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Gentoo Ported to PS2
kerneljacabo writes "In what is yet another testament to the flexibility of the Gentoo platform, it has been ported to the PS2. It is still in the early stages but more information can be found here."
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People have had success running Gentoo on the Xbox go to the Gentoo forums under Gentoo on Alternate Architectures and you'll see it.
Direct download link here.
Proud patriot and republican voter.
The distro from Sony requires a linux cd to be in the ps2. The kit comes with a hd, keyboard, mouse and video cable that allows you to plug up a vga monitor to it. When you first boot of the disk it formats the hd, installs linux, an then formats a memory card and installs lilo on it. After this process is done, you still need the linux disk in the ps2. This disk is read only when you first hit the power button, it then uses lilo memory card to boot off the hard drive your installed on. I haven't read the artical yet since its slashdotted but I bet the process will be to add a gentoo package that will convert your system over to the gentoo way of life. Very cool. -Cho
My friend/co-worker is the one who did this port... He's trying to upload a fix right now and this /.ing is making it hard for him to do that!
sigh...i can see this is gonna fall on deaf ears.
gentoox is the project name for gentoo for x-box
"We can no longer live as rats... we know too much." -Secret of NIMH
Actually its surprisingly not crippled Sony have pretty much opened up most of the hardware , infact they supply a lot of sourcecode and examples on how to program the VU unit and other bits of hardware, There are even complete developer kit reference manuals in pdf's on the CD's that come with the thing. The PS2 Linux kit is the closest you are going to get to a professional PS2 Development kit, only it costs under 200 quid as oppose to the 20,000 odd it will cost you for the kind of thing a software house gets.
The only thing that Sony dont provide is documentation on the encryption stuff and / or reading the CDROM drive.
It is possible to get around this by using an USB cdrom drive. And there are also ways to bypass the linux kernel by writing code that will boot directly from the Memory Card.
All in all I think Sony have done a sterling job in serving the Linux and open source community in this way. I have one of these linux kits and I have been very happy with it.
I for one have more respect for Sony for doing this, and there continuing enthusiasm for linux.
Well done Sony ! Lets show Microsoft who rocks !
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp