The PS3 Linux distro we've all been waiting for

Rolf N said:
We're still not there yet. I'm sorry. We should all just go home.
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Thanks for taking the fall for the rest of us! Imbeciles like me need pioneers tot est things first so I know if I can handle it.

Seems this is just too hard for now. I wonder why it's so difficult for Linux to become useable. Say what you want about Bill's monstrosities of an OS but they've been possible to easily install and set up by anyone for 10+ years now.

Is it maybe that the people developing it don't want them to be easy to handle? Is there a countermovemetn in Linux development to keep the OS "leet"?

The nonsense we'ev seen where you set PS3's screen res by editing text files and so on..wth? It's not the 1970s still for god's sake.
Peace.
 
Rainbow Man said:
The nonsense we'ev seen where you set PS3's screen res by editing text files and so on..wth? It's not the 1970s still for god's sake.
Peace.
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Why don't you make such a utility instead of posting complaints here? Why do you expect other people to create programs for you?
 
tuna said:
Why don't you make such a utility instead of posting complaints here? Why do you expect other people to create programs for you?
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:oops: That's like asking someone to write their own Gears of War rather than complain about the bits of GeoW they don't like! Have you ever watched a movie and thought 'they shouldn't have done that but done this instead'? Why not go make you're own movie then!

People are allowed to criticise in the hopes of getting things improved. If you have the skills and time needed to implement you're own solution, it'd be best to do it yourself of course. But most people don't. They rely on the work of others, and sometimes those others need direction on how to create better products for their audience. If someone's creating an OS for people to use, and yet those people find it hard to use, the creator ought to be made away of what's wrong. Otherwise (s)he's missed their own target.
 
betan said:
While Yellow Dog is the first and probably most tweaked PS3 distro, it is not PS3 specific and Ubuntu (or any other distro) can and will include many SPU related stuff sooner than later.
SPU optimized Mesa3d will supposedly be open anyway.
Currently as far as I know Yellow Dog's main advantage is including Cell related dev libs but I am willing to bet Ubuntu and Debian will be better Cell development distros than Yellow Dog very very soon. Also some of us actually care about free software.
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Actually I doubt that'll happen. First, as of 7.04 PowerPC builds of Ubuntu has been reclassified to unofficial status, thus won't (depends on the resourcefulness PowerPC community) get the same level of development, support and funding that the other mainline archs will. Secondly, IBM and the Barcelona Supercomputing Center target Fedora (current version targes Core 6 now) for development, of which YDL is a fork of. So Deb/Ubuntu will likely trail YDL as far Cell SDK support goes.

Rolf N said:
he best thing about Ubuntu is the Debian heritage and the apt system, which has grown beyond critical mass and is more or less "winning" the repository format race. Everybody and their mother maintains compatible repositories, and apt makes it trivial to go straight from source to install in the event that there's no binary that fits your platform.
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Apt is nice, but as far going from "source" the BSD portage system IMO does a better job. The closest analog in Linux would be Gentoo's portage. The nice thing that portage does vs. apt, yum, rpm, etc. is when you build from source it's much easier to taylor the build to your system specifics...

Rolf N said:
Dunno about flash cards
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Dunno about Ubuntu, but that's how I installed Linux on mine although I basically built from scratch (using a livecd to bootstrap an environment and set up the disk, then copy my build from a CF card and chroot into it).

Rainbow Man said:
Seems this is just too hard for now. I wonder why it's so difficult for Linux to become useable.
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It's not... Although it depends on what context. It's a lot easier for an IHV to support Windows or OS X than it is Linux (not to mention, their more used to it). There's nothing inherit within a Linux distro that makes it hard (Ubuntu is awfully easy to install in a regular PC) to install or support.

The nonsense we'ev seen where you set PS3's screen res by editing text files and so on..wth? It's not the 1970s still for god's sake.
Peace.
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Try installing Vista on a PS3 and see how far you get, then we'll talk about being in the 1970's...
 
Carl B said:
Rolf just curious on the side, but what about those numbers doesn't add up?
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I expected there to be 192MB of XDR memory (256-64) for Linux, and that was just about the limit under YDL. 212MB does adds up -- in fact the number 134 has been generated by the ancient art of substraction ;) --, but it is unexpected to have "so much" free memory.
Maybe the recent 1.70 firmware update increased the limit. Maybe Feisty can use GDDR memory for some things (I reckon 14MB for the front buffer space between four 1280x720 desktops). I don't know.
 
Shifty Geezer said:
:oops: That's like asking someone to write their own Gears of War rather than complain about the bits of GeoW they don't like! Have you ever watched a movie and thought 'they shouldn't have done that but done this instead'? Why not go make you're own movie then!

People are allowed to criticise in the hopes of getting things improved. If you have the skills and time needed to implement you're own solution, it'd be best to do it yourself of course. But most people don't. They rely on the work of others, and sometimes those others need direction on how to create better products for their audience. If someone's creating an OS for people to use, and yet those people find it hard to use, the creator ought to be made away of what's wrong. Otherwise (s)he's missed their own target.
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You do realize that there is a difference between complaining and critizing. You were complaining that the Linux devolopers have not made a utility with a GUI (why the developers of an operating system kernel such as Linux would make such a utility is beyond my comprehension btw......) which you clearly want. If I had created such a utility I would not release it to the wider world just to stop whiners like you reap the fruits of my labor.

