Linux on my PS3

[Stephen]

Linux on the PS3

When SONY won the hi-def wars last February I decided it was time to buy 
a Blu-ray player. I buy movies and wanted to move to the new media format.

I was advised that the PS3 was the best choice in a Blu-ray player. It 
was cheaper that straight players because SONY was competing in the game 
player market. I have no interest in computer gaming, so this was 
strictly a price decision.

I put my neglected home theatre together again and watched 2001. I was 
blown away. The picture was outstanding and there was no compromise on 
the sound. Well, maybe a bit. My Onkyo receiver is vintage 2000 and has 
no HDMI input. So I send sound (and video) directly to the TV (Samsung 
48” 120Hz LCD) and then optically to the receiver.

In going through the manual I saw that CDs could be ripped to the PS3 in 
a lossless format. (I never bought into MP3. I barely accept CDs).

I had trouble getting the PS3 connected to the Internet because of the 
construction in my condo. Wireless could not reach. I finally ran wire 
and that is working.

I saw that the PS3 could run other OS’s (!). The Playlist functionality 
of the PS3 is rather lame and my open source software on Linux gives me 
the organization capability I wanted.

So I check it out and see that my favourite distro, Ubuntu, has a PS3 
project. The code is compiled to native PPC chip code. There is a “Live 
CD” to get started and install from a Linux environment.

I got a large (256GB) drive to replace the 40GB in the PS3. I could not 
get the screws out of the drive cradle. This is a known problem and SONY 
mailed me a new cradle and screws.

Installing Linux has three big speed bumps, but there is good 
documentation to get by them. You must partition the disk manually. The 
automatic process will stall. It is also necessary to kill unneeded 
processes. Lastly the desktop does not fit on the TV screen. You need 
the docs to tab around blind as you fill in the install data elements.

The Live CD is painfully slow, but performance once installed is good. 
The RAM is low, at 256K but there are two PPC processors.

A significant obstacle is that I could not get music CDs recognized 
under Linux on the PS3. When playing movies and CDs on the PS3 I will do 
so under the PS3 OS. But I had to rip the CDs on my desktop Ubuntu 
system and copy via USB stick to the PS3.

Going forward, I think I will want to keep the music files on my desktop 
computer. I expect to add another PS3 for my office when my bank account 
allows. To play Blu-ray movies and also music from my library. So a 
centralized music library makes sense.

That means a large drive on the PS3 is not necessary. I will use it 
elsewhere.

I need to learn about network file sharing under Linux and also remote 
desktop operation.

To live is to learn.

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