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PlayStation 4 Will Be Running Modified FreeBSD
jones_supa writes "This discovery comes nicely alongside the celebration of FreeBSD's 20th birthday, for all the UNIX nerds. The operating system powering the PlayStation 4 is Orbis OS, which is a Sony spin of FreeBSD 9.0. It's not a huge surprise FreeBSD is being used over Linux, in part due to the more liberal licensing. The PlayStation 4 is x86-64 based now rather than Cell-based, which makes it easier to use FreeBSD. BSDs in general currently lack manufacturer supported full-feature AMD graphics driver, which leads to the conclusion that Sony and AMD have likely co-developed a discrete driver for the PS4. Some pictures of the development kit boot loader (GRUB) have been published too."
In 3 ... 2 ... 1 ...
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
So how trivial will it be to slurp the OS out onto a AMD card enabled PC and have our own "HackStation4"?
Or... how would one modify FreeBSD to run PS4 software?
I'm sure there'll be encryption up the wazoo anyway... and potentially software could specifically check that the graphics chip is not some off-the-shelf AMD card... ...but it begs the question.
READY.
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PS4 is on FreeBSD, X1 is on a Windows-kernel abomination, and the Steam box is going to be Linux. Interesting. Any chance the WiiU has secret Mac lineage to complete this?
Its good to see a BSD release picking up another major instance of commercial use. One of the obstacles the BSDs have faced is mindshare. Linux has had such an overpowering presence in the free/open world that it often overshadows the BSDs. That plays out in the commercial software that is available. If you look at high end vendor software, such as Oracle or other databases, or CAD tools, it is pretty rare to see much released for anything except Red Hat, or maybe Suse Linux. But getting the BSDs out where users are aware of it will definitely help.
This will also probably also be good for FreeBSD in terms of its codebase as well. I expect Sony will probably be feeding back some patches.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
The fact that game developers will be able to recruit people who have several years of experience with the base of the underlying OS should result in better code than the usual half-assed guesswork near the beginning of a console's lifetime.
Is there *any* hope that Sony will push patches upstream? I would imagine not, but it would certainly be a nice gesture and could result in more PS4 sales if they did.
If this is true, I'm pre-ordering the PS4.
This godly OS is recognized for what it's worth.
The PlayStation 4 is x86-64 based now rather than Cell-based, which makes it easier to use FreeBSD
Funny how Sony tried to woo Apple over to the Cell architecture, even offering Apple Sony authored PS3 games for the Mac.
As it happens, Intel's was not the only alternative chip design that Apple had explored for the Mac. An executive close to Sony said that last year Mr. Jobs met in California with both Nobuyuki Idei, then the chairman and chief executive of the Japanese consumer electronics firm, and with Kenichi Kutaragi, the creator of the Sony PlayStation.
Mr. Kutaragi tried to interest Mr. Jobs in adopting the Cell chip, which is being developed by I.B.M. for use in the coming PlayStation 3, in exchange for access to certain Sony technologies. Mr. Jobs rejected the idea, telling Mr. Kutaragi that he was disappointed with the Cell design, which he believes will be even less effective than the PowerPC.
source: What's Really Behind the Apple-Intel Alliance / NYTimes / 2005
Other sources I am too lazy to dig up cited Jobs as stating that his main mover for this decision was that he in no way wanted any Apple product associated with a gaming console. Call it Platformism, but if that citation is correct, it was very solid reasoning from Jobs. Every PC pundit on the planet would have had a field day with that one. Never mind that the US DoD (and likely the NSA) has found the Cell architecture in PS3s most useful for clustering, since the Cell architecture is so very cheap and so very good at that. citation
Anyone else worried about AMD developing the drivers? AMD has never had good drivers. Most of them have been terrible. It has been the only reason I've been using NVIDIA cards for the past 10 years.
The Official Site of 1337 Pwnage
After the IBM vs SCO fiasco, maybe Xenix can be put to good use.
Imagine being able to start up your PS4 to GRUB? Even just giving us the graphics driver this time around Sony would be nice, since you're playing the good guy this gen.
