Developing On the PS3 Under Fedora

An anonymous reader writes to point out the first in a series of articles from a while back about using the Playstation 3 as a development environment under Fedora. Here are the second and third parts of the series. Quoting: "Early on, it was a bit of a challenge to get Linux natively installed on the PS3. Time has passed, and a great deal has changed. Fedora 7 installs on the PS3 out of the box, with the most challenging installation steps eliminated. This article introduces the basic configuration knobs and widgets specific to the PS3 running Linux, shows you how to use them effectively, and suggests the kind of trickery that gets improved performance."

Comments

How oddly timely

[dreamchaser]

I just finally bought a PS3 about a week ago and was getting ready to install Linux on it. I wish we could access the GPU but I understand why Sony doesn't want that. I think I found my project for the weekend.

Re:How oddly timely

[Anonymous Coward]

You should watch this and save yourself some time. There is no real point in doing it except to do it, in which case you might as well just watch somebody else.

Re:How oddly timely

[dreamchaser]

Oh I've already seen the (more than one) videos of Linux on the PS3. I want to play around with some Cell coding; that's the only reason TO do it. The PS3 has a web browser already so installing Linux to just a somewhat functional web appliance is probably a waste of time.

Re:How oddly timely

[ettlz]

I wish we could access the GPU but I understand why Sony doesn't want that.

I sincerely hope you don't sympathise with Sony. ;)

Re:How oddly timely

[hazee]

I wish we could access the GPU but I understand why Sony doesn't want that.

Well, I wish somebody would explain it to me. I presume the answer has something to do with piracy, but I don't see how that has a damn thing to do with access to the graphics chip under Linux. I mean, if they want to prevent you booting disks that haven't been officially signed, then that's fair enough (just about), but what does limiting the access to the GPU achieve?

This whole business of running Linux is basically just a tax dodge anyhow - because, if it didn't run Linux, the EU would have classified it as a game, rather than a computer, and slapped a higher import duty on it.

The EU should have stood firm and said "if you want to claim it's a computer, then users should be able to program the facilities of the *whole* computer".

How happy would you be if you bought a new PC, only to find out that, no, you can't access the GPU, etc from your own programs?

Re:How oddly timely

[AndGodSed]

I disagree - for the average geek the DOING of something is an end in itself.

Geeks are the pioneers of today, we do stuff because it is there to do.

Re:How oddly timely

[kripkenstein]

I wish we could access the GPU but I understand why Sony doesn't want that.

Well, I wish somebody would explain it to me. I presume the answer has something to do with piracy, but I don't see how that has a damn thing to do with access to the graphics chip under Linux.

Well, I'm just guessing, but this is my theory.

You can't just write games for consoles, you need to be a registered developer, and have a business relationship with the manufacturer, Sony/Nintendo/Microsoft. This has two goals, first, the manufacturer gets a cut out of your profits, second, the manufacturer gets to decide what runs on the console, so there aren't any subpar titles that give it a bad name.

If Linux could access the GPU, we'd have lots of nifty games ported to the PS3 in no time (Sauerbraten, Nexuiz, Alien Arena, etc. etc.), and later on developers might write games specifically for the PS3/Linux, just to get around the cost of developing using the 'normal' procedure for consoles. Sony, according to this theory, wants to avoid such things, for the reasons I said before: no more guaranteed profit per game played on their consoles, and no control over what games are played on them either.

I think it's crappy reasoning, personally.

Re:How oddly timely

[TheRaven64]

It's about control of the platform. If Linux could access the GPU, then games could be written for PS3 Linux and shipped on a DVD contain a Linux kernel and bootloader without paying Sony anything. Since they sell the hardware as a loss-leader and expect to make up the difference from developer license fees and first-party game sales this would be a problem for them.

How happy would you be if you bought a new PC, only to find out that, no, you can't access the GPU, etc from your own programs?

Depends. If it were heavily subsidised then I might accept it. Probably not though, which is why I don't own a console.

Re:How oddly timely

[Anonymous Coward]

The RSX GPU is a very powerful DMA-capable programmable device developed by a 3rd party (nVidia) primarily for use as a high-end video game on PCs. On your PC for example it's definitely possible to program the GPU to scribble over the operating system, disabling it. Preventing this from happening even by accident (due to a bug in a video game) is quite hard. Preventing it from happening deliberately may be impossible.

Sony don't care if the GPU overwrites the Linux kernel, but they do care if it trashes their hypervisor, because the hypervisor enforces the PS3's copy protection rules.

If you would like to use the GPU from Linux you need to make it so that no matter how you program the GPU it never overwrites the Hypervisor or its associated state, and never interferes with the Hypervisor's copy prevention features (which ensure you can't take an illegal copy of a PS3 game and run it from Other OS).

It's quite possible that because of the myriad bugs and complexities of the RSX this is either impossible or implausibly hard (maybe it's no harder than building an entirely crash-proof version of Windows...) and thus Sony haven't done it. Unless they can do this, they can't justify allowing access to the RSX from Linux, for the same reason they don't provide a "make backup copy of my game" feature.

Re:How oddly timely

[rbanffy]

"the manufacturer gets a cut out of your profits"

They need this in order to be able to subsidize the console. The solution to this closed ecosystem where console makers can dictate which publishers enter the market is to prevent the subsidies. If you prevent the subsidies, there is little to no reason to limit what the end user can do with the device or who can program for it.

Re:How oddly timely

[CronoCloud]

Firefox 3 under Linux on the PS3 is a better web browser than Netfront under GameOS.

Re:How oddly timely

[CronoCloud]

This whole business of running Linux is basically just a tax dodge anyhow - because, if it didn't run Linux, the EU would have classified it as a game, rather than a computer, and slapped a higher import duty on it.

Wrong. Because that tax that you are referring to hasn't existed for years. It got revoked before even Linux on the PS2 was released. It was Yabasic on the PS2 that was an attempt to doge it, not Linux on the PS2 or PS3.

