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The PlayStation 4 Does Use The FreeBSD Kernel, Mono

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  • The PlayStation 4 Does Use The FreeBSD Kernel, Mono

    Phoronix: The PlayStation 4 Does Use The FreeBSD Kernel, Mono

    In the forum discussion from yesterday's article about Sony using the LLVM/Clang compiler for the PlayStation 4 with its game development kit, some readers questioned whether the PlayStation 4 was really powered by FreeBSD. FreeBSD can be found on the PlayStation 4 along with Mono and other open-source components...

    Phoronix, Linux Hardware Reviews, Linux hardware benchmarks, Linux server benchmarks, Linux benchmarking, Desktop Linux, Linux performance, Open Source graphics, Linux How To, Ubuntu benchmarks, Ubuntu hardware, Phoronix Test Suite

  • #2
    Great, but it won't change its market share much. Sony has code for free and they don't even have to share their patches. It's Open Source software, but it's the worst possible kind of it. GPL projects like Linux kernel serve community and ensure community will benefit when some company finds the code useful. That's a real nature of Open Source. Btw. will you check if Moogy runs bsd as well?

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sWzrmIoCac
    Last edited by Guest; 25 December 2013, 04:54 PM.

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    • #3
      Originally posted by Pawlerson View Post
      Great, but it won't change its market share much. Sony has code for free and they don't even have to share their patches. It's Open Source software, but it's the worst possible kind of it. GPL projects like Linux kernel serve community and ensure community will benefit when some company finds the code useful. That's a real nature of Open Source. Btw. will you check if Moogy runs bsd as well?

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sWzrmIoCac
      How do you know that you will find code which some random company wrote useful just because they found it was useful? How do you know they haven't contributed any back to the community, code which they thought the community would find useful as well?

      Are you planning on writing a custom OS for the PS4? Would you have bothered to if the PS4 used a Linux kernel and provided patches for Linux and other software? What would have been the point, when the hardware is as close to generic PC hardware as consoles have been in a long time? Will you ever have access to the hardware used in the PS4 to do with what you like in the first place?

      More than likely, the software was stable enough for their usecase that they didn't have to modify it in the first place, except for functionality specific to the PS4. I fail to see the software Sony using missing out on a wealth of code that they're just holding behind locked doors.

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      • #4
        Originally posted by Nobu View Post
        How do you know that you will find code which some random company wrote useful just because they found it was useful? How do you know they haven't contributed any back to the community, code which they thought the community would find useful as well?
        You don't, but IF it is useful - community can take advantage of it. In BSD - it's not even a possibility.

        Originally posted by Nobu View Post

        Are you planning on writing a custom OS for the PS4? Would you have bothered to if the PS4 used a Linux kernel and provided patches for Linux and other software? What would have been the point, when the hardware is as close to generic PC hardware as consoles have been in a long time? Will you ever have access to the hardware used in the PS4 to do with what you like in the first place?
        If it's bare bone - minor difference what OS is used. But it's not. Otherwise no one would want to develop for PS4. And yes, with GPL3 license you would have access to hardware of PS4. Even with GPL2, providing that Sony doesn't go hostile on hardware level. If you don't know what i talk about - read why GPL3 was created.


        Originally posted by Nobu View Post

        More than likely, the software was stable enough for their usecase that they didn't have to modify it in the first place, except for functionality specific to the PS4. I fail to see the software Sony using missing out on a wealth of code that they're just holding behind locked doors.
        And your point is?
        Previous users point is, BSD doesn't get any advantage from existing major players who take advantage of community, like Apple, and now Sony. Your whole message is nothing but speculations.


        Compare BSD with PS4 to Linux with Android, picture is clear.

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        • #5
          Originally posted by Nobu View Post
          More than likely, the software was stable enough for their usecase that they didn't have to modify it in the first place, except for functionality specific to the PS4
          Well PS3 also used FreeBSD kernel so it's easy to see them using it in the newer version too. If they did some modifications for PS3, they can keep building on top of those for PS4 and so on.

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          • #6
            Originally posted by Nobu View Post
            Are you planning on writing a custom OS for the PS4? Would you have bothered to if the PS4 used a Linux kernel and provided patches for Linux and other software? What would have been the point, when the hardware is as close to generic PC hardware as consoles have been in a long time? Will you ever have access to the hardware used in the PS4 to do with what you like in the first place?
            GPL kernel distributed with binary graphics drivers?

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            • #7
              Originally posted by dimko View Post
              Your whole message is nothing but speculations.
              No, the only speculative part of my post was that Sony wasn't providing patches back to the community, and according to Michael's other article, they are:

              Originally posted by Michael
              Developers working on the PlayStation 4 development kit also made changes to LLVM Clang, including the default compiler tags, optimizations for cross-compiling, pragmas for custom features, better Windows support, and other back-end tweaks. Now that the Sony PlayStation 4 has launched, the developers can work better with upstreaming the relevant LLVM patches, but as of last month there was still a lot of backlog that the developers had to work through cleaning and sending out. The developers hope to eventually live off the latest upstream LLVM/Clang trunk code-base.
              Whether or not you choose to believe what he said is your prerogative.

              The rest of my post was inquisitive, and somewhat interrogative.

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              • #8
                Oh, and that they hadn't needed to apply stability/performance patches. But I'd imagine they'd upstream such changes, were they necessary, since it would benefit them in the long run to have those audited and included by upstream--much like they are with LLVM patches. (stupid 5min edit window. >_< )

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                • #9
                  Originally posted by Nobu View Post
                  No, the only speculative part of my post was that Sony wasn't providing patches back to the community, and according to Michael's other article, they are:
                  More than 1.

                  Originally posted by Nobu View Post


                  Whether or not you choose to believe what he said is your prerogative.
                  I got no problem with that. So far i didn't see any blunt lies, may be some errors here and there, but no disinformation.

                  I took that you attack GPL2, and I reacted as such.
                  I wish BSD did not exist. At this stage it probably does more harm than good. IMHO anyways. I under strike, it's opinion, not factual claim.

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                  • #10
                    Originally posted by Pawlerson View Post
                    Great, but it won't change its market share much. Sony has code for free and they don't even have to share their patches. It's Open Source software, but it's the worst possible kind of it. GPL projects like Linux kernel serve community and ensure community will benefit when some company finds the code useful. That's a real nature of Open Source. Btw. will you check if Moogy runs bsd as well?

                    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sWzrmIoCac
                    That's not correct - they have sent in their patches (AVX patches): http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/f...ch/013740.html - so FreeBSD benefits already from their patches.

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