Best Unix OS for the PS3

randombar

Hi,
I'm just wondering what peoples opinions on this are, I know most OS depend on the users needs but just looking for peoples perspectives!

Ubuntu
Fedora Core 5
Gentoo
Debian

I'm hearing Ubuntu is probably the easiest to manage for people that don't know too much about unix?
Thanks
Gary

witnessmenow

Hey Gary,

Your missing one major one, probably the one that is going to get the most focus YDL(Yellow Dog Linux) Its free too, but tough enough to find and its pretty huge! (its image is 3.6gb or something like that). I put ubuntu onto mine, wasn't all that hard , Here's a guide how. I installed it with this and it worked. It did not support wireless. Didn't run anything on it yet!
YDL 5.01 and up is ment to have a wireless driver so maybe thats the way to go?

longtimer

What are the benefits of changing your OS?

mathias

What are the benefits of changing your OS?

Your not actually changing it , just adding one ,

The benefits are that you can play just about any media you want , also install something like mythTV which is a fully featured media centre , personal video recorder and all that jazz , its cool if you have a HD ready TV and a lot of media.

By the way , Yellow dog is really Fedora core ( its based on it ) with all the PS3 device drivers added ,

I can only find a link to the commercial version , there is a link around to download the ISO but cant find it at the moment , any heres the commercial link , check out the PS3's they are selling with the OS installed !

http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com/store/

iBoards

Gary it's Linux - not Unix. Yes it's built around Unix, but so is Mac OS - but it's still not Unix



I have tried both Ubuntu & Red Dog on my PS3.

Hate to tell you this but the PS3 isn't great running Linux. You will get the same kind of peformance from a Celeron 1ghz with 256mb of ram. And 256mb of ram is ****e for a computer these days.

Also as for streaming media, yes it works but try and do anything with a decent resolution, let alone HD then you will have stuttering, frameskips or simply no response. It stuggled to stream 720p for me which was a joke.

Apps can be sluggish to load, Open Office and such can sometimes feel unresponsive.

Linux is a great idea in principle, in practice it's a novelty that's been very badly implemented on the PS3.
The partiton system is a joke, and with no proper GUI to enable quick switching back and forth having to run a frigging Terminal command just to boot back into your PS3 is a joke.

And unless you have some experience of terminal and running sudo commands, and edirting your xorg.conf I would not recommend someone doing it because you will get lost quickly.

Sorry but just because the PS3 'could' (barely) doesn't mean it 'should'.

mathias

I have tried both Ubuntu & Red Dog on my PS3.

Hate to tell you this but the PS3 isn't great running Linux. You will get the same kind of peformance from a Celeron 1ghz with 256mb of ram. And 256mb of ram is ****e for a computer these days.

Also as for streaming media, yes it works but try and do anything with a decent resolution, let alone HD then you will have stuttering, frameskips or simply no response. It stuggled to stream 720p for me which was a joke.

Apps can be sluggish to load, Open Office and such can sometimes feel unresponsive.

Linux is a great idea in principle, in practice it's a novelty that's been very badly implemented on the PS3.
The partiton system is a joke, and with no proper GUI to enable quick switching back and forth having to run a frigging Terminal command just to boot back into your PS3 is a joke.

And unless you have some experience of terminal and running sudo commands, and edirting your xorg.conf I would not recommend someone doing it because you will get lost quickly.

Sorry but just because the PS3 'could' (barely) doesn't mean it 'should'.

Once again , the whole purpose of Yellow dog is its optimised , using all the available cores and the graphics .... try that , streets better than Ubuntu , which doesnt have the features needed to make the best of the hardware.

iBoards

Doh! sorry I meant Yellow Dog in my post! Must have had Red Bull on my mind

But Yeah I've already been there and done that. Didn't feel that optomised to me.

mathias

Well it flies for me , are you sure you have the right version , it smoothly plays all 1080p video files I have downloaded , its a cool media centre when its set up right.

Not only is it powerful , its more powerful than most pc's at high performance apps ,because of the cell processor.

Check this out ,

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/power/library/pa-linuxps3-1

randombar

Any ideas where I could get this Yellow Dog OS?

projectmayhem

GaryCocs wrote:

Any ideas where I could get this Yellow Dog OS?

ftp://mirror.mcs.anl.gov/pub/yellowdog/iso/yellowdog-5.0-phoenix-20061208-PS3.iso

Rev Hellfire

You can get the ISO's from the links below.
http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com/resources/downloads.shtml

Just get mplayer (it comes with the codex you will need). As for the suitability of the PS3 for linux, it all depends on what you want to do. It works fine for basic browsing and watching xvids etc.

