Yellow Dog Linux for PS3

Gargoyle (Gargoyle) While we're still lacking official news from Sony on the operating system(s) the PS3 will run, Terra Soft Solutions has announced that their Yellow Dog Linux will run on the PS3.

October 17, 2006 3:53 PM ET in News,

So your PS3 can play Blu-Ray, run Folding@Home, and play a few video games too. But can it run OpenOffice? Now it can. Yellow Dog Linux 5.0 will run on the PS3, but from the press release, it seems unlikely to ship with it. Terra Soft Solutions is planning to demonstrate the setup at the SC2006 trade show from Nov. 13th-16th, but word is that Terra Soft will be posting videos up prior to then. We’ll keep you posted.

Under basic agreement with SCEI, Terra Soft was granted a unique opportunity to develop and bring to market a complete Linux OS for the Sony PLAYSTATION 3. In development of Yellow Dog Linux v5.0, Terra Soft integrated and enhanced code from Barcelona Supercomputing Center, Sony Group, and Fedora in order to offer the following:
- kernel 2.6.16
- gcc 3.4.4 and glibc 2.4
- Cell SDK 1.1
- OpenOffice.org 2.0.2
- FireFox 1.5.0 and Thunderbird 1.5.0
- Nautilus 2.1.4
… and a suite of Personal Accessories, Development Tools; Sound & Video, Internet, and Networking applications.

Via Engadget

Source: Terra Soft Solutions

19 Comments:

  1. Gargoyle
    17 Oct '06, 7:59 pm

    The uninitiated (like myself ) may be wondering what "E17" is. It's the newest version of the Enlightenment window manager. And it's pretty.

    E17 on YDL info.

  2. Buddy J
    17 Oct '06, 9:52 pm

    I know what E17 is. (I have E16 on SM_24). Is it out of beta yet? enlightenment.org seems to be down.

  3. Enverex
    17 Oct '06, 10:30 pm

    Hmm, quite behind on a few of those programs (GCC is on 4.1.1 now, GlibC on 2.5, Nautilus on 2.16.2) but it's a nice idea. Odd choice on E17 considering I've hear it's hard as hell to get to compile/set up properly.

  4. Mal51
    17 Oct '06, 11:03 pm

    So with this Linux OS, could someone hack it and create different partitions on the hard-drive? Maybe dual-boot for windows so you could play comp games on it, as well? Or maybe even have an emulator for windows?

  5. RWB
    17 Oct '06, 11:16 pm

    I am curious... with the PS3's processing power, could we not easily see a huge upcropping of Linux games built for the PS3?

  6. Enverex
    17 Oct '06, 11:19 pm
    Quoting Mal51

    So with this Linux OS, could someone hack it and create different partitions on the hard-drive? Maybe dual-boot for windows so you could play comp games on it, as well? Or maybe even have an emulator for windows?

    You wouldn't need to hack it if the drive is writable (is this going to be a LiveCD or something?). I doubt you'll boot Windows though as I don't think the processor is x86 compatable (not sure what it uses) and it wouldn't have any Windows drivers anyway.

    Quoting RWB

    I am curious... with the PS3's processing power, could we not easily see a huge upcropping of Linux games built for the PS3?

    I highly doubt it. Deveoping for the PS3 natively would likely be a LOT easier.

  7. RWB
    17 Oct '06, 11:56 pm

    Sure... if you had an SDK... Otherwise indy developers should be able to develope games very nicely for the PS3 using Linux, maybe someone could develope something so you can use whatever cells you want for whichever portion of the game.

  8. Enverex
    18 Oct '06, 12:01 am

    Hmm, if it uses OpenGL then hopefully it would be easily portable, heh.

  9. drasnor
    18 Oct '06, 12:56 am
    Quoting RWB

    I am curious... with the PS3's processing power, could we not easily see a huge upcropping of Linux games built for the PS3?

    You've got it backwards; the PS3 would have selection to the full library of Linux free software games as well as any new ones written to take advantage of the Cell SDKs.

    -drasnor

  10. Enverex
    18 Oct '06, 1:19 am
    Quoting drasnor

    You've got it backwards; the PS3 would have selection to the full library of Linux free software games

    Yay... because the PS3 doesn't have any games and Linux has loads of good ones

    I hope this does end up meaning more games for Linux though. You get a little sick of the Doom engine after a while...

  11. drasnor
    18 Oct '06, 2:01 am
    Quoting Enverex

    Yay... because the PS3 doesn't have any games and Linux has loads of good ones

    And the first RPG on the PS3 will be... Nethack!

    -drasnor

  12. Enverex
    18 Oct '06, 8:31 am

    Aww, leave the Dragon alone...

  13. GHoosdum
    18 Oct '06, 12:47 pm

    This is promising. This turns the PS3 into the low-priced performance PC that it should be, rather than the ridiculously high-priced game console that it is.

  14. Enverex
    18 Oct '06, 1:33 pm
    Quoting GHoosdum

    This turns the PS3 into the low-priced performance PC that it should be.

    I'll reserve that assumption till I see some benchmarks, heh.

  15. ThuleMan
    20 Oct '06, 4:47 pm
    Quoting RWB

    I am curious... with the PS3's processing power, could we not easily see a huge upcropping of Linux games built for the PS3?

    BTW - for those of us that don't know (like me)...
    What are the specs for the PS3?
    I've heard 'how powerful' it's supposed to be...but nothing on actual specs.

    Anyone?

    -ThuleMan

  16. ThuleMan
    20 Oct '06, 4:49 pm

    Wow....haven't seen Nethack in a WHILE.
    Never *did* finish that game.

    -Thuleman

  17. drasnor
    20 Oct '06, 6:07 pm

    PS3 Specifications in tabular form.

    Most of those numbers are nonsensical since the architecture is radically different than anything else out there. The 256MB of RAM is also somewhat misleading since what it really has is 8 memory buses attached to each of the 8 SPE units (SIMD units) with 32MB of XDR (Rambus) each. Each SPE also appears to support VMX (Altivec for you Mac users) or something similar for massive vector crunching. Also note that the RAM runs at core speed...

    The RSX GPU is provided by nVidia and is supposed to give the 7950 a run for its money. If I understood the Cell architecture properly, the PowerPC core is only a supervisory processor designed to keep the SPEs fed with data to crunch.

    Powerful doesn't really mean anything without specifying the usage. From my perspective the PS3 has a CPU engineered for floating point and vector processing coupled to a nice GPU. It just screams "Math...math...math..." and would probably make an excellent addition to any scientific computing lab or living room. The PS3 would probably suck as a database or webserver due to its memory size and layout as well as a seeming lack of emphasis on integer math. Note that Sun's latest databse and web server processor is engineered for fast integer math and little else. The PS3 would probably make an o.k. entry-level Linux box for grandma and grandpa to check their e-mail and surf the internet on but so does nearly every other computer in existence.

    I don't know anyone that's finished Nethack either .

    -drasnor

  18. GrayFox
    25 Oct '06, 4:33 pm
    Quoting drasnor

    The RSX GPU is provided by nVidia and is supposed to give the 7950 a run for its money.

    Where did you hear that its just a G71 thats underclocked. From the numbers it looks like it wont be much faster then a 7600GT.

    edit: The wikipedia article only says its a G70

  19. drasnor
    25 Oct '06, 8:34 pm

    I misquoted I guess. The figure was "on par with 6800 Ultra's in SLI" and is something spread around through several sources, including Gamespot. The Inquirer doesn't do it for me as a source though, they've been wrong before. There isn't any news on RSX newer than 2005 though.

    -drasnor

Troll-free since 2003 ®