Slashdot Mirror


PlayStation 3 HDD to Ship With Linux

timtwobuck writes "Gamespot.com is reporting that Ken Kutaragi, president of Sony Computer Entertainment, has disclosed in an interview that PlayStation 3 will natively run Linux. In fact, it will come bundled with it, if you purchase the HDD peripheral." From the article: "But while Linux would require a hard drive to run on, Kutaragi told Impress PC Watch, 'We're not going to equip [the PS3 with] a HDD by default, because no matter how much [capacity] we put in it, it won't be enough.' It was unclear whether he was referring to the previously known fact that the PS3 would not have an internal hard drive or whether he was indicating that the device would not come with the external 2.5-inch detachable HDD outlined in the specs revealed at E3."

11 of 548 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Not suprising. by alexandreracine · · Score: 4, Informative

    The money is made with the hardware (in PS3 case), not directly with the software...

    And unless they buy a copy from india (1$), I don't think they will change the price of the PS3 just to include Windows.

    --
    No sig for now.
  2. Re:Linux bluetoooth support ? by FauxPasIII · · Score: 3, Informative

    Stable but wonky interface, in my experience. You have to manually poke it to get it to attach to a
    new device, and at least on my belkin parts you have to manually switch crypto off and then back on.
    Oh, and anybody in the world can listen in on your keypress events, but that's not a Linux thing,
    that's an auto-selected 4 numeral PIN thing ;)

    --
    25% Funny, 25% Insightful, 25% Informative, 25% Troll
  3. Re:Linux bluetoooth support ? by dieman · · Score: 2, Informative

    Very good, it works great with Ubuntu and Debian as long as you can deal with setting up some things by hand (ie: editing /etc/default/bluez-utils and some files in /etc/bluetooth/)

    You'll also need to setup HIDD and after the drivers and bluez-util init script has been ran just run "hidd --connect ".

    For bluetooth keyboards you'll need another keyboard around to type a pin in. then type the pin into your new bluetooth keyboard to pair it.

    It takes me about 5 minutes at worst these days to get a new bluetooth install going. Be sure to enable encryption and authentication in hcid.conf, too.

    --
    -- dieman - Scott Dier
  4. Re:Opening the door for game pirates? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    No, the xbox is "so hackable" because they leave LPC points on the mobo for testing - it's easy to bypass the bios using these LPC pads and a ground on the d0 pad. It's more accurate to say "hackability is the reason linux runs on the xbox".

  5. Re:Linux bluetoooth support ? by blonde+rser · · Score: 2, Informative

    Check out http://www.bluez.org/. I use an apple bluetooth keyboard with my debian system without any kernel patches and it runs overall pretty well (although there are a few glitches). By the time the PS3 comes out I have confidence that it will be completely smooth.

  6. Re:Spelling please?: Kutaragi by Heian-794 · · Score: 5, Informative

    The fun-packed grammar and spelling nazi show can be followed by the Useless Japanese Trivia show:

    Ken Kutaragi -- in Japanese, v'½--Ç-Ø OE', is one of those lucky fellows with a four-character surname. You can go for years among Japanese people and never meet such a person; it's like having a European-language surname that starts with "X". There are even web sites devoted to listing up all the 4+ character surnames.

    And that was Useless Japanese Name Trivia for today!

  7. Re:Open source? by listen · · Score: 2, Informative

    But it is possible QEMU could be ported, and Transitive almost certainly would be willing to work with sony on this.... their stuff has been used for PS2 games before along with Cedega.
    So wine could work using either of these options.

  8. Re:Won't be enough? by hollismb · · Score: 3, Informative

    Wrong. You're basing that off really old rumors that turned out not to be true. Microsoft is shipping all XBOX 360s with a 20 Gig HD, included in the box. It's removable to be upgradable and portable so you can take your data/saves/music with you to use on other XBOX 360s though.

  9. Re:Not suprising. by Spy+Hunter · · Score: 2, Informative

    That's because nobody else had the Linux kit. Everybody who has a PS3 hard drive will have Linux. Of course, the Linux games won't hold a candle to the official licensed PS3 games. But you'll be able to play tons of silly little arcade games, solitaire, Frozen Bubble, things like that. At the very least, all the games you can play on Linux now. The concept of mainstream users playing a non-officially-licensed game on a PS3 is quite novel.

    --
    main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
  10. Re:Not suprising. by Rallion · · Score: 2, Informative

    Whoa, hold up. You expect them to profit on the hardware? I don't think so.

  11. Re:PS2 Linux by bebing · · Score: 2, Informative

    I disagree, 100 bucks for 40GB HDD, keyboard, mouse, network adaptor, custom linux distro, official pdfs on the internals of the ps2 including a manual for each chip seems like a good deal to me at that time(2+ years ago?). Concerning suitable displays, you could install out of the box on a ntsc, pal, or SOG monitor, through a controller cheat code, though this info was delayed, people were doing 'blind installs' on tvs. I understand that the latest homebrew development platform sps2 gets pretty close to the hardware. And I also use ps2linux to this day as a desktop.