Slashdot Log In
Developing On the PS3 Under Fedora
Posted by
Soulskill
on Sat Aug 02, 2008 05:02 AM
from the ignore-the-toy-and-play-with-the-box dept.
from the ignore-the-toy-and-play-with-the-box dept.
An anonymous reader writes to point out the first in a series of articles from a while back about using the Playstation 3 as a development environment under Fedora. Here are the second and third parts of the series. Quoting:
"Early on, it was a bit of a challenge to get Linux natively installed on the PS3. Time has passed, and a great deal has changed. Fedora 7 installs on the PS3 out of the box, with the most challenging installation steps eliminated. This article introduces the basic configuration knobs and widgets specific to the PS3 running Linux, shows you how to use them effectively, and suggests the kind of trickery that gets improved performance."
Related Stories
Firehose:The PS3 is more than a toy with Fedora 7 by Anonymous Coward
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
How oddly timely (Score:3, Interesting)
I just finally bought a PS3 about a week ago and was getting ready to install Linux on it. I wish we could access the GPU but I understand why Sony doesn't want that. I think I found my project for the weekend.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You should watch this [youtube.com] and save yourself some time. There is no real point in doing it except to do it, in which case you might as well just watch somebody else.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Oh I've already seen the (more than one) videos of Linux on the PS3. I want to play around with some Cell coding; that's the only reason TO do it. The PS3 has a web browser already so installing Linux to just a somewhat functional web appliance is probably a waste of time.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Firefox 3 under Linux on the PS3 is a better web browser than Netfront under GameOS.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I have my PS3 on a computer desk with a 19inch HD LCD, so it's more like a regular PC desktop setup, keyboard tray, printer and everything.
Re:How oddly timely (Score:4, Interesting)
I want to play around with some Cell coding;
A few months ago, i was part of a project writing a demo app for PS3... We wrote some cell-code to scale webcam images. The app is written in C, the project website can be found here: http://cellproject.kjeldelaey.be/documentatie/html/annotated.html [kjeldelaey.be] The site is in dutch, but the code is documented in english.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Absolutely. Linux on the PS3 is for Cell programming.
An interesting video but ... (Score:5, Insightful)
... the article specifically states that running Linux on the PS3 is now far easier. I don't know if that is true but the article states that many of the time-consuming steps are no longer required. The PS3 is a very cheap development environment if your target platform is the CELL processor and that must be a reason for doing it if you are going to be programming one of those systems. There is no reason to assume that everyone has the same motivation for running it.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
That's nice that you don't think it's good for that. But there are plenty of things that people could use programming on Linux on the PS3 for. They could use it to familiarize themselves with writing to the SPEs. They could use it to learn about multithreading. It's an amazing learning resource. And if you happen to work in a scientific lab environment, it's a very cheap workhorse. So just because you don't think it's good for anything does
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:An interesting video but ... (Score:5, Informative)
A two processor Xeon 3.0 ghz quad core system would have an xhpl-relevant Rpeak of about 96 Gflops. Two cell processors (of the Poer8XCelli varaint, not the ones in PS3) has an Rpeak of 200 Gigaflops. The power consumption of those are about even. So the processor achieves over twice the aggregate performance within a comparable power envelope. *THAT* is why it's interesting.
See the #1 Top500 system. Not significantly more power usage than Intel systems, but blows the Intel ones out of the water.
The thing about code is, a Cell system can run the same C code other platforms can. Not blazingly fast, mind you, but it isn't like you *must* retool everything. In order to get the 2x boosts in certain code loops, yes, you would have to, but a lot of that is done already.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The point is it adds functionality to a device that already has plenty. Even if it doesn't have 3D hardware access it's still capable of doing non-3D development. There's nothing stopping someone from using Linux on the PS3 and becoming a part of the Nethack Devteam, or writing patches to Claws-Mail or something.
I've watched video under Linux on the PS3, it may not be good enough for 1080p but for the average non-HD video it should work fine. I've watched plenty of youtube on it. Besides, there's always
Re:How oddly timely (Score:5, Informative)
I wish we could access the GPU but I understand why Sony doesn't want that.
Well, I wish somebody would explain it to me. I presume the answer has something to do with piracy, but I don't see how that has a damn thing to do with access to the graphics chip under Linux. I mean, if they want to prevent you booting disks that haven't been officially signed, then that's fair enough (just about), but what does limiting the access to the GPU achieve?
This whole business of running Linux is basically just a tax dodge anyhow - because, if it didn't run Linux, the EU would have classified it as a game, rather than a computer, and slapped a higher import duty on it.
The EU should have stood firm and said "if you want to claim it's a computer, then users should be able to program the facilities of the *whole* computer".
How happy would you be if you bought a new PC, only to find out that, no, you can't access the GPU, etc from your own programs?
Parent
Re:How oddly timely (Score:5, Informative)
I wish we could access the GPU but I understand why Sony doesn't want that.
Well, I wish somebody would explain it to me. I presume the answer has something to do with piracy, but I don't see how that has a damn thing to do with access to the graphics chip under Linux.
Well, I'm just guessing, but this is my theory.
You can't just write games for consoles, you need to be a registered developer, and have a business relationship with the manufacturer, Sony/Nintendo/Microsoft. This has two goals, first, the manufacturer gets a cut out of your profits, second, the manufacturer gets to decide what runs on the console, so there aren't any subpar titles that give it a bad name.
