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Setting Up Ubuntu On a PS3 For Emulation

Posted by Soulskill on from the eight-bit-high-def dept.

Gizmodo is running a guide on how to install Ubuntu on a Playstation 3 and set it up to play vintage games through emulation. Quoting: "It still kind of surprises me (in a good way) that Sony was, from the start, very OK with PS3 owners tinkering with Linux on their PS3s. A modified release of Yellow Dog Linux was available from the very beginning, and some very handy hard drive partitioning and dual-boot utilities are baked right into the PS3's XMB; Ubuntu gets installed on an entirely separate partition of your PS3's hard disk, so your default system doesn't get touched and switching between Ubuntu and the XMB is a piece of cake. There is a flipside to this coin, however. Since the PS3's Cell Processor is PowerPC based, you won't be able to use any Linux software that's compiled for x86, which is, unfortunately, most of it. However, Ubuntu has always had a PPC distro, and most of the basic stuff will work just fine. You can even load up a PPC-compiled Super Nintendo Emulator, SNES9X, and play some classic games pretty easily on your Sixaxis controller paired via Bluetooth."

3 of 81 comments (clear)

  1. don't do this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    linux on ps3 sucks balls:

    no access to gpu
    10 gigs of disk space
    ~256 megs of memory
    crappy ppc processor which meant for the stuff I wanted to do with it (read: boxee), I didn't have the libs.

  2. Re:VM hacking? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Mod parent up, this is the most over-engineered solution to a hopeless problem I have ever read, and thus should boost karma.

  3. Re:VM hacking? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    I'll be to bed in a minute, SOMEBODY IS WRONG IN THE INTERNET!

    First and foremost, just about anything will compile for PPC unless it uses assembly. C is "portable" for a reason. This fact completely invalidates your entire post for most programs, even emulators.

    Further beating the dead horse, due to the hypervisor you can't access the 3D acceleration goodness of the PS3 while running anything but the "Playstation OS". This is to prevent such awesomeness as playing pirated games and romz on a device meant to play legally bought stuff, but doesn't matter with the good ol' games & systems we love and respect.

    Hand in your geek card.