PS3 to run Yellow Dog Linux

[Wally Balljacker]

"YDL v5.0 is slated for release mid-November with support for the Sony PS3 first, and support for the former Apple PowerPC product line to follow. Any updates required to support the Apple PowerPC systems following the release for PS3 will be made available via a free download.
It's also mentioned YD 5.0 will ship with version DR17 of the Enlightenment window manager."

Just think of the possibilities!

http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com/produ ... very.shtml
http://linux.slashdot.org/linux/06/10/16/1342243.shtml
http://www.linuxgames.com/news/feedback ... n=flatview

[TankCatNinjaFish]

Is it really worth $600 from a hardware standpoint? For $600 these days you can get a pretty decent machine w/o all the headaches that comes with a closed platform (ie drivers, DRM, etc).

[Wally Balljacker]

Is it really worth $600 from a hardware standpoint? For $600 these days you can get a pretty decent machine w/o all the headaches that comes with a closed platform (ie drivers, DRM, etc).

For $500 you get everything the higher-end model has, minus the larger hard drive, WiFi, and Memory Card reader. None of those features really matter to me. I planned on buying a PS3 anyway, because it has all the games I want to play, superior graphics to Wii or Xbox360, and being able to install a real Linux distro on a machine, that is essentially a Supercomputer, only sweetens the deal. I also doubt there would be any driver issues, since TerraSoft is officially supporting this system.

[Tsuroerusu]

"YDL v5.0 is slated for release mid-November with support for the Sony PS3 first, and support for the former Apple PowerPC product line to follow. Any updates required to support the Apple PowerPC systems following the release for PS3 will be made available via a free download.
It's also mentioned YD 5.0 will ship with version DR17 of the Enlightenment window manager."

Just think of the possibilities!

Sure, that Yellowdog distro will be locked in a virtualization jail of some sort (Think like FreBSD Jails or the Xen hypervisor), I can tell you with certainty right now, that through Linux on a PS3 you will not have access to 100% of the machine, and access in this case equals control.

Is it really worth $600 from a hardware standpoint? For $600 these days you can get a pretty decent machine w/o all the headaches that comes with a closed platform (ie drivers, DRM, etc).

Yeah I was gonna say, for 600 bucks you can get a pretty damn nice AMD X2 machine with like 2 GBs of RAM or something, and if you add 200 bucks extra you can get a graphics superior to what the PS3 has (The PS3's graphics chip is like two Geforce 6800 Ultras crammed together from what I've heard from Sony's tech presentation, where they have had the president of NVIDIA on).

Also, let's get down to earth. the PS3 is a gaming machine on steroids that does a crapload of extra stuff, but come on, how much fun is it to run Linux on your TV? I have two of the original Xbox'es, and running Linux on those without SSH is a real big pain in the butt at timexs, because the text is very tiny or hard to read on a TV monitor.

[Wally Balljacker]

Also, let's get down to earth. the PS3 is a gaming machine on steroids that does a crapload of extra stuff, but come on, how much fun is it to run Linux on your TV? I have two of the original Xbox'es, and running Linux on those without SSH is a real big pain in the butt at timexs, because the text is very tiny or hard to read on a TV monitor.

Well, we're all getting HDTV's sometime down the road, if we haven't got one already. I'm sure text would be very readable on any size HDTV. Even SDTV's would be great for playing back videos, music, and podcasts. I'm sure it would also be possible to jack the PS3 into a computer monitor for typical desktop stuff.

Regardless, it's very hard not to get excited about this thing. With Linux (in any form) on it, the breadth of games from Sony, the motion sensitive controller, and the insane level of graphics it can produce, it's making the other consoles look less and less attractive.

Yeah I was gonna say, for 600 bucks you can get a pretty damn nice AMD X2 machine with like 2 GBs of RAM or something, and if you add 200 bucks extra you can get a graphics superior to what the PS3 has (The PS3's graphics chip is like two Geforce 6800 Ultras crammed together from what I've heard from Sony's tech presentation, where they have had the president of NVIDIA on).

