Chrome OS for PS3?

I had always hoped Sony and IBM would work together to make the PS3's Linux compatibility a highly marketable feature. But it seems Sony has little interest in promoting PS3 features other than gaming and Blu-ray, so it doesn't spend money on secondary functions beyond the initial R&D.

Perhaps Sony will re-position the PS3 to compete with a relaunched Natal-equipped 360. I have little hope for this, as these days it seems to do the opposite of anything that would give its products mass market appeal.

 

Can we please refrain from business discussion, outside of the business of Cell, in this board. The mandate here is very clear.

Regards Chrome, I don't see any point in a PS3 OS that isn't Cell optimised. PPU hasn't got enough juice to drive a comfortable contemporary OS. Yet none of STI have shown a large interest in a Cell optimised Linux. We get libs in dribs and drabs. They must be working on OS software for their own uses, but there's little to benefit the consumer OS space.

 

If the bootos file from PS3 is open to the public, then it should be possible for a third party to make one for PS3. Sony doesn't have to be involved. Is ChromeOS based on Linux ?

 

What would a Cell-optimized linux mean? Cell-optimized libc or just a Cell-optimized scheduler? I could see the first... schedulers, it took a while for Linux to get a new one of those, and the politics behind it are daunting.

 

As I don't know the strustuce of Linux, I can't really answer that What PS3 needs is a GUI that runs ont he hardware, either Cell optimised or RSX accelerated. It needs applications that use the performance of SPEs, so media playback etc. is Right Nippy. Certain OS functions, like vector text/graphics drawing, should be incredibly fast and efficient on SPEs. As I understand it, at the moment most stuff is PPC, meaning Linux on PS3 is akin to running Linux on a 256ish MB, weak 1.5 GHz PPC (given descriptions of the PPE's implementation, it doesn't run as fast as a 3 GHz PPC!). It could be soooo much more. Movie decoding has a Cell implementation now. Has an encoding implementation too!

But PS3 could be soooo much more. Standard audio libraries could do amazing things on SPEs. GUIs could be smooth and fast. Interfaces could break away from the original GEM WIMP standard and be more exotic. Sony could readily create a motion interface etc. Being a closed platform affords so many more opportunities.

Yeah, I miss the Amiga and all the advances it brought to computing.

 

Sony should man up and open up the RSX to Linux. That would solve most problems right there.

 

The main problem is someone spending the time to develop this! Without an obvious market, development would need to happen for the fun of it, and the current homebrew space shows Cell development is way, way low on the Indie scene. IMO it'd take Sony to have a vision of PS3 as a 'computer' to make it happen (though by computer, their vision could be a set of applications and open-sourced libs, more like iPhone than PC). I can't see anyone else taking the challenge. I don't see Google developing a PS3 flavour of Chrome, and I don't imagine a contigent of enthusiasts will make a worthwhile port either. We may see another flavour of Linux on PS3, but how much difference will that really make?

 

Is ChromeOS a stripped down Linux with Google apps ?

 

We need to wait to figure out what exactly it is.

 

"The software architecture is simple — Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel. For application developers, the web is the platform. All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite web technologies. And of course, these apps will run not only on Google Chrome OS, but on any standards-based browser on Windows, Mac and Linux thereby giving developers the largest user base of any platform."

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/introducing-google-chrome-os.html


I saw a quote on either Gizmodo or Engaget this morning where they said the UI would be almost indistinguishable from a web browser. To me, that means every single window in the OS is basically a Chrome window. Apparently google told MS that they could port IE over to Chrome OS because it is open source. I'm not sure what that means, because IE is architecturaly different from Chrome, and the web browser is basically the architecture of the OS. Looks like native apps are out entirely. This is web apps only.

Is there really any reason to run something like this on the PS3? Since it is all open source, I have a feeling someone will make a PS3 version available. They should be able to do it using one of the available linux kernels for PS3. The good thing is, the OS really only has one application, Google Chrome. There aren't any native apps to port. If you get the OS ported to the platform the entire app library is web based and platform agnostic.

Edit: I guess there are browser plugins to worry about?

 

Ah, in that case, I think it will show up on PS3 someday.

Presumably someone could even preinstall ChromeOS on PS3 like how Fixstar preinstalls YDL. The former would be for consumer applications based on WebKit. The audience will probably be very small.

As for plugins... WebKit is moving towards HTML5. We should have database support, local cache, multimedia stack, plus 2D and 3D animation. It'd be like running a VB/JavaScript app locally. I heard JavaScriptCore is very fast.

Best is still to run WebKit right inside GameOS.

 

I guess the other thing is, if all the apps are web/standards based, then is there even a reason to run Chrome OS on the PS3?

 

To run chrome OS on PS3, V8, google's javascript JIT compiler will have to ported to PPC. Which is a non trivial task to say the least.

 

... depends on whether PS3 web browser will support HTML5.

 

Chrome OS is server side

I think it would be good, but ...
As I understood, Chrome OS is a "server side" Os.
I mean .. I think you'll be able to run ChromeOs on a Pentium3 (or a 486) as you run it in a intel quad core, because it's web based. You just need a Pc to get an internet connection, no more .. Your application is online, on google servers. Maybe it would be interesting to know what hardware google use on his server, and ask yourself if that application could run better on cell (es. google app)

 

I doubt ChromeOS is a server OS. It's instant on, has web browser and JavaScript, runs web applications; supports ARM and Intel. All the articles I came across treat it like a consumer OS.

 

Chrome OS is server side

I didn't read a lot about ChromeOs, but .. the little I get is it's goal is to run the web application, and it will be the default Os for the netbook. This because it's light (I think).
If ChromeOs was made to work online .. to run web application .. I don't think it'll need a strong CPU to run, but you'll need a good internet connection!
So I think this is not where I suppose to see the Cell making the difference.

 

Aye, yes. It'd just be one of the devices in the living room. As rpg pointed out above, V8 needs to be ported to PPC first.