Filter error: You can type more than that for your comment.
Sony had formerly for 2 generations used linux-style elf/toolchain as it's preferred format, with native and hypervisor (respectively) support for the linux kernel on PS2/3 hardware.
With this generation Sony moves to FreeBSD, but given how they released source for the previous 2 systems, how much worse is it now that they release no source at all (Hint: PS2 toolchain is basically dead at this point, PS3 I haven't heard anything about in a while.) Where's the homebrew? Where's the outrage?
Does anybody even actually care?
Exactly. I would imagine this would be the first vector of attack.
READY.
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...(an)Other OS to screw users out of being able to use OtherOS!
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
This isn't really news. The PS3 also ran FreeBSD, as did the PS2. They seem to have something that works for them and have kept with it. There's a great big FreeBSD Foundation copyright notice in my PS3 manual, and the filesystems for both the PS2 and PS3 are FreeBSD-flavored UFS.
I was under the impression that the PlayStation 3's OS was already based on FreeBSD, which means that this is not entirely unexpected news. According to the PS3 System Software page on Wikipedia:
The native operating system of the PlayStation 3 is CellOS, which is believed to be a branch from the FreeBSD project. The 3D computer graphics API software used in the PlayStation 3 is LibGCM and PSGL, based on OpenGL ES and Nvidia's Cg. The PlayStation 3 uses the XrossMediaBar (XMB) as its graphical user interface.
Wonderful news! Does this mean that I'll need to compile all the pre-requisites for the game, and the game itself, just to play the game on this console?
BSD : Software Licenses = SONY : Companies
I couldn't help but find it funny that the first result on Google for "Orbis OS" is this: http://orbisos.wikispaces.com/
Who else thought the same?
Sony actually intended for it to be the graphic chips. Early on they were doing graphics demos of things running on a number of Cell chips. However, it wasn't good at that either and as the PS3 went in to hardware development, it was clear that they'd need a real GPU.
Well rather than just admit that the Cell wasn't ready for a consumer device (I mean who the fuck tries to put first gen technology in a consumer device) they decided to make it the CPU instead, and had nVidia make them a GPU.
Ultimately Cell's long term problem has been GPUs themselves. As you say Cell sucks as a general purpose CPU. No problem, that wasn't really its design. However as a stream processor it can't keep up with the new GPUs. That wasn't an issue when it was designed (this was back in the pre nVidia 8800 days) but now it gets out stream processed by GPUs.
Hence it has kinda just languished. IBM has chattered about it a bit, but nothing has happened.
Their drivers aren't crap, but they aren't up to nVidia's standards. I've a 7970M in my laptop, which I got when it was a brand new chip, and it has been a trial. So there are two big issues it has had, only which could be relevant to the PS4:
1) Issues with Enduro, that's AMD's hybrid GPU switching. The laptop can use the integrated Intel 4000 graphics for easy stuff and fire up the 7970M for hard stuff. Well until fairly recently, that didn't work that well. The 7970M didn't operate at full capacity, something with the drivers was inefficient. You could see it on other laptops which has a mux to allow you to switch off the iGPU. With just the 7970M they ran much faster. AMD finally got it (mostly) fixed, but it took for damn well ever. Also when it first came out, the interface for choosing GPUs was really clunky.
2) OpenGL issues. AMD has sucked at the OpenGL for as long as I can remember, and it never seems to get better. They SUPPORT it, but it doesn't work well. On nVidia, GL and DX run equally fast. They are both first-class APIs and there really is no speed or capability difference between them. On AMD, not so much. Recently the issues I've seen were with Brink and HFSS. Brink was a shit (man it was a waste of money) game that used iD Tech 4. As such, OpenGL. On my AMD GPU, it never ran well despite being WAY passed the spec needed. Tried it on a lesser spec nVidia system, flawless. Said problems were all over the forums. With HFSS we set up a desktop at work with a cheap AMD chip, a 7570 or something like that, just for basic graphics (it was server class hardware, so no good iGPU). The user reported HFSS worked over RDP, but not local and sure enough, that was the case. So it occurred to me: HFSS will use OpenGL to accelerate its interface. Out came the AMD card, in went a cheap nVidia GT 210, and HFSS worked fine.