Maybe, but without installing Windows on it, it can't compete with the sheer number of titles available on game consoles. I'm not interested in buying a new desktop computer anyway, this old crusty P4 machine is running just fine.

[Tsuroerusu]

Also, let's get down to earth. the PS3 is a gaming machine on steroids that does a crapload of extra stuff, but come on, how much fun is it to run Linux on your TV? I have two of the original Xbox'es, and running Linux on those without SSH is a real big pain in the butt at timexs, because the text is very tiny or hard to read on a TV monitor.

Well, we're all getting HDTV's sometime down the road, if we haven't got one already. I'm sure text would be very readable on any size HDTV. Even SDTV's would be great for playing back videos, music, and podcasts. I'm sure it would also be possible to jack the PS3 into a computer monitor for typical desktop stuff.

I will admit that I might buy a new LCD TV during the next two years, HOWEVER, it will because of the slim size, certainly not the HDTV. I could really care less at how many details I can see of Kirsten Dunst's face (She's still smokin' without the details) when I watch Spider-Man 3, because she looks good enough without that level of detail.

Regardless, it's very hard not to get excited about this thing.

For me, as a student, it certainly is! I just don't have the amount of cash needed to "support" this thing, especially over the long term. Let's walk through it, first off you start with a 500 dollar investment, on top of that you need a couple of games that are 60 bucks a slice, plus an extra controller and once we're done, the US price is frightingly close to 800 dollars!
And that's just the US price, here in Europe, the PS3 is gonna me much much more expensive, first of all it's 500 euros and not dollars the slimmed down PS3 costs, on top of that the danish VAT of 25% (Germany's is 16%) takes the price of the PS3 all the way up to 890 US dollars!! The games go all the way to 120 US bucks a slice!!

I'd much rather get a nice AMD X2 computer, and even in Denmark, for 890 US dollars, you can get a really nice box! You could also go for Intel's Core 2, although I am a big fan of AMD and I prefer their chips for a bunch of reasons, and especially with their purchase of ATi, it can only get better.

With Linux (in any form) on it, the breadth of games from Sony, the motion sensitive controller, and the insane level of graphics it can produce, it's making the other consoles look less and less attractive.

To each his own, you are free to go buy a PS3 if that is what you want, although I am not going down that path, because I don't have free access to Bill Gates's bank accounts.

Maybe, but without installing Windows on it, it can't compete with the sheer number of titles available on game consoles.

Nope, but you can do a lot more with it, and you can even upgrade the optical drive to one that won't suck out of the box. Really, 1st generations of ANY new optical medium is always gonna suck, it was the case with CDs, DVDs, HD DVDs, BluRay, and I don't think Sony have fixed all the issues with BluRay for the PS3, if they have, I'd be reall surprised.

I'm not interested in buying a new desktop computer anyway, this old crusty P4 machine is running just fine.

Hehe, well, I have an AMD Athlon Barton XP 3200+ machine with 1 GB of RAM, it's running great! The only thing I'm changing on a regular basis is the hard drives, because with my porn collection (70 GBs!) I need more storage on a regular basis, if I buy a 366 GB drive (400 GBs if you buy into the marketing by the hard drive vendors) it's usually filled up (Not all with porn of course, it's mostly podcasts and a lot of other stuff that I can not speak of publicly under the terms of the DMCA ).

Computers do last for a while, I might buy a BRAND NEW machine in 2008, until then, it's gonna be incremental upgrades to my current machines, and hopefully I can find parts for a good file server one of these days (I want one of those heavy-ass Adaptec RAID controllers! And make like a 6-disk RAID-5 array).

[Vogateer]

You hear several people here say that XGL and AIGLX don't really impress them, and doesn't have anything they want or need. Of course, most of the current uses of XGL aren't impressively useful, and what's more exciting is that these technologies will open up new possibilites.

If one thinks that better graphics are boring on a computer, then I'd imagine that better graphics on a video game console--especially a console that will more than likely put out the same type of games with the only noticable improvement being better graphics--would be downright sleep inducing. Certainly not worth $500 in my book, much less $600.