BTW, I have made some movies together with some friends. Also, I wanted a GUI media player that could dump the embedded mp3 file encoded in most videos, so I made a program that could do that as well (with some help from the gstreamer community).
 
tuna said:
You do realize that there is a difference between complaining and critizing.
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Yes...in the spelling ;) There's obviously politic ways to complain about things, and of course positive factors should be praised along with complaints. But on the whole they're much the same thing.
If I had created such a utility I would not release it to the wider world just to stop whiners like you reap the fruits of my labor.
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If you create it for yourself, you don't have to share it with the world. But if you create for the world, you may as well do a good job. eg. I decide to create a free music editor. I create a functional program but it has some interface that people find hard to use. You can record MIDI note input, but perhaps it's presentation is only in Hex and musicians can't use it. I receive complaints about the presentation format. If I want an application people will use, it makes sense to change the presentation into one people are happier with. If i don't do that, I've failed in my intention to create a product for others.
BTW, I have made some movies together with some friends. Also, I wanted a GUI media player that could dump the embedded mp3 file encoded in most videos, so I made a program that could do that as well (with some help from the gstreamer community).
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That's lovely. But you can't expect everyone to do their own work in every field. This board is chocabloc full of criticisms of games. I can levy lots of complaints about Star Control 3 and Master of Orion 3. I don't have the time or resources to learn how to develop my own versions of those games - I can only complain and hope developers pick up on the complaints and change things for next time. If I move into a house and it's falling to bits, should I whings and moan about the build quality, and build my own house? If I buy a car and it's great in every way except it annoyingly beeps whenever I do anything in it, should I remark about this problem or build my own car?

Seriously, you can't have a discussion forum without people saying what they think is wrong with some ideas! It's also the basis of every game review site on the planet. Or do you suggest the peeps at GameSpot and Eurogamer stop complaining in their reviews about what's wrong with the control system or graphical errors in Game X and instead write their own games?
 
True, although I find bitching about having to edit a conf file (in Linux of all things), on a non-supported OS that's under development, on an unofficial platform (that's largely closed), of what's a niche feature of the platform is a tad silly...

It's sorta like bitching that somebody's homebrew demo isn't up to the snuff that commercial titles are...
 
tuna said:
I have some hope that you will learn the errors of your way of thinking and emerge as a better person.
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A tad self-righteous aren't we?

archie4oz said:
It's sorta like bitching that somebody's homebrew demo isn't up to the snuff that commercial titles are...
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It was a perfectly valid observation. Linux has had many years now anfd a lot of manhours sunk into it to become matured and it's still very fiddly and tinkery in nature.

It's hardly the equivalent of some dude's homebrew app.

Besides the PS3 version of yellow dog isn't exactly th eonly distro in the universe that needs configuring by editing esoteric text files.

Even TOS on the atari ST could set screen res udsing a very simple GUI by the way.

Peace.
 
Even TOS on the atari ST could set screen res udsing a very simple GUI by the way.
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So can pretty much most Linux distros... Just because it's not working on many PS3 distros doesn't mean it can't be done. Like I said, vs. desktop and server applications, PS3 support is VERY niche. Chances are, the members of the Ubuntu community that are working on probably are aware of that and it's probably a minor issue since they're working on bigger issues.

It was a perfectly valid observation. Linux has had many years now anfd a lot of manhours sunk into it to become matured and it's still very fiddly and tinkery in nature.
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Of course, because it's not an operating system, it's just an open source kernel. Along with a pile open source utilities, programmingyou eventually get an operating system. Because if that relative flexibility it's pretty easy to tailor it to different tasks. You want something more Windows like in user friendliness then Xandros or Linspire would more your cup of tea than raw Ubuntu.
 
Rainbow Man said:
A tad self-righteous aren't we?


It was a perfectly valid observation. Linux has had many years now anfd a lot of manhours sunk into it to become matured and it's still very fiddly and tinkery in nature.

It's hardly the equivalent of some dude's homebrew app.

Besides the PS3 version of yellow dog isn't exactly th eonly distro in the universe that needs configuring by editing esoteric text files.

Even TOS on the atari ST could set screen res udsing a very simple GUI by the way.

Peace.
Click to expand...

I don't know about YD on the PS3, but on FC6 on the PC and some other distros, you don't even need to use a GUI. Pressing Cntrl-Alt - or Cntrl-Alt + will change the screen res. A lot easier than Windows no?
 
What is meant by WLAN? Networking off-site machines? Does NAT storage come under this, or was that supported already?
 
Shifty Geezer said:
What is meant by WLAN? Networking off-site machines? Does NAT storage come under this, or was that supported already?
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No, it means support for the PS3's internal wireless networking chipset which up to now didn't exist in any Linux distribution. Unfortunately, currently it's only available for subscribers as it seems...
 
Jesus2006 said:
No, it means support for the PS3's internal wireless networking chipset which up to now didn't exist in any Linux distribution. Unfortunately, currently it's only available for subscribers as it seems...
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Could you not use Linux internet access over WiFi prior to this then?
 
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