YDL v5.0 confirmed for PS3; arriving mid November

[Titanio]

Oct 17 Update - Official PR with details/clarifications:

http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com/news/2006/2006-10-17.shtml

Terra Soft to Provide Linux for the Sony PLAYSTATION®3.

LOVELAND, Colorado - 17 October 2006 - Terra Soft is proud to announce Yellow Dog Linux v5.0 for PLAYSTATION®3 from Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCEI).

Yellow Dog Linux v5.0, Terra Soft's next generation Linux operating system for Power will support PLAYSTATION 3, providing an end-user experience far surpassing previous versions. Through an aggressive, rapid co-development project conducted by Carsten Haitzler and the Enlightenment development team, Yellow Dog Linux v5.0, built upon Fedora Core 5, now integrates the next generation "E17" desktop in order to provide an unprecedented level of function and interface aesthetic. Designed for users of all ages and all levels of experience, Yellow Dog Linux v5.0 is Terra Soft's most advanced distribution to date.

"We have worked closely with the energetic, determined E17 team to bring this advanced graphical user interface to a state of interface euphoria. It's not about eye candy and unnecessary special effects, it's about finding balance between a lean, uncluttered desktop and a personal environment that is both familiar and powerful. E17 is simply the most incredible thing I have ever used --with any operating system," states Cesar Delgado, System Administrator for Terra Soft.

Owen Stampflee, Lead Software Engineer of Terra Soft Solutions expresses, "From the days of the Commodore 64 to modern overclocked and water cooled home computers, a battle has raged between dedicated game boxes and home computers for highest quality game play. PLAYSTATION 3 provides an industry first exceptional Linux OS experience ... and Terra Soft the first Linux OS. I am proud to have played a part in this development."

Under basic agreement with SCEI, Terra Soft was granted a unique opportunity to develop and bring to market a complete Linux OS for the Sony PLAYSTATION 3. In development of Yellow Dog Linux v5.0, Terra Soft integrated and enhanced code from Barcelona Supercomputing Center, Sony Group, and Fedora in order to offer the following:
- kernel 2.6.16
- gcc 3.4.4 and glibc 2.4
- Cell SDK 1.1
- OpenOffice.org 2.0.2
- FireFox 1.5.0 and Thunderbird 1.5.0
- Nautilus 2.1.4
... and a suite of Personal Accessories, Development Tools; Sound & Video, Internet, and Networking applications.

A single-click installer enables absolutely anyone to install without instruction. Post-install, the default suite of applications presents an intuitive, self-guided means of exploring Linux without the confusion of multiple applications in the same family. An Advanced installer mode enables selection from greater than fifteen hundred packages, as is expected from a complete Linux distribution.

PLAYSTATION 3 is an advanced computer system designed to provide next generation computer entertainment contents in the home, incorporating the state-of-the-art Cell microprocessor with super computer like power.

As a guest of IBM at the annual SC2006 tradeshow, Nov 13-16, Tampa, Florida, Terra Soft will showcase Yellow Dog Linux v5.0, Y-HPC v2.0 beta, and Y-Bio v1.1. Yellow Dog Linux v5.0 for PLAYSTATION 3 will be made available through YDL.net Enhanced accounts, through the Terra Soft on-line Store, retailers, and public mirrors world-wide.


About Terra Soft Solutions, Inc.
As the recognized leader in Linux for Power since 1999, Terra Soft provides turn-key integrated solutions built upon IBM and Mercury systems, board support packages for Power OEMs, and develops cross-architecture Linux applications for high performance computing. As an IBM Business Partner, Mercury and Apple VAR, Terra Soft provides turnkey HPC systems. Terra Soft develops Yellow Dog Linux, an historic 32/64-bit Linux OS for the Power architecture and first to market with support for the Cell processor; the Y-HPC cluster construction; and Y-Bio, a cross-architecture gene sequence analysis suite for both workstations and clusters.