Cake Fiend

iBoards wrote:

Gary it's Linux - not Unix. Yes it's built around Unix, but so is Mac OS - but it's still not Unix

Noone cares.

randombar

Ya started downloading from projectmahems link above (god bless the work internet connection!) I'll give it a go anyway and see how I get on! Anyone know how big the iso is?

Retr0gamer

Anyone know how easy emulators are to set up on Linux on the PS3. It's the only reason I'd use it.

optiplexgx270

projectmayhem wrote:

ftp://mirror.mcs.anl.gov/pub/yellowdog/iso/yellowdog-5.0-phoenix-20061208-PS3.iso

thats the old version: You can get the latest from here: ftp://ftp.sunet.se/pub/os/Linux/distributions/yellowdog/iso i downloaded from there with "free download manager" and it was downloading @ 330kB/sec on a 3MB connection.

randombar

Balls, what's the newest version on that page?

May 17 2007 17:02 3797405696 yellowdog-5.0.1-phoenix-20070511-PS3.iso

What's the difference in versions?

lee_baby_simms

GaryCocs wrote:

Balls, what's the newest version on that page?

May 17 2007 17:02 3797405696 yellowdog-5.0.1-phoenix-20070511-PS3.iso

What's the difference in versions?

I presume its the one at the bottom of the page. 5.02

Thats the one i'm downloadin anyway.

projectmayhem

lee_baby_simms wrote:

I presume its the one at the bottom of the page. 5.02

Thats the one i'm downloadin anyway.

the one at the very bottom isn't for the PS3. at least it's not optimised for the ps3...

lee_baby_simms

projectmayhem wrote:

the one at the very bottom isn't for the PS3. at least it's not optimised for the ps3...

Balls.

cashman

I installed Yellow dog linux onto my PS3 didnt like it one bit what a waste of hard drive space:eek:

witnessmenow

Just put YDL on my ps3. I'm after putting VLC player on it. Seems decent enough. Just watched a episode of south park and played through pretty good. Playback doesnt seem to be as good as vlc on windows though. I also got the wireless working which pleases me! Vlc took absolutely ages to install!
here a tut how Will play around with this more at college this week and i'll report back

P.S If anybody wants a copy of the install dvd pm me, all ill ask is for a stamped addressed envelope and a blank dvd. It took me 16hrs to download the iso lol!:D

azzeretti

Put YDL 5.0.2 on PS3 today and took it off again within 3 hours. The install took about 1 hour. It moaned about memory resources and swap files, took about 5 minutes to boot, ignored my boot-games-os command at kboot then keeled over at the desktop. Possibly the worst distro I have ever tried.

I had to do a factory restore to get the original boot loader back - dodgy.

Has anyone tried and Ubuntu version on PS3?

Dont be at yourself

I currently have ubuntu installed on mine. It's pretty slow to be usable as an everyday OS, and I found playback to be slow. Installation etc was hassle free, but the wireless card doesnt work out-of-the-box.

I'm waiting on the arrival of my HD telly to install YDL, so I cant offer a comparison.

mathias

Concerning YDL for the PS3 , it will run like a dog if you get the wrong version , make sure you download the PS3 optimised version not the standard PC version.

Also for Video playback , its best to just use the installed player in the PS3 distro , its optimised for the hardware in the ps3 , installing the likes of VLC , which is written for a much bigger and less confined set of hardware ( like a PC ) , is going to give trouble.

The correct version of YDL runs smooth and turns the PS3 into a very capable media player.

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

witnessmenow

mathias wrote:

Concerning YDL for the PS3 , it will run like a dog if you get the wrong version , make sure you download the PS3 optimised version not the standard PC version.

Also for Video playback , its best to just use the installed player in the PS3 distro , its optimised for the hardware in the ps3 , installing the likes of VLC , which is written for a much bigger and less confined set of hardware ( like a PC ) , is going to give trouble.

The correct version of YDL runs smooth and turns the PS3 into a very capable media player.

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

First of all "run like a dog" couldnt resist the pun huh?!! What media player do you mean? The one in the game os? but all it plays is mp4! VLC playback isn't great but it plays .avi at least!! YDL runs pretty good for me, in fact im using it right now to type this! Not amazing but decent!