Re:How oddly timely

[Anonymous Coward]

It's perfectly sound reasoning. PlayStation is a business. They don't owe you anything. When you invest over $100M in developing a new platform, you can invent whatever rules you like.

Re:How oddly timely

[belgian_embedded_]

I want to play around with some Cell coding;

A few months ago, i was part of a project writing a demo app for PS3... We wrote some cell-code to scale webcam images. The app is written in C, the project website can be found here: http://cellproject.kjeldelaey.be/documentatie/html/annotated.html The site is in dutch, but the code is documented in english.

Re:How oddly timely

[Anonymous Coward]

The cause and effect is reversed somewhat here. They don't need to offset the initial cost of the device, and so it isn't why they have licensing fees. Rather it's because they control access to the platform that they are able, if they choose, to try to obtain a larger market share by hiding the total cost of the device. The licensing fees exist to obtain larger, more consistent earnings from the platform. It also prevents ET-class games, which are long-rumored to have helped kill the early '80s console business. Making it illegal to sell consoles at a loss will not alter the licensing practice. Only preventing the manufacturer from being able to control the market available to their platform through licenses altogether would do that, and the console manufacturers would probably just pull the plug and tell you to buy a PC instead.

Re:How oddly timely

[CronoCloud]

The point is it adds functionality to a device that already has plenty. Even if it doesn't have 3D hardware access it's still capable of doing non-3D development. There's nothing stopping someone from using Linux on the PS3 and becoming a part of the Nethack Devteam, or writing patches to Claws-Mail or something.

I've watched video under Linux on the PS3, it may not be good enough for 1080p but for the average non-HD video it should work fine. I've watched plenty of youtube on it. Besides, there's always GameOS for that functionality.

And Linux on the PS3 gives it the ability to read e-mail, open a powerpoint, browse the web with better web browsers than GameOS's sucky Netfront. For people with a 1 PC household that could be a godsend.

Re:How oddly timely

[Anonymous Coward]

Make sure you have an appropriate monitor before starting. (I got a 1600x1050 monitor which supports 1080p - it looks great with games, but is terrible under linux. Unlike PCs, where you have a lot of flexibility in setting the video resolution to match your monitor, your monitor HAS to natively run at 1920x1200 or 1280x1024 or 1280x768 to look halfway decent. If not, the monitor may rescale the image in such a way that it looks blurry or has missing pixels. Unfortunately, HDCP compliant 1920x1200 monitors cost a pretty penny...)

Shiny. My captcha was "Firefly".

Re:How oddly timely

[Anonymous Coward]

Then all they need to do is have an "official seal" program like Nintendo does.

Re:How oddly timely

[mikael]

It probably isn't Sony, but Nvidia. Third party board manufacturers do get access to the Nvidia hardware specifications in order to write drivers for a fee, so I would guess that making developers pay for access to the hardware specifications helps to pay for the cost of support staff. The

Surely, nvidia could create blob drivers for the PS3, as they do for PC's?

Re:How oddly timely

[aeschenkarnos]

I wish we could access the GPU but I understand why Sony doesn't want that.

You do? Wow. I always suspected that somebody must. And it's you! Share, please. :)

Re:How oddly timely

[CronoCloud]

Yeah, trying out all the video modes to see which one works best for ones screen is a must. I've got a 1440x900 LCD TV, for me using VESA WXGA over HDMI, which is 1280x768 on the PS3 which my TV scales slightly works best.

Re:How oddly timely

[aur0ra]

Not only can you not access the GPU, but Sony has implemented a hypervisor running between the hardware and the OS. So any I/O calls are extremely slow. I played with the Cell processor in a PS3 for a few months and found that the hard disk and NIC I/O were unacceptably slow due to the hypervisor. I was able to get better performance from a quad-core Opteron based server. I don't want to bash the Cell processor though. One other thing to point out is that if one utilizes the SIMD instruction set, you can perform 4 operations simultaneously on one of the SPE's. So one could essentially run 4*6=24 instructions at the same time with these chips. I was successful in doing this but the slow I/O speeds pretty much killed the project.

Re:How oddly timely

[grumbel]

The video is rather lame, since it only states in rather verbose terms that the CELL isn't a x86 CPU and that you don't have access to the GPU, which we already knew anyway. It would be much more interesting to know what the PS3 Linux actually can do instead of knowing what it can't do (i.e. does mplayer work, is CELL any good for video encoding right know, how fast is the framebuffer when watching video, how fast is Dosbox or other emulation, etc.).

Re:How oddly timely

[synthespian]

Absolutely. Linux on the PS3 is for Cell programming.

Re:How oddly timely

[SuperDre]

I don't understand why Sony doesn't want you to have access to the GPU if you have access to about anything else (well a little bit ofcourse I do understand).. having no access to the gpu is only a bitch for things we(well at least for me) really want run linux for in the PS3, like being able to play with emulators or Scummvm.. for piracy it doesn't matter if we do/don't have access to the gpu, so that's not the reason.. The only reason I can think of is otherwise people will create linux games and run them instead of buying real ps3 games.. So I do hope the grant access to the GPU once they start making money on the PS3 hardware, IMHO for a lot of people being able to use linux with full access to the GPU would be a major selling point (being able to run any mediacenter you want, being able to run any linuxgame you want, being able to run a lot of emulators, but I guess for a lot of people the mediacenter would be the biggest plus)..

Re:How oddly timely

[synthespian]

Kai Staats, main developer for Yellow Dog Linux, from Terra Soft (the firm Sony contracted), says "they're working hard" to [convince? Sony? NVIDIA?] to let Linux access the GPU.

http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=lSP9b4Qcu4M

Maybe this will change if the community puts enough pressure on Sony and NVIDIA.

Re:How oddly timely

[synthespian]

Anyway, what's good enough for 1080p, 1080i? Only Blu-Ray.

