. With it's digital optical audio out (which can output 48000khz PCM, Dolby Digital, and DTS), and a digital receiver (I have a Denon AVR-1601) and 40GB hard drive, it's a fastastic MP3/Ogg Vorbis audio player (indeed, the build of Ogg Vorbis available through vorbis.com was built by yours truly). Additionally, as it supports NTSC as well as VGA output, it also makes a good video server.
2. It extends my investment in the PS2 hardware. How many people here own an old console system that is just sitting in a closet somewhere? Game consoles are designed with an approximate 5 years of usefulness as a video game console. There are millions of useless consoles out there in the world, that are relegated to the closet, basement, garage, or dump when a newer, better system comes along.

   When the PS3 comes along, chances are good that, like the PS2, it will be backward compatible. If this is the case, and I buy one, I normally wouldn't have any use for my PS2 anymore. However, with the PS2 Linux kit installed, I can continue to make use of my hardware investment by dedicating the system exclusively to Linux, running network tasks. The system is more than fast enough to act as a mail server, a personal webserver, a file server, or any number of other tasks.

I initially bought my PS2 for games. But they won't be making PS2 games forever. Linux, OTOH, will be around forever, making the hardware investment more useful for a longer amount of time.

Yaztromo.

A PS2 developers perspective on the PS2 Linux kit

[msporny]

This thread as well as the couple surrounding it make great examples of why one would want to use the PlayStation 2 Linux kit. As stated throughout the comments, the PlayStation 2 Linux kit is not for everybody... perhaps I can shed some light on why a developer in the PS2 industry would want to use one.

I'm one of the guys that put the BlackRhino Linux distribution together and also, one of the founders of xRhino.

We started the company for the sole purpose of bringing Linux to the PlayStation 2, this was far before we even knew of Sony's PS2 Linux efforts. How great would it be, we thought, for everybody to have access to this incredibly advanced piece of hardware through Linux. As we now know, Sony was thinking the exact same thing.

A typical PlayStation 2 developer sits at a standard PC, edits his/her PS2 code, compiles it on the PC and then uploads it to a big honkin' machine called a DTL-10000. These big honkin' machines aren't cheap... infact, you could buy a good used car for the price of one of these boxes. Couple that with you have a team of 15 developers and that is a huge amount of up-front investment for a start-up game company... and thats just for the hardware.

While developing our PS2 commercial application, we were able to use much cheaper PS2 debug units to write, compile and test our code on. Instead of a big honkin' machine that cost the same as a good used car, we spent 1/10th of that on an equally powerful development machine for each developer.

Coding on the PS2 Linux kit allows a PS2 developer to test out ideas and use pre-built Linux libraries to speed development along without tying up expensive development hardware.

So, the PS2 Linux kit lets a developer save time during product creation by using cheaper hardware to accomplish the same code, compile, run, debug cycle.

It also helps the developer in another way, which was our main point with BlackRhino Linux and our PlayStation 2 product. Our commercial product is called RockSteady and it is a MP3 and Internet Radio player for the PlayStation 2. It would play MP3s off of any Samba share on your network, and it would also stream Internet Radio from the web and play it on your home stereo system.

While developing the product under BlackRhino Linux, we didn't have to worry about writing a networking stack from scratch, or a MP3 decoder, or a scripting engine, or an XML parser, or anything a typical Linux programmer takes for granted. Since we were running Linux, we could use all the development tools available under the open-source sun.

Linux has one of the most solid networking stacks out there, libmad was our MP3 decoder, Python our scripting language, libxml2 was our xml parser and SDL was used for graphic display. It wasn't nearly as fast as coding natively, but we were able to put a complete application together using about 1/5th of the resources it would have taken to do it the traditional way... and that is the true power of using Linux to do PS2 development, it saves you precious development resources (time and money).

I thank those of you that have Linux kits for explaining why somebody would want to use one... again, its not for everyone... but it sure is a great little development box.

-- manu