Gentoo Ported to PS2

It was just a matter of time... by fudgefactor7 · 2003-09-11 06:23 · Score: 4, Insightful

Linux is portable...so porting it to a PS2 (or a sufficiently advanced toaster) is just a matter of exercising the will to do so. Not a surprise that it was done...Gentoo or otherwise, one distro or another eventually would have done it.

PS2 not PS/2 by Salica · 2003-09-11 06:26 · Score: 3, Insightful

[...] testament to the flexibility of the Gentoo platform, it has been ported to the PS/2 [...]

Don't tell me you cannot make the difference between an old IBM PC and a game console ;-)

Gentoo on PS2 != new linux distro most likely by GweeDo · 2003-09-11 06:28 · Score: 4, Insightful

This probably means that they have brought portage over to the PS2 Linux kit. The PS2 Linux kit uses a version of the 2.0.x kernel redone for the MIPS processor in the PS2. If they brought portage over (which is what Gentoo is) then you get the power of portage on the system you are already familiar with, just like what the Gentoo team is doing with Mac OS X. Gentoo on OSX != Mac OS X running some new kernel or something, just means you get the power of Portage for getting apps and depenedencies and what not.

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Unstable Apps: Our Android Apps Don't Suck

Re:Linux on PS2 has been done many times :) by stratjakt · 2003-09-11 06:34 · Score: 2, Insightful

Umm

Gentoo on PS2 = mod chip, complete access to the hardware, and not buying the kit.

Yeah, you can get Sony's kit. But it's extremely crippled so far as accessing the hardware.

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I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!

Re:Great. by altp · 2003-09-11 06:39 · Score: 2, Insightful

Agreed.

Why are developers spending time porting to the PS2, instead of contributing code to Gnome, KDE, OpenOffice, Mozilla, or what ever other end user project needs work. Better yet, work on making the PPC or UltraSparc ports better.

We have a great OS and many great applications, now we need to polish them up. How pretty the icons are is more important to the end user than how many game consoles you can run Linux on.

Altp.

Yippie skippy. by untaken_name · 2003-09-11 06:49 · Score: 2, Insightful

Now I can have another useless linux box. Oh, look, the system I used to play games on now just sits there contributing to my distributed.net score just like the 3 or 4 other useless linux boxes I have sitting around. Yay. Here's an idea: spend the 180 bucks it costs to buy a ps2 on a p3 or old AMD box instead and it'll run linux better than the ps2, and then you can play ps2 games on your ps2. Just because something *can* be done does not mean there's any real point to doing it.

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http://xkcd.com/386/

Re:Yippie skippy. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-09-11 07:04 · Score: 1, Insightful

The point of it being that it was *simmilar to* the kit Sony is selling, and has been for some time, for developing purposes.

Besides, its just fun for some to push normal objects to do more than they were supposed to do.

Gives people Ideas on what to create next sometimes.
Re:Yippie skippy. by liquidsin · 2003-09-11 07:18 · Score: 2, Insightful

Just because something *can* be done does not mean there's any real point to doing it.

Actually, just because it *can* be done IS the reason to do it. How many great inventions would we be without today if it weren't for that exact line of reasoning? And even so, what's so wrong with doing something just to prove that you can? Or do you feel that since it has no immediate value to you personally that it must be useless? If you don't like it, fine. But you don't need to bitch about someone else doing it. Go sit in your basement and play video games while the rest of us enrich ourselves by actually learning things. There's much to be said for learning the ins and outs of a new system and porting an OS to it. Kudos to the team that did it, and shame on you for slagging on their hard work.

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do not read this line twice.
Re:Yippie skippy. by IM6100 · 2003-09-11 07:55 · Score: 2, Insightful

Just because it CAN be done is a cool enough reason to do it for some of us.

I run NetBSD and X11 on a Macintosh SE/30. With it's tiny little black and white screen. It's so cramped that I have to run the Tab Window Manager (TWM) because FVWM has too much 'eye candy' and crowds the windows.

I could go to an auction here and get a Pentium 100 box for one buck (sometimes that price for a whole pallet of Pentium 100s) if I wanted to just run a freenix on cheap hardware (a Mac SE/30 isn't even particularly cheap, with all the motherfuckers who are stripping the hardware out to make fricking aquariums out of the cases).