Now of those, the OpenGL problem could be problematic to the PS4, since that's what it uses. Maybe they won't have a problem since this is ONLY a GL driver and they've had time and all that, but I worry. The PS4 may lose its, on paper, graphics advantage due to driver issues. It would suck for Sony if their console which has more graphics units and more memory bandwidth had lesser GPU capabilities because AMD can't work out a good GL driver.
At any rate the overall situation is AMD still has problems nVidia drivers don't. I really like AMD's hardware, it is often faster and is nearly always a good price, but I get continually bit with driver issues. Not something huge like "The system blue screens and won't run," but things that are very real and very annoying. Hence I have nVidia in my desktop and I've seriously considered replacing the card in my laptop (it is a Clevo laptop and the card is field replaceable). They aren't perfect, but I find them WAY less problematic.
And don't even get me started on Linux drivers. There is NO comparison there. nVidia binary drivers is lightyears ahead of anyone else.
Sony grows up and decides not to hack up their own crappy OS any more, finally entering the 21st century. However in a nod back the PHB nest that traditionally comes up with their PHB strategies, they decide to go with the second best free kernel out there because it allows more scope for doing evil. Nice one Sony.
Oh well, it could be worse. The other guys have to use Windows.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
The entire point to use BSD is NOT to have to contribute back. The general public will never know about this because if Sony WANTED people to know, they would have used Linux for the same reason everyone else does, mindshare. They didn't.
How much has BSD benefited from lending its code to Windows? Most people don't even know and that suits MS just fine.
The BSD license is like a girl who has sex BEFORE the first date and then her fans are wondering why nobody dates her. GPL means something very simple, if I share MY costly commercial code with others, others can't take it and give nothing in return. This matters to business. It tells you a LOT about BSD fans that after decades they STILL don't get this. Simply put, when Intel releases code, they don't just want AMD to take it and do with it as they please UNLESS they are pushing a standard.
Sony ain't pushing a standard and they also got zero motivation in getting community involvement in looking at the code (BSD supports DRM now), they just want free code. That is what the BSD license allows, it is it greatest strength AND its greatest weakness.
Liberal license for who? For their users or just Sony?
Even if I ever considered Playstation worth my time (I'm against consoles as disposable crap which leaves me with games I can never play again)....
:)
If Apple moves to ARM, it doesn't really matter. Will still just patch the kernel to boot on other hardware anyway. Within a generation or two, there should be enough differences between the different systems that the OS should be generic enough to make it easily patchable.
Use TPM all you want, that's of little significance. TPM is more useful for blocking software from running on your hardware than it is useful for making an OS which won't run elsewhere. This is because of the beauty of patching.
UEFI secure boot again blocks software from booting on your hardware, not running software on other hardware. It's all an issue of how difficult or useful the system will be without an account to use it on.
So, all that matters is that there's a way to get your hands on a copy of the OS which I'm guessing will be accomplished within hours of release of PS4. Then it's a matter of popping it up inside of VMware with kernel debugging and trap unknown hardware calls (general protection faults) and step through the sections looking for TPM code... this takes a shit load of time since it's probably quite obscure, but it's just a matter of patience. I think I had the knowledge to crack through this sort of code when I was around 15 years old... had the patience too. Now I'm like 100 years old and can't be bothered to care... but I'm sure there is someone out there who will
...was how fast it booted up. One of the worse was how many times it needed to be restarted whenever it had an update. I thought Linux didn't need to be restarted ;)
Don't matter - I don't trust Sony and that they'll yank support for it in the future.
Back in the day, all my servers ran NetBSD, but I have gradually migrated to Linux for hardware compatibility. AMD is going to have to write chipset and GRFX drivers for Sony. I hope the licensing terms will let them release them. I would love to run BSD on my AMD laptop. Considering AMD's past Linux support, this is probably just wishful thinking.