Of course, I'm not a typical gamer. I haven't played and new video games in years. Occasionally I pull out the old NES for a quick round of Dr. Mario against my wife, but I don't want video games that are so complicated they become a damned lifestyle choice. The Wii sounds like it probably be more up my alley, since I miss the simplicity of those original NES games. I want to be able to sit down with a game, figure out how to play it in less than 10 minutes, and to be able to play around for 30 minutes or so at a time, and that's about all the time I'm willing to devote to it. The tennis game for the Wii with that new controller already looks like a lot of fun to me, and I always have enjoyed the games that Nintendo puts out. High priced graphics just don't impress me anymore. I hope that Nintendo does manage to produce original and interesting games with their new controller, then for the first time in about 10 years, I'll actually want to play video games again.

[snarkout]

There are plenty of games I want to play/finish, but having 2 kids under 4 kind of stole that part of my life from me.

[Patrick]

There are plenty of games I want to play/finish, but having 2 kids under 4 kind of stole that part of my life from me.

I can definitely relate to that my friend

[Judland]

You hear several people here say that XGL and AIGLX don't really impress them, and doesn't have anything they want or need. Of course, most of the current uses of XGL aren't impressively useful, and what's more exciting is that these technologies will open up new possibilites.

I used to think this too.... until I started using it at my workplace on a daily basis. The transparency tool is very useful to me, as well as the Expose-like window organizer tool.

The fading in and out of application windows, rather than them just appearing and disappearing, seems easier on the eyes at the end of day. I could be just imagining it, but if I feel better using AIGLX/Xgl then it has accomplished it's goal.

I like it and now find other desktops not using it to be unappealing.

[Tsuroerusu]

You hear several people here say that XGL and AIGLX don't really impress them, and doesn't have anything they want or need. Of course, most of the current uses of XGL aren't impressively useful, and what's more exciting is that these technologies will open up new possibilites.

I think the type of graphics that we're talkinga about when you say XGL or AIGLX is a little different from what Sony and Microsoft brags about having in their new consoles. The graphics XGL and AIGLX brings with them is really just traditional OpenGL technologies used in a new way to enable closer contact to the actual visuals of the X applications that a user sees. The stuff Sony and Microsoft talks about is raw horsepower, and new technologies that make things look more realistic and give the player a "more realistic experience".
The reason I put the quotes around that last phrase, is because I personally don't feel that a game is more realistic no matter how pretty the graphics are, done with today's, and the near future's, technologies.

XGL and AIGLX can be used to make for new ways for a user to interact with their computer, because the interfaces can be designed in new ways. The cube thing is mostly eye candy to most of us, but it can actually help people, who aren't computer litterate, to understand the concept of multiple desktops.
The fade effects that Compiz, and Beryl, offers are what I am personally the most interested in, because when I sit in my room in the middle of the night, with the lights off, and hack, if I have Konqueror open, which has a white background, if it suddenly disappears I sometimes get this funny feeling in my eyes, it's like if you look at a light bulb or the sun and then look down at the ground. You'll notice a sort of glare in your vision or something in that direction.
What the fade effect does for me, is that is makes it a lot more comfortable to look at KDE or GNOME, because colors and lights disappear smoothly, even if it's just a little over half a second the fade is in action, it makes it a lot easier on my eyes.

The thing I hate about Compiz is that it still, after months and months of community development, works so poorly with KDE, which makes it largely irrelavant to me, because of reasons that we have had endless discussions of in the past.

Better, or I might say newer, graphics on a console is meant to give the player(s) a more realistic experience, and help them immerse themselves in the world of the game they're playing, if it's like Zelda or Elder Scrolls and stuff like that with big big worlds.
This does work to a certain degree. If you take N64 graphics it will look kind of boxy at times, and there you certainly notice that it's a game you're playing, however, with the GameCube's (I don't have a PS2, and the Xbox doesn't have a game I find particularly interesting besides Spider-Man games) generation of graphics, if it's done properly, which games like Super Mario Sunshine and even a cell-shaded game like Zelda: The Wind Waker is, I can actually for brief moments forget where I am and just feel like I am looking at the character that I am controlling.
To me, the GameCube was a tipping point, or the point of no return, where games feel realistic in many situations, of you pour more graphics into it, it really does not do anything for me, this is of course my very personal feeling about graphics in games.

