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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."
... 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.
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
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,
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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.
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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.
AFAIK, that tax loophole was removed _years_ ago. So, nope.
AFAIK, they did, back in the PS2 times. Sorta. They essentially ruled that it's a game console anyway.
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.
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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.
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.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
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.