If Linux could access the GPU, we'd have lots of nifty games ported to the PS3 in no time (Sauerbraten, Nexuiz, Alien Arena, etc. etc.), and later on developers might write games specifically for the PS3/Linux, just to get around the cost of developing using the 'normal' procedure for consoles. Sony, according to this theory, wants to avoid such things, for the reasons I said before: no more guaranteed profit per game played on their consoles, and no control over what games are played on them either.
I think it's crappy reasoning, personally.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
How happy would you be if you bought a new PC, only to find out that, no, you can't access the GPU, etc from your own programs?
Depends. If it were heavily subsidised then I might accept it. Probably not though, which is why I don't own a console.
It's not quite about piracy (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, it's not quite about piracy. It's about the fact that their whole business model is, well, sorta like the Gillette model: give the razor for almost free, make them pay through the nose for blades. Or, in Sony's case: massively subsidize the console itself, but control the games publishing and make them pay extra for the games.
It's not just Sony that has this model, btw. HP does the same with printers and ink, to the extent that for some it's cheaper to just chuck the old printer in the bin and buy a new one (which includes ink), than to buy a new ink cartridge. It's done by telcos, who give you a phone for 1 Euro, but saddle you with a long term contract as their real revenue. Etc, etc, etc.
So the last thing Sony wants is that someone bypasses them and publishes their own games for the PS3, say, as Linux games. And don't think as much "homebrew" (they probably couldn't care less if you make your own buggy tetris clone for it), think some big publisher getting that idea. Like, say, EA realizing that they can bypass and undercut Sony for their sports games.
And it's easier to play the piracy card there and forbid it completely from the start, than to go to court later and claim "but they need our permission to make games for our machine!" There are already precedents that you can't outright forbid that. Starting with the famous IBM case which created the software industry in the first place. Turned out that IBM couldn't forbid you to make software for their machines. Atari tried the same stunt and lost too. In fact, nobody won that kind of a case yet, and I'm not sure Sony wants to try to be the first.
AFAIK, that tax loophole was removed _years_ ago. So, nope.
AFAIK, they did, back in the PS2 times. Sorta. They essentially ruled that it's a game console anyway.
Well, just to play the devil's advocate, then fucking buy a computer. Of course, then you won't have Sony subsidizing half the cost of it, and they can't impose any restriction on you.
Same as with cell phones, printers, etc. If you don't want to be bound by some long term contract, buy your own phone. If you don't want to be gouged for ink, buy a Cannon. Etc. It's that simple. If you decided to take the subsidy, then have the decency to also accept your own part of the contract too.
It's kinda silly to essentially demand that a company subsidizes anything for you, but is forbidden to get anything in return. If they don't get anything out of that deal, why would they? No, you don't have some sacred right that someone else buys you a lollipop.
Parent
big blue trying to hack their own cpu :) (Score:3, Interesting)
Nice to find a solution to find a cheap hack to use the Cell on an IBM website. Sometimes you really wonder if they have seen the light :)
I wonder if these machines would make an excellent slim desktop pc to compete with eee desktop and others. But I guess reselling the ps3 with linux preinstalled will be fought by Sony.
Re:big blue trying to hack their own cpu :) (Score:4, Informative)
Again, the tax myth. The tax doesn't exist, hasn't existed since before Linux on the PS2 was released. It was Yabasic that was an attempt to dodge the tax, not Linux.
By the way, you CAN install a bigger HD in the PS3, Sony tells you how in the manual.
Parent
No... (Score:3, Insightful)
If they didn't know how to develop for it, they wouldn't have gotten to #1 supercomputing slot. IBM knows how.
Now, with this, it's a move to drum up interest in the architecture. IBM has server-class systems with enterprise support for CBE systems (QS22 being the current generation). However, drumming up general community interest in Cell benefits them in many ways.
Businesses contemplating Cell can have developers evaluate the architecture on the cheap. They won't be able to have a high speed interconne
Finally! (Score:5, Funny)
nothingtoseeheremovealong (Score:5, Informative)
The 3-part article tells very little about PS3-specific hacks. Basically, the author was telling you how to strip the Fedora system so that it could run on the resource-limited hardware without being too slow. This includes stopping unecessary daemons, ditch GNOME for twm, and running the X server on another box (or getting rid of X altogether).
This also apply to everything that Fedora can run on.
I fail to see how this is related to ``developing on the PS3 under Fedora''. The article didn't say much about development. If by ``developing'' you mean compiling your code in Fedora running inside a PS3 (which is under a virtualized environment) may be you have some points. But this is not developing for the PS3 platform. This is developing for a virtualized Linux platform.
Out of date (Score:3, Informative)
Yellow Dog Linux for the PS3 (Score:5, Interesting)
Sony has payed the Yellow Dog Linux guys to port Linux to the PS3, so it's probably more optimized for it than Fedora (even though it's based on Fedora), for instance, by using the Enlightenment window manager.
http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com/products/ydl/ [terrasoftsolutions.com]
Re:In other news: PS3 is slow as hell (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is defining "comfortably". Some dev used to running Eclipse, compiling code, running Firefox, and Thunderbird under a full KDE/Gnome desktop all the time might have a different definition. I've ran X on the PS2. X on the PS3 runs better, it runs fine.
Parent