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A Good Intro to NetBS

Re:emerge finalfantasy by MenTaLguY · 2003-09-11 06:59 · Score: 3, Insightful

And thus it is with Open Source. Fixing bugs and maintaining old code is booooring. Noone wants to do it, so noone will. Same with documentation.
If the whole world ran on a volunteer basis, there'd be no janitors. Who'd clean up all the shit?

Well, how about these janitors, for example?

I find your lack of faith disturbing.

I'm not really sure I'd call Open Source strictly volunteer, anyway. Personally speaking, about 40% or so of the OSS hacking I do is fixing bugs that I personally need fixed.

Granted, the other 60% is probably making new bugs for other people to fix (I like to think of it as "adding features")... but somehow we still seem to come out ahead in the end. ^_-

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DNA just wants to be free...

Re:Great. by spencerogden · 2003-09-11 07:01 · Score: 3, Insightful

Typical "Open Source developers have their priorities out of whack" comment. Who says the guys who did this (the port) would consider contributing to Gnome or KDE, who says they have the skills? All of that aside, if you aren't paying these guys, then how can you assign them priorities?

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Spencer Ogden

Re:emerge finalfantasy by RealisticWeb.com · 2003-09-11 07:22 · Score: 2, Insightful

The point to this is not practicallity. People that assume that are misunderstanding, IMHO. The people that do this kind of this do it as a hobby. For example, I'm almost finished making my own MAME arcade cabinet. Basically you put a computer in side an old arcade machine and hack a keyboard so that the arcade buttons actually press keyboard buttons and you can play MAME games on it. You could just as easliy say "you already can play MAME on your desktop, what is the point in going through all that trouble?" or "you used to have 104 keys on your key board and now you only have 12, what is the point?", or "Now that computer is inside that arcade manchine you can't do anything else with it, it's not nearly as usefull". Half the fun was hacking the keyboard into and soldering on the arcade buttons. The other half of the fun will be actually playing on the thing. Is it practial? NO! My wife doesn't want to let me keep it in the house because it is so big. Was it fun? Heck yeah! When you fire it up, and it actually works there is a big sence of accomplishment that is hard to get in other ways. That is why so many programmers (myself included) also write code in thier spare time. Why do people put neon in thier PC case? Why would you put LED's in your mouse? Why would you put a blower on the hood of a Ford Fiesta?

My hat is off to the people that have accomplished this. There doesn't have to be a good reason for the project to still be worth it.

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Sigs are out of style, so I'm not going to use one...oh wait..

Re:Great. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-09-11 09:31 · Score: 1, Insightful

Wow, you broke out the thesaurus today, huh?

What you fail to understand is this: doing "whatever the fuck you feel like doing" is what got Linux to the state of being that it is now, and that many of the people who work on it don't care a bit that it is or is not a viable competitor to Microsoft products at any level.

Open Source developers do Open Source work for one of a few fundamental reasons. Fun, as a learning experience, (so that they may make money later--preferably doing what they enjoy), because they need (or want) something to work that's not available anywhere else, and for recognition.

To some people, OSS is fun. It's the only reason they are involved. Some of these people live to make Linux (or NetBSD) run on some abstract, stupid thing. No reasoning behind it, feckless, dun or not. If they'd rather do that than play Counterstrike, have sex, bathe, eat, or otherwise live, that's their issue, not yours.

To some people, doing the above is a learning experience. You have to start low to be able to do greater things. If this weren't the case, every 9 year old would be a world class physician. It's one of the fundamental laws of our existace. You just can't jump in and become an expert, no matter how many times it happens in the movies. No, I'm not high. Open Source is exactly about running Gentoo on a PS2, toilets, toasters, and not about everybody working on some project they could care less about.

You assume that everybody that's ever touched a line of Linux (or related) code wants nothing more than their work to stomp over to Redmond and trample Billy Gates into oblivion; and I can assure you that's simply not the case.

If it weren't for everyone doing whatever the fuck they want, we wouldn't have Linux, we wouldn't have Samba, or the V4L, or DRI, or Apache, or GTK, QT, Gnome, KDE, the free *BSDs, Gimp or anything else. Everyone would have abandoned ship long ago if someone dictated to everyone else what to do.

For that matter, why the hell are you arguing with me, or even reading slashdot? You could instead use ****EVERY WAKING HOUR**** working on making Linux more desireable for the average user, since that's what you seem to deem "fundamentally and extraordinarily important".

IHBT. IWHAND.

Dipshit.

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