Re:How oddly timely

[Forkenhoppen]

I wish we could access the GPU but I understand why Sony doesn't want that.

Well, I wish somebody would explain it to me. I presume the answer has something to do with piracy, but I don't see how that has a damn thing to do with access to the graphics chip under Linux. I mean, if they want to prevent you booting disks that haven't been officially signed, then that's fair enough (just about), but what does limiting the access to the GPU achieve?

The GPU is a NVIDIA chip. Linux drivers from NVIDIA are closed-source, and I haven't heard of any low-level hardware documentation being handed out to people looking to write open source alternatives. How would people program the GPU under PS3 Linux without that documentation?

Re:How oddly timely

[Anonymous Coward]

PlayStation is a product. Sony is a business. FYI.

Re:How oddly timely

[dannycim]

That video features an inordinate amount of stupidity. I mean the guy installs Linux on a PS3 and then tries to run high-end games inside of that. Then he complains that Wine doesn't run on it.

Reminds me of idiots buying PlayStation games and then returning to the store a day later all upset because they couldn't figure out how to insert the CD in their Nintendos.

Hello? Every hear of PS3 games? You know, those that don't require an extra OS to run?

Also, he complains about screen resolution. I've tried my PS3 running Linux at 480[ip], 720[ip] and 1080[ip] with perfect results. And you know what? I do really cool things on it, like coding, testing, networking, learning about the Cell Architecture, streaming music and video, etc.. Not games, and that's fine by me.

What a feces-head.

Re:How oddly timely

[PitaBred]

Empathize with people who are too stupid to do a modicum of research before trying something? Why yes, I do believe I have a problem doing that. Hell, a 5 minute web browsing session would tell you that the PS3 has a Cell processor, which is a PowerPC core. A few more minutes, and you'd realize Wine isn't made for PowerPC's. Game over there. But hey, go ahead and make excuses for someone saying "I'm a fucking retard, and this sucks because the grill I just bought doesn't make my potato salad cold!".

Re:How oddly timely

[dreamchaser]

Thank you! I'll surely check that out.

Re:How oddly timely

[dreamchaser]

Meh, if I want to browse the web in front of my TV I have a laptop for that. The built in browser is more than good enough for the occasional need. That being said of course if I'm booted into Linux I'll be using the browser for various things; viewing and downloading code comes to mind.

Re:How oddly timely

[CronoCloud]

I have my PS3 on a computer desk with a 19inch HD LCD, so it's more like a regular PC desktop setup, keyboard tray, printer and everything.

Re:How oddly timely

[ya really]

Actually, you can develop games for the xbox360 relatively cheap. For 99 bucks, they will give you the license. The XNA development kit is free for anyone (at least the express version, which is partially stripped down).

Last I knew, MS was giving a one year membership license to XNA away for free on their dreamspark site for students. They were also giving away the XNA 2.0 development kit (full version). It's worth at least checking out if you have an interest in console development (even if it's the xbox360 and not the PS3).

Re:How oddly timely

[petermgreen]

The thing is if sony lets linux apps access the GPU they will have essentially let people sell games for the PS3 without giving sony a cut.

Since afaict sony takes a loss on the PS3 itself and tries to make up for that with thier cuts of game revenue I don't see them allowing linux based competition to liensed games anytime soon.

Re:How oddly timely

[CronoCloud]

mplayer works, at least for the mp4 web video. I don't know of any video encoding that uses the spe's. Dosbox is fast enough to play SSI's Dungeon Hack full speed. QEMU+Win95 is fast enough to play Diablo.

Re:How oddly timely

[CronoCloud]

That's what comes from letting a PC gamer near Linux, all he knows is games so that's what he'll try to run. If he wanted Quake, GameOS is what he should have been using to play the PS2/PS3 Quake games, unless he wants to run source ports of Quake 1 or Quake II. I think there's people who ran Starcraft under win95/win98 via QEMU.

Although Youtube doesn't work directly in Firefox on the PS3, that's a limitation of gnash, you can view youtube video. All you need is a Firefox plugin or command line tools like youtube-dl

Networking is easy, just plug the cable in. The built in wireless takes a bit of work if you want to use that.

As for screen resolution, he should blame his monitor. He's probably using HDMI to DVI. For me, it installed and booted in 720p, which is not quite full 720p, it's 1100somethingx600something, on the ps3 because it allows for overscan (because of CRT based HDTV's) But it was easy enough to knock it into VESA WXGA mode (1280x768) which works quite well on my TV.

[CronoCloud@mideel ~]$ xwininfo -root
 
xwininfo: Window id: 0x3b (the root window) (has no name)
 
  Absolute upper-left X: 0
  Absolute upper-left Y: 0
  Relative upper-left X: 0
  Relative upper-left Y: 0
  Width: 1280
  Height: 768
  Depth: 24
  Visual Class: TrueColor
  Border width: 0
  Class: InputOutput
  Colormap: 0x20 (installed)
  Bit Gravity State: ForgetGravity
  Window Gravity State: NorthWestGravity
  Backing Store State: NotUseful
  Save Under State: no
  Map State: IsViewable
  Override Redirect State: no
  Corners: +0+0 -0+0 -0-0 +0-0
  -geometry 1280x768+0+0

Re:How oddly timely

[CronoCloud]

novice end users are going to play games in GameOS, except maybe games through SDLmame or emulators like Stella, or VICE.

Re:How oddly timely

[CronoCloud]

Not games, and that's fine by me.

Not even Nethack?

Re:How oddly timely

[dreamchaser]

I got mine primary for movies and games, and it sits in my living room connected to my HDTV.

Re:How oddly timely

[apparently]

If Linux could access the GPU, then games could be written for PS3 Linux and shipped on a DVD contain a Linux kernel and bootloader without paying Sony anything

Just take a look at the sheer size of the linux PC-gaming library for an example of what Sony has to fear.

