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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."
This is not suprising. Of course they wouldn't ship it with Windows, they don't want to fund their direct competitor!
After the whole fiasco that Sony had with the NA release of HDD (delaying it by years, promising it would do things it never did, then abandoning it completely with the PS2 redesign after being on market less than a year), I'm not beliving anything Sony says about PS3, HDD specs or otherwise, until it is physically at the store available for purchase.
Personally, I think it would be a mistake that they not include an HDD with the console, but considering the rumoured cost of the PS3, it is probably doubtful that it will include one at launch.
No. WINE is not an emulator, Cell is not an x86 chip.
++ Say to Elrond "Hello.".
Elrond says "No.". Elrond gives you some lunch.
We're gonna *TAKE DOWN* those vi fanboys!
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
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
Nonesense. Never came close to filling up the 8gig on my Xbox, but every game I've played has made use of the HD because they KNOW it will be there.
Of course, since the HD is optional with the PS3, devs will have to assume that it will not be there to reach a wider installed base. PS3 has just made developing for their system more difficult by releasing two products - ones with HDs and ones without.
Even just a small 4gig drive might have been helpful and inexpensive.
It's a good marketing play. It just shifted my preference toward PS3 and away from Xbox360. The ability to use Linux on a system with some rather exotic symmetrical processors, and play all previous PS titles. Right now, all Xbox 360 has going for it is the promise of Halo 3.
;P
always mosh clockwise
Well you could not run JUST Wine. You would need Wine with a cpu emulator or a JIT compiler.
The other issue will be the tool chain. Can you get a compiler for the Cell? Most emulators do not do a lot of FP so the Cells will probably not be used much for the lower end emulators.
The compiler/tool chain is going to be critical. GCC for what I have seen is not very good at vectors. For a lot of Cell development a compiler the can generate vector code will be extermly useful if not vital. Maybe Intel and or IBM could help out GCC in that area?
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Other PC Operating Systems can run too, such as Windows and Tiger (Max OS X 10.4), if the publishers want [them] to do so. That happening seems so far-fetched to me that its very mention undermines the believability of anything else said in the article. That said, it is good to hear Sony will continue to support linux on PlayStation.
This announcement makes me wonder if Sony is positioning ps3 as a general purpose pc replacement. If the HDD includes not only the kernel but a windowing environment(KDE, gnome, etc...), I could see more than a few people using ps3 as thier primary web/email/office box. Assuming that it has keyboard/mouse support, the ps3 has more than enough power to handle normal pc usage.
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!
Terrible move by Sony. Developers ignored the PS2 hard drive because the installed base was so low, and I'm sure PS3 will be the same way.
LordBodak's journal.
If this is true, and they write some reasonable accelerated X drivers, they've more or less sold me on the PS3. Why?
One reason: MythTV frontend. It's hard to justify spending $350 on a console. Spending $350-$400 on a console that replaces a $250-$300 mini-ITX box... that's much easier to justify. You gotta figure that MythTV will be ported pretty fast to it, if the video and audio drivers are reasonable. I also rather like the idea of using MythGame to emulate other systems - really makes for an all-in-one entertainment system.
X-BOX 360 was definitely a competitor for my cash and home media network, but I just can't bring myself to deal with MCE. For all its benefits (easy setup, well-supported), it has niggling annoyances (lack of friendly open formats, multiple tuner issues, proprietary extenders).
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
PS2 Linux was a disaster. First, it was ludicrously expensive - considering you were paying for a free OS. Then there was the whole fiasco about suitable displays - you could only play games on a TV, but only use Linux on a monitor (and one with a "Sync on green" facility too). And finally, they crippled access to all the interesting bits of the system too for good measure.
If that was their idea of opening up the system, then I don't hold out much hope for Linux on PS3.
KK: Linux is legacy, but it will be a start.
Legacy? Riiight. No Linux fanboy here, but I know bullshit when I see it.
In the case of the Cell, operation systems are applications.
Wah?
The kernel will be running on the Cell, and multiple OSes will be running on top of that as applications.
Bah?
Of course, the PS3 can run Linux. If Linux can run, so can Lindows.
Comparing kernels to distros here. Despite the fact that the latter is built upon the former.
Other PC Operating Systems can run too, such as Windows and Tiger (Max OS X 10.4), if the publishers want [them] to do so.
But the odds of Microsoft or Apple doing so are zero. So why say it?
I'm sure the guys clever. But he's not technical in the slightest.
I call your bluff -- ' v'½--Ç-Ø OE',' isn't a name at all! In other news, Slashdot (perhaps unsurprisingly) isn't very multilingual.
However, I did once know a Japanese lady whose family name was 'kyuuraku' as in 'long-lasting pleasure'.
I think it's one of those names awarded to artists and craftsmen way back when... they're getting pretty rare now.
There's a list of 4-character names here:
http://www.ipc.shizuoka.ac.jp/~jjksiro/4moji.html
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
On the serious side, this is probably what sony wants to avoid. A lot of people were devoted to hacking the current consoles to run linux on them - and incidentally opened it up for piracy along the way. If it runs linux from day 1 there will be less people working to crack it. Won't hurt the big piracy orgs, but could stop a few of the smaller ones.
I am trolling