For more information, visit www.terrasoftsolutions.com


PLAYSTATION is a registered trademark of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. Power is a trademark of IBM. YDL, Y-HPC, and Y-Bio are trademarks of Terra Soft Solutions. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. Additional product and company names mentioned may be trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective holders.

I think this deserves its own thread..

http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com/products/ydl/

And there was much rejoicing.

 

[Arwin]

No kidding! This is awesome. I already thought it was rather interesting to read that this is the Linux version that drove OS/X on the PowerPC Macs, and after the initial shock of them leaving for Intel, they seem to have recovered in a very similar way that IBM is.

Despite Sony having said that we would get proper Linux on the PS3, I wanted it so much that I refused to get my hopes up as a system of self-defense. But this is starting to look very, very good. These guys already have a lot of experience with the Blades and with working together with Mercury, and they've got a proper 64bit kernel up and running and everything. They also seem to imply they have been working at a nice GUI, so that'll be interesting to see.

Ah, this has really made my day.

 

[avaya]

NAS HDD support on top of this and I'm all set. Get Myth TV running as well. I'll be looking on with great anticipation as the first wave of the community get to grips with the functionality, I hope it's all been further improved for March.

 

[deathkiller]

I think that they may include the distro with the Playstation 3, the instalation software may requiere/include certifications so they don't need physical content protection (like the PS2/PS1 games have).

 

[PeterT]

Whoa E17??
Could that actually be referring to Enlightenment DR17? I never thought I'd see the day

 

[Titanio]

Yes it's Enlightenment. I don't think 17 has been released yet (?) They've started putting up a page on it.

http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com/products/ydl/e17/

I wonder if other desktop management systems will be optionally available (in the box, or made available subsequently). KDE was supported in 4.

 

[PeterT]

It is now abundantly clear to me that the killer app for PS3 will be either freeciv or tux racer - btw. give us a SIXAXIS driver for that :smile:
But seriously, I'm very positively surprised by and happy about these news. I always said that I very much doubted Sony's Linux claim. Now if they give us access to RSX and at least some of the SPEs (4 would easily be enough), and take a more active role with homebrew (i.e. some distribution/ad system for good stuff) then they can rightfully talk about conjuring up a storm.

I still don't completely understand their strategy though. Cui bono? What if some people (like me e.g.) just get a PS3 to play around with homebrew and buy maybe 5 big RPGs and not a single bluray movie over the live of the console? Or is the group of people that would do that just not big enough to matter?

 

[Farid]

They'll use Enlightenment's E17, nice.

And color me surprised that they're actually working, this close to launch, on the Linux distro they talked about. To me it sounded like a "we'll do that later, maybe, if possible" kind of deal at first.

 

[deathkiller]

I still don't completely understand their strategy though. Cui bono? What if some people (like me e.g.) just get a PS3 to play around with homebrew and buy maybe 5 big RPGs and not a single bluray movie over the live of the console? Or is the group of people that would do that just not big enough to matter?

More sales = less cost per PS3 and I belive that they make money with the hardware (not enought to pay the advertaising/R&D and other side costs by itself of course).

I don't think that the people who wouldn't buy the PS3 if it only played games/movies can cause any problem to Sony.

 

[Krat0s]

I belive that they make money with the hardware

Not for a couple of years..

But it is a way to make your system more attractive. This just owns everything the rival is doing in this sector.

 

[patsu]

So.... any USB keyboard and mouse will do it seems. The next thing I would like to know is how tightly integrated is YDL with XMB.

 

[Titanio]

So.... any USB keyboard and mouse will do it seems. The next thing I would like to know is how tightly integrated is YDL with XMB.

I'd say they'll be completely sandboxed from one another, ideally (from a security point of view). I think it has to be that way. I can see what you're getting at (running created apps directly via the xmb?), but I think that'd be a long time coming, if ever. Of course, if you ever have an app that's good enough, you'd be a in a good position to go to pitch it to the e-Distribution initiative, wherein it'd be made into a 'xmb app', so to speak (and sanitised of any potentially harmful code ).