Re:How oddly timely

[Anonymous Coward]

There's also a bunch of useful info on IBMs website, also
http://www.cse.ucsd.edu/classes/wi08/cse260/Cell.html has got some good links. IBM's SDKs are pretty good now (compared to beta quality of 1.x)

Re:How oddly timely

[h3]

That video is full of misleading information. First of all, to complain about the video quality and talk about "interlacing" ? LOLWUT??? Of course it's gonna look garbage if you're using it on some SD set. 1080p, looks fine. Secondly, I installed Ubuntu on my PS3 and had no problem watching Youtubes - I guess YDL has some issues, but that doesn't make it a problem with /Linux/. And of course Wine won't work - that he even tried indicates some fundamental misunderstanding of How Things Work.

An interesting video but ...

[ctid]

... the article specifically states that running Linux on the PS3 is now far easier. I don't know if that is true but the article states that many of the time-consuming steps are no longer required. The PS3 is a very cheap development environment if your target platform is the CELL processor and that must be a reason for doing it if you are going to be programming one of those systems. There is no reason to assume that everyone has the same motivation for running it.

Re:An interesting video but ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would your target platform be the cell processor? The only people who use them are PS3 and Toshiba Qosmio owners. If you're writing PS3 apps on Linux, it's doubtful they will ever see much use. Likewise, the cell "helper" processor in the Qosmio isn't going to see a lot of use either, it's just there to speed up HD processing. And if you plan on writing code to be run on Roadrunner, I don't think the PS3 is a good development environment for that.

Re:An interesting video but ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think the PS3 is a good development environment for that.

That's nice that you don't think it's good for that. But there are plenty of things that people could use programming on Linux on the PS3 for. They could use it to familiarize themselves with writing to the SPEs. They could use it to learn about multithreading. It's an amazing learning resource. And if you happen to work in a scientific lab environment, it's a very cheap workhorse. So just because you don't think it's good for anything doesn't make it so.

Re:An interesting video but ...

[Sophia Ricci]

Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room

Aah...that explains why there is only one +5 Insightful comment.

Re:An interesting video but ...

[uassholes]

Not quite. Supercomputers.

CBEs or successors will probably get popular in HPC.

The Barcelona Supercomuting Center, for instance, has a site on Linux on Cell BE-based Systems: http://www.bsc.es/plantillaG.php?cat_id=96

Re:An interesting video but ...

[CronoCloud]

And a non-coder slightly nerdy person could use it (in my case Linux on the PS2) to learn about this Linux thing they've seen mention of on Slashdot.

Re:An interesting video but ...

[hairyfeet]

I am curious and have never seen a clear explanation,so maybe someone here at slashdot can tell me:what makes the cell a better choice for supercomputing than other chips. Is it better at a certain kind of math? Wouldn't you limit the work you can do by going cell instead of a more general chip? And I thought that the next generation Intel and AMD chips are going to allow for specialized co-processors like the old days,thanks to Hyper-transport. Has that been shelved or something?

Because it would seem to me if you were spending the kind of bucks you need to build a true supercomputer(as opposed to those that hook up 6 to 8 PS3s to do some specialized computing for cheap) that it would be better to go a more general CPU route where you have all this FLOSS code already written that you can run. Is the cell that much faster that it negates the adavatage of having all that free code already written? And I apologize if it is a noob question or something,because every article I've read on the cell has been written as a How-To like this one,and I've never really seen anyone explain what the actual advantages of the cell is over a multicore Intel,AMD,or Sun setup.

Re:An interesting video but ...

[belgian_embedded_]

The cellprocessor is actually a 'normal' powerpc processor (2 threads), with 8 coprocessors (Synergistic Processor cores, 1 thread each), optimized for single precisionfloating point operations. All 9 cores can use DMA simultaneous... Since the cell is actually an 'upgraded' powerpc, all FLOSS code will run on it, of course not optimazed... That's why it's so easy to port linux to it...

Re:An interesting video but ...

[Junta]

A two processor Xeon 3.0 ghz quad core system would have an xhpl-relevant Rpeak of about 96 Gflops. Two cell processors (of the Poer8XCelli varaint, not the ones in PS3) has an Rpeak of 200 Gigaflops. The power consumption of those are about even. So the processor achieves over twice the aggregate performance within a comparable power envelope. *THAT* is why it's interesting.

See the #1 Top500 system. Not significantly more power usage than Intel systems, but blows the Intel ones out of the water.

The thing about code is, a Cell system can run the same C code other platforms can. Not blazingly fast, mind you, but it isn't like you *must* retool everything. In order to get the 2x boosts in certain code loops, yes, you would have to, but a lot of that is done already.

Re:An interesting video but ...

[westlake]

The PS3 is a very cheap development environment if your target platform is the CELL processor and that must be a reason for doing it
.

explain to me why you are spending time in an environment that doesn't give you full access to the graphics sub-system - and may have other significant constraints.

Re:An interesting video but ...

[feepness]

explain to me why you are spending time in an environment that doesn't give you full access to the graphics sub-system -

Because you aren't doing graphics?

and may have other significant constraints.

and could also come to life and kill you!

Re:An interesting video but ...

[synthespian]

The ps3 has 8 cores. It's cheap. Something, e.g., with Sun's UtraSparc T2 costs over US$ 14,000.

http://www.sun.com/servers/coolthreads/t5140/

The ps3 is multicore for the masses. They're here.

This is, like, having an Apple ][ in 1977 :-).

Re:An interesting video but ...

[Anonymous Coward]

The PowerXCell 8i version of the Cell processor can do 102 GFLOPS double precision. However, the PS3 Cell chip only supports single precision natively.

the Cell chip in the PS3 does has a peak of around 200 GigaFLOPs single precision and 20 GigaFLOPs double precision

Re:An interesting video but ...

