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."

Comments

It was just a matter of time...

[fudgefactor7]

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

[Salica]

[...] 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

[GweeDo]

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.

Re:Linux on PS2 has been done many times :)

[stratjakt]

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.

Re:Great.

[altp]

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.

[untaken_name]

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.

Re:Yippie skippy.

[liquidsin]

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.

Re:Yippie skippy.

[IM6100]

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).

Re:emerge finalfantasy

[MenTaLguY]

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. ^_-

Re:Great.

[spencerogden]

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?

Re:emerge finalfantasy

[RealisticWeb.com]

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.