Maybe that might be true for the DS at some point but the Wii had shovelware from the start, piracy and cheating weren't a factor. It's just that most of the game publishers thought the PS3 and Xbox 360 was where all the money was and mostly phoned it in on the Wii. They didn't expect the Wii to be as popular as it was. Once they realized that there was serious money to be made, they made better games as time went on.
The licensing screen on the PS Vita says it is running a modification of FreeBSD too.
It is now official. Netcraft has confirmed: *BSD is dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last [samag.com] in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be the Amazing Kreskin [amazingkreskin.com] to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.
Why does the SDK running on BSD mean that the PS4 itself is running BSD? The original XBOX SDK ran on Windows, but the XBOX ran a modified Win2k kernel, with a very stripped down API. I smell BS.
The Monsanto of the computer world thanks you. They probably have rootkits on their CDs/DVDs for FreeBSD now.
The PS3 was BSD based. The GameOS filesystem, for example, is UFS2, as seen in NetBSD.
Freedom to oppress, to exploit, to be a parasitic leech are not freedoms worth having, let alone worth crowing about.
You're not really free unless you are able to choose both good and evil. Being forced to do good is just as much a form of 'tyrany' as being forced to do anything else.
Netcraft confirms it!
That is why I have windows.
"BSDs in general currently lack manufacturer supported full-feature AMD graphics driver, which leads to the conclusion that Sony and AMD have likely co-developed a discrete driver for the PS4."
Really? What about the BSD-like Mac OS X and the ATI nee AMD Graphics chipsets used in the Mac Pro and Macbook Pro? Or is that relationship so far removed that AMD couldn't use that intellectual property in partnership with Sony?
$ man woman *
-bash:
I'm curious to see if people will still continue to use the old tired argument that Linux isn't ready for gaming. Sony and Valve seems to think so. (Yes, I know BSD is not Linux... but they are close enough, that porting between the two is trivial.)
There's nothing in the linked story that proves that its running FreeBSD. It could just very well be running NetBSD, MINIX, Haiku or a Sony Made OS.
Title is a lie.
---- GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
Sony has just made the PlayStation geek accessible. Microsoft will have to answer with Windows 8, I think they will call it Windows 8g, W8g.
Any chance the WiiU has secret Mac lineage to complete this?
Nintendo is so against having external help with it's hardware, they probably have their own OS. TubeOS? NintenDOS? I have no idea, but I do know that Nintendo would much rather have complete control over the hardware aspect than let any other company involved. Hence why they dragged their feet with going from cartridge to CD/DVD.
If Apple got involved, it'd be an act of some deity to make Nintendo do that. Considering that Nintendo would rather keep all the money they get rather than pay Apple, I can't see this being viable.
The BSD license gives complete freedom to developers, including the freedom to put that code into closed-source projects and benefit from it without contributing back. Sometimes this enables selfish/dickish behaviour by downstream recipients. But it does allow the code to be used in almost any scenario, and as we see with e.g. Apple contributing patches back to BSD, sometimes there are other incentives (e.g. economic incentives) for companies to "play nice" and contribute back, even when the license does not strictly require them to.
The GPL license tries to maximize the freedoms available to *users*, which includes preventing anyone but the original developers from closing the code or putting it inside a closed-source project. Developers who use GPL'd code are (legally) forced to give their changes back to the developer community, which (in theory) is better for users in the long term. But for some developers (especially those working on commercial or closed-source products) it does make the code less attractive to try and reuse.
I'm not sure which of these two philosophies I prefer; I definitely see the value in the GPL model, and there is major, useful software which has grown and thrived in part because of the protections of the GPL license (Linux for example). But as a paid developer working on commercial projects, I basically can't use GPL'd code at all unless my employer has separately negotiated a commercial license with the authors of that code. For BSD code, reusing it in commercial projects is much easier. I'm not forced to give away my source code, but maybe I will still contribute back patches.
Both models have benefits and drawbacks, and there is room in the free-software and open-source communities for both models.
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