[hairyfeet]

Thanks for the info everyone,it makes a lot more sense now. Question: has anybody hacked the graphics core so you can run code on it yet? It seems to me if you were going to link a bunch of PS3s together having all those graphics cores sitting idle when they could be processing vectors seems like a waste. According to the Wiki the GPU gets 1.8 TFLOPs which,when combined with the cell would make for some truly scary number crunching. So anybody have any luck with it? I know that Sony is scared of piracy,but surely they could release a binary blob that simply lets you run number crunching,maybe an Nvidia binary that only allows certain apps to be run through the GPU. I also see on the Wiki that it share a lot in common with the Nvidia 7800. Maybe that could be the way in? But as always this is my 02c based on curiosity,YMMV

big blue trying to hack their own cpu :)

[pimpimpim]

Nice to find a solution to find a cheap hack to use the Cell on an IBM website. Sometimes you really wonder if they have seen the light :)

I wonder if these machines would make an excellent slim desktop pc to compete with eee desktop and others. But I guess reselling the ps3 with linux preinstalled will be fought by Sony.

Re:big blue trying to hack their own cpu :)

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if these machines would make an excellent slim desktop pc to compete with eee desktop and others. But I guess reselling the ps3 with linux preinstalled will be fought by Sony.

Fought by Sony? It was their idea in the first place!

Re:big blue trying to hack their own cpu :)

[mrtom852]

The only reason Sony let this happen was to try to have the platform classified as a 'computer' in the EU - because of tax.

Sony tries so hard to lock up its platform that their offerings were laughable...
http://www.edge-online.com/news/kutaragi-details-ps3-computer-claim

Re:big blue trying to hack their own cpu :)

[pimpimpim]

Quite an amusing read :) I had to check again to see if it wasn't The Onion which I was reading. "The playstation is a PC! Well we didn't make it very usable as a PC. Actually it is a piece of crap as a PC. Did I mention our playstation is a PC?"

Re:big blue trying to hack their own cpu :)

[CronoCloud]

Again, the tax myth. The tax doesn't exist, hasn't existed since before Linux on the PS2 was released. It was Yabasic that was an attempt to dodge the tax, not Linux.

By the way, you CAN install a bigger HD in the PS3, Sony tells you how in the manual.

Re:big blue trying to hack their own cpu :)

[Ant P.]

Actually it sounds more like they don't know how to develop for it, which is why we see these regular slashvertisements from "anonymous readers" that point to the IBM developerworks site. They're trying to enlist /.'s population as free rentacoders.

It all sounds a bit Itanic to me.

Re:big blue trying to hack their own cpu :)

[AmberBlackCat]

Maybe everybody knows this except me, but does the thing have a keyboard? I'd have a hard time programming without one.

Re:big blue trying to hack their own cpu :)

[HeronBlademaster]

I don't have a PS3, but if memory serves it has USB ports, so you can plug in a keyboard and mouse. At least the PS2 did have USB ports, and I don't see a reason the PS3 would remove them...

Re:big blue trying to hack their own cpu :)

[OmegaBlac]

Maybe everybody knows this except me, but does the thing have a keyboard? I'd have a hard time programming without one.

The PS3 has several usb ports so you can use a USB keyboard and mouse if you want. You have to buy them seperately of course though. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PS3#Graphical_user_interface/

Re:big blue trying to hack their own cpu :)

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, you can already buy a pre-installed Linux PS3.

Please see:

http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com/store/index.php?submit=hardware&submitimg[hardware][sony]=1

Re:big blue trying to hack their own cpu :)

[poormanjoe]

Playstation 3's can be found with a pre-installed version of Yellow Dog, on the Terrasoft webpage. The price is about $450, an extra $50 for the linux install. Of course this is the "official" distro for the PS3 so it would probably be a problem for other distros.

Re:big blue trying to hack their own cpu :)

[pimpimpim]

Hmm, then why do they emphasize the use of the ps3 as a pc then? Anyone who uses the PS3 solely as a PC is a loss factor for sony, who earns most on the games. Also changing the disk drive could have been a nice sort of income (only sony-approved disk drives). Now really, I like their politics here, I am just amazed why they seem to deviate from the standard ripping-the-customer-off tactics. Is it just to create goodwill?

Re:big blue trying to hack their own cpu :)

[CronoCloud]

It's not a loss factor for Sony, a Linux equipped PS3 still plays PS3 games, it's a dual boot thing. As for the HD, you could install Linux on larger ATA drives too in the PS2 too, though those could only be used under Linux. Sony's long been a supporter of hobbyist development...to a certain extent, Yaroze for PS1 ($800), the Linux kit for PS2 ($199), and now Linux on the PS3 (free). It also helps create new PSfoo programmers.

Re:big blue trying to hack their own cpu :)

[CronoCloud]

Just to let everyone know one downside to buying a PS3 from Terrasoft. The PS3's sold by Terrasoft are 40GB models with bigger HD's installed. So they don't have any PS2 backwards compatibility. If you're just doing dev it's no big deal, of course.

Finally!

[oodaloop]

The year of the Linux game console is here!

Re:Finally!

[Fri13]

Sorry, you are late... it came when Linux got running on XBOX (1). See you on the next market area, because Servers, Desktops, WLAN's, Routers (networking) and Consoles "Year of the Linux on X" has already gone on those markets... Mayby next one is "Year of the Linux on Cars" or "Year of the Linux on Dildo"...

Re:Finally!

[tristian_was_here]

... or the year of Linux on the Destop.

Re:Finally!

[CronoCloud]

Sorry, you are late, it came when Linux was running on the PS2.

Re:Finally!

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, an advanced dildo would only need a low-end AVR or PIC running through preset routines. Even a really minimal Linux embedded system would be massive overkill. It would be amusing to open the package and find a copy of the GPL though ...

Re:Finally!

[Anonymous Coward]

"Year of the Linux on Dildo"

I imagine the "fsck" command will be popular in this one

Re:Finally!