If one thinks that better graphics are boring on a computer, then I'd imagine that better graphics on a video game console--especially a console that will more than likely put out the same type of games with the only noticable improvement being better graphics--would be downright sleep inducing. Certainly not worth $500 in my book, much less $600.

My sentiments exactly!
Personally, with the GameCube, I have all the graphics I want, games just don't seem more realistic to me if you keep janking the horsepower up, the only things it does is that it creates more heat, which makes my room hotter and more uncomfortable to play games in, and it also makes my electricity bill much worse than what it already is.
The ability to be able to actually point at an enemy, and hit a trigger like button, and then see him get a billed to his head, is a heck of a lot more realistic than anything any sort of graphics could ever do. Being able to actually swing the controller like a real sword is endlessly more realistic than anything graphics could ever do.

Another thing that, to me, is very negative about "better" graphics is that it makes games a lot more expensive to develop on the developer's part, and then that results in more expensive games for the consumers. And most importantly, super high costs in game production locks out the small game studios, it's just too expensive, and even for the medium sized ones, it's way too expensive to be able to "take risks" and actually try to do something new, instead of creating like a Madden 98725505560.

Of course, I'm not a typical gamer. I haven't played and new video games in years. Occasionally I pull out the old NES for a quick round of Dr. Mario against my wife, but I don't want video games that are so complicated they become a damned lifestyle choice. The Wii sounds like it probably be more up my alley, since I miss the simplicity of those original NES games. I want to be able to sit down with a game, figure out how to play it in less than 10 minutes, and to be able to play around for 30 minutes or so at a time, and that's about all the time I'm willing to devote to it. The tennis game for the Wii with that new controller already looks like a lot of fun to me, and I always have enjoyed the games that Nintendo puts out. High priced graphics just don't impress me anymore. I hope that Nintendo does manage to produce original and interesting games with their new controller, then for the first time in about 10 years, I'll actually want to play video games again.

Nintendo has kind of defined their markets into several groups of a very large market that they're going for. These are:

Core gamers
Casual gamers
Lost gamers
Non gamers

Core gamers is someone like me who like big and sophisticated games (Zelda being a really good example). Casual gamers are people who ocationally play games and in a lot of situations stick to simpler games. Lost gamers are people who used to play games, for example people who played like NES, SNES, Sega Genesis etc. but stopped playing around N64 and PlayStation, either because they lost interest or because games simply got too complicated for what they liked. Non gamers are people like my mother who has never played games and do not even consider it something relavant to her.

Before anything starts saying Nintendo is not gonna focus on the core gamers, let me tell you this, during their E3 press conference, Satoru Iwata (Nintendo's president) said these words: "Core gamers always represent our most important audience".
Right when the Wii comes out, you're mostly gonna see games that appeal to the hardcore gamers, such as Zelda and FPS games, but over the next 1½ - 2 years, you'll see a lot of new things, we saw that with the Nintendo DS, it took a little while for Nintendo to release some of these very unique and new games.

There are plenty of games I want to play/finish, but having 2 kids under 4 kind of stole that part of my life from me.

Don't worry man, I started playing games when I was just about 3 years old, and back then it was NES and GameBoy (I didn't actually own a GameBoy until I was 4½, and at 8 or 9 years of age, the N64 was my first TV console), you should be able to play a game with your kids quite soon, at least my own personal experiences tell me so.
Just a thought, since games like Wii Sports for the Wii (duh) are incredibly simple to play, because you just need to wave your arm, it should be something that a 3 - 4 year old kid could understand and do, I'd give that a shot if you get a chance. Of course this largely depends on the kids, but of course, what do I know, 'ey? I don't have kids yet, I can just speak from my own personal experiences, as far as I can remember.

There are plenty of games I want to play/finish, but having 2 kids under 4 kind of stole that part of my life from me.

I can definitely relate to that my friend

The family stealing ya' time and freedom, 'ey?

[Patrick]

The thing I hate about Compiz is that it still, after months and months of community development, works so poorly with KDE, which makes it largely irrelavant to me..