Not a bad distro in my limited opinion! Im after putting a snes emulator on it so thats something new! Is it just me or is all the info about it seems to be quite old. Dont think it had the impact people predicted.

mathias

First of all "run like a dog" couldnt resist the pun huh?!! What media player do you mean? The one in the game os? but all it plays is mp4!

Im talking about the player/s included with yellow dog for the ps3 not the ps3 os player ! No , couldnt resist the pun....what can you do ?

witnessmenow

Totem player is it? Im a real noob to linux and i've been trying to get .avi's to play with it and i just can't (same for mp3 with rythmbox) . Can any one recomend a good repo to use with yumex to get these codecs? Or any other way of getting them?

tw0nk

Just to add my own 2 cents.... Im pretty new to the ps3 scene and I just installed yellow dog 5.0.1 a few days ago. I use linux regularly and I have a media server running ubuntu already, but I have to say YD isnt a good distro imo. Its based on Fedora(which I hated already) and what it offers in terms of a fully fledged home p.c. just doesnt suffice.

Its great that the ps3 offers this as an extra but its just not for me.

mathias

Its based on Fedora(which I hated already) and what it offers in terms of a fully fledged home p.c. just doesnt suffice.

Well as far as it goes I agree with that , but I never considered it a substitute for a PC , rather a way for it to play media , its only as a media player thats more versatile than the PS3 software that I was interested in YDL in the first place. ( As a matter of fact thats why I bought the PS3 , a cheap but very good blu ray player )
Used like that YDL does a good job. Thats what the cell is all about after all.

Dont be at yourself

Is there any decent media center software available for YDL? I know I can hunt for codecs and use totem or VLC, but is there a media-center styled packaged aimed for living room HD tvs?

tw0nk

Well I use TVersity http://tversity.com/home quite successfully, it plays everything I throw at it on the PS3. I run it over a wireless network and have never had connection issues, it is a developing product however and there are some slight problems....

- Must run it in debug mode to make sure all files play
- Cannot rewind or skip (you can fast forward at 1.5x)
- Refreshing media doesnt always work, better to remove library and add again.

But apart from these problems it is fantastic, I can browse and watch my entire media collection from my ps3

The guy

GaryCocs wrote:

Hi,
I'm just wondering what peoples opinions on this are, I know most OS depend on the users needs but just looking for peoples perspectives!

Ubuntu
Fedora Core 5
Gentoo
Debian

I'm hearing Ubuntu is probably the easiest to manage for people that don't know too much about unix?
Thanks
Gary

I don't know about the ps3 but ubuntu linux was incredibly easy to install on my pc.

mathias

I don't know about the ps3 but ubuntu linux was incredibly easy to install on my pc.

There are some Ubuntu live disks for the PS3 , but still Beta and full of bugs ,they also require a hard drive format so any downloads and savegames will be wiped , in that case a spare hard drive is the way to go , the hard drive caddy just pulls out of the side on a PS3 making it as easy as pie to have a spare one for linux , its the way I do it , I dont want to wipe the console by trying linux.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/PlayStation_3

YDL is , as far as I know , still the only Distro optimised for the PS3 so far and its based on Fedora Core.

Still , with Ubuntu's excellent track record , it shouldnt be long before they have a good install for the PS3 , maybe when Gutsy Gibbon is released.

witnessmenow

If you have an external hard drive you can use the back up facility in the game os if you want to install linux.its what i did... twice!! Backs up everything! Demos , movies and save games anyways

azzeretti

tw0nk wrote:

Well I use TVersity http://tversity.com/home quite successfully, it plays everything I throw at it on the PS3. I run it over a wireless network and have never had connection issues, it is a developing product however and there are some slight problems....

- Must run it in debug mode to make sure all files play
- Cannot rewind or skip (you can fast forward at 1.5x)
- Refreshing media doesnt always work, better to remove library and add again.

But apart from these problems it is fantastic, I can browse and watch my entire media collection from my ps3

Not sure about the debug mode, never tried it, although I haven't ever had any problem playing any media format as long as the hosting PC has the required codecs.
I thought there was a problem with Fast Forwarding but I found it does actually work. Its not very good for showing you one screen and it appears there is nothing happening, or the screen is blank. But if you leave it for a while and then pause it and play, I thinkg you'll find it does fast forward!

The refreshing thing is a bit of a nightmare!

randombar

Just ressurecting this one wondering how people are getting on?

so is it YDL or Ubuntu?

viperlogic

im running ubunutu 7.04 on mine. took a bit of messing around to get the wireless going but it all good now