[dfn_deux]

Unless something has changed dramatically the "native linux" on PS3 is really running virtualized on top of Sony's own hypervisor which prevent direct access of the graphic acceleration hardware. In a practical sense that means that anything you "home brew" to run on linux on a ps3 is going to be hamstrung by it's lack of direct hardware access and won't stand a chance of being performance competitive with REAL native ps3 applications.

Re:Finally!

[synthespian]

You got the hypervisor part right.

The performance part I think you pulled it out of your ass.

Re:Finally!

[dfn_deux]

Graphics/Video PS3 has a powerful graphic processing unit with high speed host connection. The GPU is connected to both HDMI and AV multi interface. Although the GPU is connected directly to CBE, no direct access by guest OSes to the GPU is allowed currently. Video mode/format setting is also the role of AV setting driver. PS3 Linux fb driver calls AV setting driver to setup video modes. Currently X server uses virtual frame buffer to render its image. No hardware acceleration is supported under Linux. See the description above section.

- Linux Kernel Overview

Linux on the PlayStation 3 allows for a huge range of homebrew programs to be developed and is entirely and completely sanctioned by Sony. Although the Cell's performance is more than enough to handle most media requirements or render complex 3D graphics, it does lack the teraflops performance of a contemporary GPU's texture fetching hardware. For this reason many complex games aren't possible on the PlayStation 3 through Linux as access to hardware acceleration in the RSX is restricted by a hypervisor.

-Wikipedia

I'm not a game programmer, but it sure seems to me like having good hardware acceleration is going to make the difference between having to split your main general processing power between game logic and graphics rendering OR having 100% of each to handle the task that it is best suited for. So unless you have some justification for saying that I'm "pulling things from my ass" it seems like your statement doesn't really hold water to the generally available info. I've heard that some hacks are showing some limited success in gaining DMA control over the GPU hardware, but nothing is solid and the method by which access is gained is actively being patched out by Sony in an effort to control the channels by which AAA quality games can get onto their hardware.

Re:Finally!

[Fri13]

Sorry, I were not late, I was just wrong on timeline;-)

the funs gone

[Lilo-x]

the fun of getting this things to work on consoles is the hacking involved, if the devs just let you fire up an iso and install then the enjoyment is gone, you may as well fire up a vm and run through the install process,

Someone tell me...

[DiamondGeezer]

...why anyone would want to run Linux on a PS3 which is both expensive and underpowered to run it? Why not get a cheap laptop on eBay?

Re:Someone tell me...

[Anonymous Coward]

We're nerds, retard! There's a ton of reasons for others, for me their is an intrinsic value in running a free OS everywhere. Never heard of hackers? Ya know those people who like to make things do things they were never supposed to?

Re:Someone tell me...

[Fumus]

Just look a few posts up.

Re:Someone tell me...

[Anonymous Coward]

A real nerd wouldn't touch Sony with a lecture hall lazer pointing device.

Re:Someone tell me...

[CronoCloud]

Because that cheap ebay laptop can't play Oblivion. Neither can it play PS2 games at full speed. In fact, it might have problems with PS1 games.

The Linux functionality of the PS3 is in addition to all the other things it does, more features, more bang for the buck.

For instance, suppose a family has a PC, a lot of families have only one. Suppose they get a PS3, then they can install Linux on it and have two machines that can read e-mail. That means if the PC is occupied and someone needs to read/write a document, they can still do it.

I used a PS2 as my primary e-mail/web browsing platform for years, doing so freed up the PC. I got a PS3 last month and within 24 hours I had Linux installed on it so it could replace the PS2 functionality wise.

Re:Someone tell me...

[synthespian]

Because you're cheap laptop you bought on eBay does not have a high-end multicore chip like Cell

nothingtoseeheremovealong

[gzipped_tar]

The 3-part article tells very little about PS3-specific hacks. Basically, the author was telling you how to strip the Fedora system so that it could run on the resource-limited hardware without being too slow. This includes stopping unecessary daemons, ditch GNOME for twm, and running the X server on another box (or getting rid of X altogether).

This also apply to everything that Fedora can run on.

I fail to see how this is related to ``developing on the PS3 under Fedora''. The article didn't say much about development. If by ``developing'' you mean compiling your code in Fedora running inside a PS3 (which is under a virtualized environment) may be you have some points. But this is not developing for the PS3 platform. This is developing for a virtualized Linux platform.

Re:nothingtoseeheremovealong

[jmichaelg]

For that matter, the PS3 comes standard with a 4200 RPM drive, which means it's not a particularly enticing Linux environment to develop in no matter which distro you use.

Nonetheless, even though it has a slow hard drive and only 256 Megs of RAM, there are some uses for Linux on the PS3. I live in a small valley where radio reception is virtually nil. I use my PS3 to play Shoutcast streams on my stereo when I'm not watching a movie on it.

My preferred usage would be to run Pandora using the built-in browser on the PS3 but unfortunately, Pandora doesn't quite fit on the PS3. Imagine - 256 megs is too little Ram to run a browser and a flash application. Somebody must have skipped "Hardware Constraints-101" when they went to college.

Re:nothingtoseeheremovealong

[CronoCloud]

That's funny because the standard memory configuration for many early WinXP boxes was 256MB. Bought a laptop in 2003 whose standard config had 256MB with WinXP, Gateway 400SP plus.

Re:nothingtoseeheremovealong

[synthespian]

All you have to do, if you're really worried about that 256 RAM is:

1) Play some ps3 games, like the almost photo-realistic Gran Tourismo, to be convinced that simple explanations here do not suffice

2) Use a more optimized windows manager that's still beautiful, like Enlightenment.

Re:nothingtoseeheremovealong

[synthespian]

So, you're saying we're ot gonna run huge data centers from the PS3s at home - because of the disks?

You're just saying it for the lulz, right? :-)

Re:nothingtoseeheremovealong

[jmichaelg]

I guess I didn't make myself clear. It's not a Linux implementation issue.

