PS3 Linux distro announced - available from November, free

LookingFor

This is pretty cool news! We had talked about it before, but here's the first concrete announcement and details. Interestingly, the distro won't come from Sony themselves, but an established Linux company. It will be Yellow Dog Linux v5.0.

Terra Soft to Provide Linux for the Sony PLAYSTATION®3
http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com/news/2006/2006-10-17.shtml

Yellow Dog Linux v5.0, Terra Soft's next generation Linux operating system for Power will support PLAYSTATION 3, providing an end-user experience far surpassing previous versions. Through an aggressive, rapid co-development project conducted by Carsten Haitzler and the Enlightenment development team, Yellow Dog Linux v5.0, built upon Fedora Core 5, now integrates the next generation "E17" desktop in order to provide an unprecedented level of function and interface aesthetic. Designed for users of all ages and all levels of experience, Yellow Dog Linux v5.0 is Terra Soft's most advanced distribution to date.

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.

Some more detail here, and more to come soon:

http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com/products/ydl/

It'll be available via Terra Soft's own website, as a purchaseable disc or download, and via public mirrors (free).

Balfa

That sounds exciting. It would make the investment seem a little more worthwhile if it could do more than just play games

projectmayhem

Balfa wrote:

That sounds exciting. It would make the investment seem a little more worthwhile if it could do more than just play games

well, you have the kernel and OS, go make it do other stuff

This bodes well for the homebrew/emulation scene.

LookingFor

There'll be a lot included with it, although it'll be the apps designed for PS3 that should be most exciting. Think of something like XBMC but with HD capability for starters..:D

thebman

E17 for functionality? I must have missed something. It's purely for eye candy.

Anyway it's built on Fedora which is a pity. They should have gone with Ubuntu because its the most popular Linux Desktop distro and there is a PPC version of it too. They also ship CD's for free.

LookingFor

brim4brim wrote:

E17 for functionality? I must have missed something. It's purely for eye candy.

I think there's also a windows management system underneath.

brim4brim wrote:

Anyway it's built on Fedora which is a pity. They should have gone with Ubuntu because its the most popular Linux Desktop distro and there is a PPC version of it too.

Yeah, but YDL has been THE PPC Linux distro for a long time now. It's very well respected in high performance computing circles, and has great relations with IBM - they were probably best placed to provide an optimised distro. It makes a lot of sense.

Having said that, I wouldn't write off the possibility of other distros becoming available for PS3.

CiaranC

LookingFor wrote:

Think of something like XBMC but with HD capability for starters..

XBMC has HD capability...

Zombrex

brim4brim wrote:

Anyway it's built on Fedora which is a pity. They should have gone with Ubuntu because its the most popular Linux Desktop distro and there is a PPC version of it
too. They also ship CD's for free.

I would say that Sony are aiming for the tinkering/hacker market here, rather than the "I hate Windows, if only there was something else" market. As such Fedora makes a better choice that Ubuntu ("linux for idiots" as someone once called it)

LookingFor

CiaranC wrote:

XBMC has HD capability...

According to its own site it doesn't..

http://www.xboxmediacenter.com/wiki/index.php?title=Supported_File_Formats#Supported_video_formats_and_resolutions

Xbox/XBMC can output 480p/720p/1080i (if you have a High Definition AV Pack/component cable) and upscale all low-resolution videos (like retail DVD-Video/Movies) to 720p (1280x720 pixel progressive) or 1080i (1920x1080 pixel interlaced) in hardware (linear upscale/upconvert). So XBMC have no problems with upscaling example DVD-video (720x480 NTSC/720x756 PAL) movies to HDTV 480p/720p/1080i. XBMC is even capable of playing native HD video (video/movies with native resolutions higher than 720x576) like 720p (1280x720) and 1080i (1920x1080), however there is here a big snag/limitation and that is that a standard Xbox only has a 733Mhz Intel Pentium-III CPU (processor) and that does not have the processing power to decode those native HD video resolutions, and that means you would only get maybe 10fps (frames per seconds) displayed which would appear so jerky because of all dropped frames that it will be un-viewable.

While XBMC can play back the file, the hardware is too slow to make it useable. So it isn't a software failing as such, but they can only do what the hardware allows. That's why I'd love to see something similar on the next-gen systems, and it should be pretty easy to do now on PS3 (and no mod chip required! so for any developer of such an app, there's the motivation of a potentially much bigger audience).

CiaranC

According to its own site it doesn't..

Ah I see, hadnt seen that before.

Blowfish

Great news. This was one of the things that worried me about the ps3, they hadn't released the details on the distro they were going to use. It would have been nice if they were using xgl and compiz though.

Its kindof strange, I actually want the ps3 more for the hardware than for any of the games by this stage, and i'll definitely be creating a load of homebrew stuff.

/me plans design of a raytracer for the cell.

thebman

E17 is very nice looking and sure its Linux. Don't like it, change it (hopefully).