If they're using a hypervisor, theoretically it might be possible for the XMB and Linux to be running simultaneously, though. So you could, for example, select an icon on the XMB and open Linux in a window within the XMB, so it would appear (on the surface) to be running within the XMB. But even if they are using a hypervisor (which I think they are), that functionality wouldn't necessarily be there day one.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Can someone please explain what Enlightenment E17 is and why an outdated Boyband is relevant to modern computing.

Is this going to be like Windows to use or is there the chance of a super-easy mode for technophobes that cares nothing for streamlined efficiency of operation and instead gives one clear pathway to achieve anything you want even if it takes a bit longer? Because there's definitely a market for the latter!

 

[Titanio]

Can someone please explain what Enlightenment E17 is and why an outdated Boyband is relevant to modern computing.

Is this going to be like Windows to use or is there the chance of a super-easy mode for technophobes that cares nothing for streamlined efficiency of operation and instead gives one clear pathway to achieve anything you want even if it takes a bit longer? Because there's definitely a market for the latter!

It's a desktop management system:

http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com/products/ydl/e17/

There's some screenshots aswell at its own site.

http://enlightenment.sourceforge.net/Enlightenment/Screenshots/DR17_User_Screenshots/index.html

It's their next-generation desktop system, I'm not sure if it's even available yet officially.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

It's a desktop management system:

As in a combination of shortcut bars, desktop settings, and generally what's available in Windows through the Right-Click desktop and Start bar?

 

[Arwin]

As in a combination of shortcut bars, desktop settings, and generally what's available in Windows through the Right-Click desktop and Start bar?

Pretty much. It dates back to 1997 and aims to remain backward compatible with all X-Windows compatible applications. Tellingly, E17 is going to be released 'mid-november' together with the new YDL 5.0 of the OP.

At least, that's what I so far quickly skimmed from their website.

 

[PeterT]

E17 is a mythical beast that some have been running for years from CVS, and that has seen numerous rewrites of critical systems. It's partly a technological marvel and partly a hack-fest, and something I much more associate with fringe coders (like myself) than with a retail product (aka PS3). That's why I was so surprized in my first post.

It's the brainchild of Rasterman (and many other contributors of course), he has some (mostly old!!) demonstration videos at his site:
http://www.rasterman.com/files/e17_movie-01.avi
http://www.rasterman.com/files/e17_movie-02.avi
http://www.rasterman.com/files/e17_movie-03.avi
http://www.rasterman.com/files/e17_movie-04.avi
The second one does a good job at showing off the performance of the compositioning engine (while recording a video no less!)
The fourth one is quite a bit newer, and also longer. It also shows their own quicksilver clone (LuXr is one as well)

Basically, it's the perfect opposite of a "dumb-user-friendly" system. I love it, but I'm still very surprized.

 

[inefficient]

Does the PS3 support any standard USB keyboard/mice?

Havent heard much about hardware support yet.

 

[PeterT]

Well, under Linux it certainly should, with the XMB it's not so certain. But Sony seems to be very open to standard components this gen, and that's really the only way to make their "It's a computer!" comments more than just idle talk. it's certainly a great thing for us technophiles.

 

[Gradthrawn]

Well, under Linux it certainly should, with the XMB it's not so certain. But Sony seems to be very open to standard components this gen, and that's really the only way to make their "It's a computer!" comments more than just idle talk. it's certainly a great thing for us technophiles.

Yes, it supports USB K/M. In fact there's a Keyboard/Mouse configuration button right in the XMB settings. Check out the PS3 Online: How it Works Thread for more information. Its also been shown in several videos that demonstrate the XMB.

if you're not really keen on using that to enter an entire message, you can always plug in any standard USB keyboard, which will work with any text entry field anywhere on the system, as well as with the web browser.