Even though there's no Linux instance running and all that's running is the native PS3 OS, a browser, a flash interpreter and Pandora's flash application, 256 Meg is not enough. Perhaps it's a bug in Pandora or perhaps 256 meg really isn't enough anymore.

I know it sounds absurd but there it is.

Out of date

[sokkalf]

The FA is almost half a year old, and focusses on Fedora 7, which is EOL. Surely much must have changed since then, with Fedora 8 and 9, and probably other distros as well.

Re:Out of date

[Anonymous Coward]

The FA is almost half a year old, and focusses on Fedora 7, which is EOL.

Surely much must have changed since then, with Fedora 8 and 9, and probably other distros as well.

Not really. F8 is better than 7 but F9 is a piece of shit. After installing 9, I went back to 8 after a couple months in a fit a rage because every update fixed something a then broke a bunch of other stuff.

Re:Out of date

[synthespian]

See my other post - you should probably be using the Yellow Dog Linux, as Sony payed Terra Soft to port the thing to PS3.

http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com/products/ydl/

No tweaking necessary, and all the development tools you need, and updated.

why?

[timmarhy]

i'm struggling to see the point of this, you can build a linux box on cheaper things than a ps3 and this is nothing to do with developing FOR the ps3, it's just a howto install guide

Re:why?

[synthespian]

Why? Because of the Cell chip.

If you still don't understand why, than you're not the kind of person who should buy a ps3 for Linux.

Dual Shock 3 the greatest & Low-income familie

[Anonymous Coward]

The dual shock 3 controller works beautifully under linux and is simply the best controller for gaming today.

Whats disappointed me personally is the lack of support from those FOSS games that would be ideal for it.

For someone who comes from the spectrum/st/amiga etc etc. Lets call that the open console era. I'm really disappointed.

Sony did try and get the PS3 classified as a computer for TAX!? reasons and failed...and rightly so. But to not pursue it and offer proper support to low-income families where a linux/openoffice or even an opensolaris/openoffice solution would have made a real difference in these peoples lives, as they often miss out on a major functional skill its appalling. They should have appealed. I know that those people are not Sony's top priority but if they believed their own original marketing hype "Computer"+"Long Lived Device" perhaps they should have been part of that strategy. Especially considering the extra functionality Linux would bring to the table, compared to that slightly(£320 vs £240) cheaper console that is not a capable device. Thats ignoring how it would have been fun as a hardware company to cheaply kick a software Microsoft back where it would really hurt in its OS and Office Monopoly.

That said when the vapourware tv tuner+45's PS3 edition is released I'll be queuing outside a Dixons grpoup shop in my sleeping bag. I'm desperate to move my Complete Multimedia+Server Jobs off my bedroom computer to under my TV, where I would finally step into blu-ray and commercial gaming again, and get rid of my old DVD/DIVX player; Hard Drive TV Recorder; Hard Drive Media computer to boot, and simply be able to switch my computer off at night rather than compare uptime with others, and am grateful of the work being done by the community[sic] and Sony's small contributions.

UNIX

[Anonymous Coward]

is a singularity

It's not quite about piracy

[Moraelin]

Well, I wish somebody would explain it to me. I presume the answer has something to do with piracy, but I don't see how that has a damn thing to do with access to the graphics chip under Linux. I mean, if they want to prevent you booting disks that haven't been officially signed, then that's fair enough (just about), but what does limiting the access to the GPU achieve?

Well, it's not quite about piracy. It's about the fact that their whole business model is, well, sorta like the Gillette model: give the razor for almost free, make them pay through the nose for blades. Or, in Sony's case: massively subsidize the console itself, but control the games publishing and make them pay extra for the games.

It's not just Sony that has this model, btw. HP does the same with printers and ink, to the extent that for some it's cheaper to just chuck the old printer in the bin and buy a new one (which includes ink), than to buy a new ink cartridge. It's done by telcos, who give you a phone for 1 Euro, but saddle you with a long term contract as their real revenue. Etc, etc, etc.

So the last thing Sony wants is that someone bypasses them and publishes their own games for the PS3, say, as Linux games. And don't think as much "homebrew" (they probably couldn't care less if you make your own buggy tetris clone for it), think some big publisher getting that idea. Like, say, EA realizing that they can bypass and undercut Sony for their sports games.

And it's easier to play the piracy card there and forbid it completely from the start, than to go to court later and claim "but they need our permission to make games for our machine!" There are already precedents that you can't outright forbid that. Starting with the famous IBM case which created the software industry in the first place. Turned out that IBM couldn't forbid you to make software for their machines. Atari tried the same stunt and lost too. In fact, nobody won that kind of a case yet, and I'm not sure Sony wants to try to be the first.

This whole business of running Linux is basically just a tax dodge anyhow - because, if it didn't run Linux, the EU would have classified it as a game, rather than a computer, and slapped a higher import duty on it.

AFAIK, that tax loophole was removed _years_ ago. So, nope.

The EU should have stood firm and said "if you want to claim it's a computer, then users should be able to program the facilities of the *whole* computer".

AFAIK, they did, back in the PS2 times. Sorta. They essentially ruled that it's a game console anyway.

How happy would you be if you bought a new PC, only to find out that, no, you can't access the GPU, etc from your own programs?

Well, just to play the devil's advocate, then fucking buy a computer. Of course, then you won't have Sony subsidizing half the cost of it, and they can't impose any restriction on you.

Same as with cell phones, printers, etc. If you don't want to be bound by some long term contract, buy your own phone. If you don't want to be gouged for ink, buy a Cannon. Etc. It's that simple. If you decided to take the subsidy, then have the decency to also accept your own part of the contract too.

It's kinda silly to essentially demand that a company subsidizes anything for you, but is forbidden to get anything in return. If they don't get anything out of that deal, why would they? No, you don't have some sacred right that someone else buys you a lollipop.

