Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Developing On the PS3 Under Fedora

Posted by Soulskill on from the ignore-the-toy-and-play-with-the-box dept.

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."

4 of 122 comments (clear)

  1. An interesting video but ... by ctid · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ... 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
    1. Re:An interesting video but ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

  2. It's not quite about piracy by Moraelin · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    --
    A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
  3. Re:In other news: PS3 is slow as hell by CronoCloud · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.