PlayStation 3 Support Is Still Being Worked On Within The Linux Kernel

[phoronix]

Phoronix: PlayStation 3 Support Is Still Being Worked On Within The Linux Kernel

The PowerPC architecture updates for the Linux 3.20 kernel, including some improvements for the Sony PlayStation 3 game console...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Sony-PS3-Linux-3.20-Changes

[Djhg2000]

Official support was dropped after 3.15, most likely to prevent some exploit. Needless to say, Sonys strategy backfired massively since that caused hackers to attempt to gain access to the PS3 internals without official support. They succeeded and by using this method they even reclaimed the GPU portion of the RAM, blocked out in an earlier update (possibly to prevent some other exploit).

Lesson is, don't try to bait-and-switch Linux users.

[schmidtbag]

Official support was dropped after 3.15, most likely to prevent some exploit. Needless to say, Sonys strategy backfired massively since that caused hackers to attempt to gain access to the PS3 internals without official support. They succeeded and by using this method they even reclaimed the GPU portion of the RAM, blocked out in an earlier update (possibly to prevent some other exploit).

Lesson is, don't try to bait-and-switch Linux users.

lol yeah, but at this point I don't think Sony really cares. The PS3 isn't really of interest to them anymore. I don't really know why anybody would bother with it. For today's standards, it doesn't even make a good server. 8-core ARM servers are smaller, more power efficient, have more support, faster I/O, and more RAM.

[duby229]

lol yeah, but at this point I don't think Sony really cares. The PS3 isn't really of interest to them anymore. I don't really know why anybody would bother with it. For today's standards, it doesn't even make a good server. 8-core ARM servers are smaller, more power efficient, have more support, faster I/O, and more RAM.

Yeah, you are right. But what's nice about PS3 is many people already have one. I don't see anything wrong with repurposing an old PS3 that otherwise would be unused.

EDIT: Also PS3 hardware was released with very good quality control. They are very sturdy consoles. My brother has a PS3 running a server that has an uptime of a few years now.

[schmidtbag]

Yeah, you are right. But what's nice about PS3 is many people already have one. I don't see anything wrong with repurposing an old PS3 that otherwise would be unused.

EDIT: Also PS3 hardware was released with very good quality control. They are very sturdy consoles. My brother has a PS3 running a server that has an uptime of a few years now.

Well yeah if you already have one go ahead and repurpose it, but I don't see many people who own one to have a use for an 8-core server. Maybe would be decent with BOINC (was that ported to PPC?) since that doesn't need much RAM or disk space.

How is the GPU support for PS3 anyway?

[duby229]

Well yeah if you already have one go ahead and repurpose it, but I don't see many people who own one to have a use for an 8-core server. Maybe would be decent with BOINC (was that ported to PPC?) since that doesn't need much RAM or disk space.

How is the GPU support for PS3 anyway?

Well, my brother is using a configuration that is several years old, no GPU support there. Not sure about recent configurations. And it's not really 8 cores. It only has 1 PPC core. It does have 8 DSP cores, but those aren't used too much in linux. Although I believe LLVM does have support for those DSPs

[SXX⁣]

How is the GPU support for PS3 anyway?

Pretty much everything explained here:

http://www.psdevwiki.com/ps3/RSX

http://www.psdevwiki.com/ps3/PS3_GPU_Driver

Though there is clearly never was enough developers to properly port Mesa/Gallium there.

[Dukenukemx]

Official support was dropped after 3.15, most likely to prevent some exploit. Needless to say, Sonys strategy backfired massively since that caused hackers to attempt to gain access to the PS3 internals without official support. They succeeded and by using this method they even reclaimed the GPU portion of the RAM, blocked out in an earlier update (possibly to prevent some other exploit).

Lesson is, don't try to bait-and-switch Linux users.

Wait, you can still install Linux on PS3? Mine is on 4.xx so is there way around this? Without requiring to downgrade the firmware back cause the newer PS3's don't have that option.

[nonekiller001]

Wait, you can still install Linux on PS3? Mine is on 4.xx so is there way around this? Without requiring to downgrade the firmware back cause the newer PS3's don't have that option.

Yeah, you do need to downgrade to at least firmware 3.55 to partition and install otheros++ and pediboot. After that you can upgrade to a newer custom firmware because new custom firmware can run the otheros just not make a otheros partition.

[xeno74]

Just for info:

Linux PowerPC on NG AMIGA computers:

http://forum.hyperion-entertainment....forum.php?f=35

http://forum.hyperion-entertainment....forum.php?f=52