Re:It's not quite about piracy

[jack1323]

Very well put. Mod parent up.

Re:It's not quite about piracy

[TJamieson]

So then skip the subsidy. Just like carrier-unlocked cell phones. If you want the PS3 with GPU available in Linux, you pay a $300 premium on top of original console cost. This allows Sony to recoup costs in terms of more expensive hardware, and mostly prevents the devs skipping over to PS3/Linux since they'll want to target the everyday console.

Simple

[dreamchaser]

Because free 3D accellerated games on Linux would cut into their royalties. I didn't say I liked it, I just said I understood their reason.

No...

[Junta]

If they didn't know how to develop for it, they wouldn't have gotten to #1 supercomputing slot. IBM knows how.

Now, with this, it's a move to drum up interest in the architecture. IBM has server-class systems with enterprise support for CBE systems (QS22 being the current generation). However, drumming up general community interest in Cell benefits them in many ways.

Businesses contemplating Cell can have developers evaluate the architecture on the cheap. They won't be able to have a high speed interconnect or decent RAM, or even respectable double-precision performance. They'll have just enough to get a feel for how coding for the platform would be. It's IBM's dream scenario, a crippled product that people buy that can serve as an evaluation platform for customers.

IBM has come out with an amazing performance chip and managed to get it into a readily available package people can play with. Whether IBM knew it or not, the PS3 capability to run Linux is a boon to their QS server stragety.

Re:In other news: PS3 is slow as hell

[CronoCloud]

The problem is defining "comfortably". Some dev used to running Eclipse, compiling code, running Firefox, and Thunderbird under a full KDE/Gnome desktop all the time might have a different definition. I've ran X on the PS2. X on the PS3 runs better, it runs fine.

IBM would like..

[Junta]

For people to use it to develop an understanding that makes you comfortable about recommending purchase of QS blade servers, which have none of those limitations of the PS3.

Howerver, I still want a good PS3 Myth frontend. I already have one that is on an AMD PC, but I would love to have one fewer device in the mix.

Re:IBM would like..

[Anonymous Coward]

For people to use it to develop an understanding that makes you comfortable about recommending purchase of QS blade servers, which have none of those limitations of the PS3.

This is true. As the old mantra goes: "Developers, developers, developers, developers." Laying down $400 for a computer is not a big deal, especially for one that can achieve 150 GFlops (Using the Cell SDK demos). If after writing a few programs or porting some old code you think your software can benefit from the Cell BE, then squeezing out $7,000 for a QS21 Bladecenter will be much easier.

IBM and Sony want the transition to be as easy and worthwhile as possible for developers. If good software is written for their hardware, then the hardware will be easier to sell (theoretically). Obviously the processor has some merit because Roadrunner at Los Alamos uses a whole bunch of them.

Re: Nothing to see here move along

[Anonymous Coward]

The PS3 platform *is* a virtualized platform. Linux is as close to the metal as Sony's own OS. So if you start kernel hacking you're closer to the metal than any PS3 game ever gets.

The main point of programming PS3 Linux is that you get to play with 6 SPUs.

There is no point in even installing Linux on a PS3 if you're *not* going to be doing this, hence the article is totally related to development on PS3. It just doesn't go very far.

Very Happy!

[tb()ne]

How happy would you be if you bought a new PC, only to find out that, no, you can't access the GPU, etc from your own programs?

As many others have explained, Sony sells the PS3 as a loss leader and makes their profit through game licensing/sales. Without the game profits, they couldn't afford to sell the PS3 at its current cost. If you absolutely need access to the GPU, then register as a PS3 developer.

The more important question for the general PS3 consumer is - How happy would you be if you could save $500 on your PS3 by giving up access to the GPU? Considering the vast majority of PS3 owners probably don't even know what a GPU is, I think they would be very happy.

Yellow Dog Linux for the PS3

[synthespian]

Sony has payed the Yellow Dog Linux guys to port Linux to the PS3, so it's probably more optimized for it than Fedora (even though it's based on Fedora), for instance, by using the Enlightenment window manager.

http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com/products/ydl/

Re:Yellow Dog Linux for the PS3

[Anonymous Coward]

Yellow Dog, in my experience, is horrendously slow on the PS3. Fedora 8 on the other hand runs like silk.

Not to mention that Yellow Dog has long, closed development cycles. Only the Cell SDK 2.1 was supported for the longest time. While Fedora supported 3.0 soon after the new SDK's launch.

Yellow Dog also had an issue for quite awhile which did not allow system restarts. This is particularly annoying when you are SSH'd in from across town and realize that both of your PS3's now require a 120 reset.

Re:Yellow Dog Linux for the PS3

[Anonymous Coward]

No they didn't. The kernel changelogs are visible on kernel.org. You can clearly see who the Cell/PowerPC kernel devs are...

Re:In other news: PS3 is slow as hell

[Anonymous Coward]

X runs fine - without the ability of running 3D - making it pretty useless...

Re:In other news: PS3 is slow as hell

[CronoCloud]

Do you need 3D to run Abiword? No. Do you need 3D for a mail client? No. Do emacs or vim need 3D? No.

Most applications are still 2D.

Interesting, also runs on apple hardware

[DrOct]

I was thinking the same thing. I'd point out that YDL also runs on older Apple PowerPC (and other PPC based processors) hardware. I recently installed Yellow Dog on my on my 8 year old G4. It's a little slower than I expected, though once I changed a few settings it seemed to run a lot smoother. I'm still learning my way around, but it was my first linux installation at home, and it went a lot more smoothly than my attempts to install Fedora 9 (which I later learned doesn't play well with my particular G4). It's an interesting distro, the E17 desktop is certainly interesting, and it does seem to do ok for the most part.

Precisely what I said.

[Junta]

I said two Power8XCell processers can do 200 gflops double precision, therefore one can do about 100.