Maybe it's time to get Zack Rusin back on. I'm curious to see how KDE 4 will play with XGL/AIGL/Beryl? I agree it's very lacking under KDE.

The family stealing ya' time and freedom, 'ey?

Absolutely. You know what I wouldn't want it any other way. Having children is fantastic. It's exhausting but absolutely wonderful. You have a life in your hands to help nuture and grow into a hopefully good person. It really is a huge responsibility and makes you grow in many ways.

[Vogateer]

You hear several people here say that XGL and AIGLX don't really impress them, and doesn't have anything they want or need. Of course, most of the current uses of XGL aren't impressively useful, and what's more exciting is that these technologies will open up new possibilites.

I used to think this too.... until I started using it at my workplace on a daily basis. The transparency tool is very useful to me, as well as the Expose-like window organizer tool.

The fading in and out of application windows, rather than them just appearing and disappearing, seems easier on the eyes at the end of day. I could be just imagining it, but if I feel better using AIGLX/Xgl then it has accomplished it's goal.

I like it and now find other desktops not using it to be unappealing.

I haven't used compiz for a while, since it's not quite as stable as I'd like for it to be, and also because my video card died on me a while back. Back when I was playing with it, though, I thought it was a great improvement, and felt very soothing, since the abruptness of certain actions were gone, and the transitions were a great touch. Even impressed my Mac loving friend with some of the effects.

You can look back in some of my previous posts where I was talking about my experiences with people like my coworkers or my sister, who upon clicking on a virtual desktop exclaimed, "Hey, all my programs crashed!" With no visual feedback or instruction on what a virtual desktop is or how it works, how was she supposed to know any better? The little spinning cube not only looks pretty slick, but tells people like my sister that their programs haven't disappeared, they've just been moved out of the way.

[Tsuroerusu]

The thing I hate about Compiz is that it still, after months and months of community development, works so poorly with KDE, which makes it largely irrelavant to me..

Maybe it's time to get Zack Rusin back on. I'm curious to see how KDE 4 will play with XGL/AIGL/Beryl? I agree it's very lacking under KDE.

Dude, if it wasn't because Zack is a brilliant guy and is so darn busy, you should have him as a co-host!

But anyway, how KDE 4 will play along with the new ways of using 3D graphics. I can tell you something about that actually. KWin, the KDE window manager, will get compositing built in, so it will essentially become a compositing window manager, so it might have it's own effects, but I could imagine KDE making a way to use Compiz plugins in KWin or something.

The family stealing ya' time and freedom, 'ey?

Absolutely. You know what I wouldn't want it any other way. Having children is fantastic. It's exhausting but absolutely wonderful. You have a life in your hands to help nuture and grow into a hopefully good person. It really is a huge responsibility and makes you grow in many ways.

I'll hopefully get to know about that in the future, we'll see ...

[jsusanka]

The thing I hate about Compiz is that it still, after months and months of community development, works so poorly with KDE, which makes it largely irrelavant to me..

Maybe it's time to get Zack Rusin back on. I'm curious to see how KDE 4 will play with XGL/AIGL/Beryl? I agree it's very lacking under KDE.

Dude, if it wasn't because Zack is a brilliant guy and is so darn busy, you should have him as a co-host!

But anyway, how KDE 4 will play along with the new ways of using 3D graphics. I can tell you something about that actually. KWin, the KDE window manager, will get compositing built in, so it will essentially become a compositing window manager, so it might have it's own effects, but I could imagine KDE making a way to use Compiz plugins in KWin or something.

The family stealing ya' time and freedom, 'ey?

Absolutely. You know what I wouldn't want it any other way. Having children is fantastic. It's exhausting but absolutely wonderful. You have a life in your hands to help nuture and grow into a hopefully good person. It really is a huge responsibility and makes you grow in many ways.

I'll hopefully get to know about that in the future, we'll see ...

I do have to say that installing Mandriva (the kde version) they have compiz integrated nicely and works really well in kde. I haven't tried gnome with it but it seems just as native/integrated on kde in Mandriva than it does on gnome in Suse.