PS2 Linux is one of those things I knew about at the time, was super interested in yet never pursued (didn't have the means to) and now wish I had. It doesn't seem like a very practical computing environment even for the time, but that's part of what makes it so damn interesting.
Linux for Playstation 2
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Re: Linux for Playstation 2
#12It was a great indie development community, gaining experience on what it meant a console like dev experience, sadly spoiled by tons of folks porting emulators instead of being creative. Most like the reasoning behind PS3 Linux no longer having GPU libraries like the PS2Linux, only 2D acceleration, and eventually migration to FreeBSD as basis for PlayStation OS from PS4 onwards. Still have my PS2Linux kit.
The PS3 also uses FreeBSD as the basis for it's OS. They don't want to use Linux for the main OS because of the license.
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Re: Linux for Playstation 2
#13I worked on this a bit! As an summer intern at SCEE in 2004, I port the Eyetoy driver to PS2 linux. Sadly, it had some legal issues due to some proprietary code in the original drivers, and it ended up not getting released.
Re: Linux for Playstation 2
#14If you didn't know, this was primarily a tax dodge for the EU. Since it ran Linux, they felt they could classify the PlayStation 2 as a general-purpose computer, which receives a lower tariff rate than game consoles. PlayStation 3 had OtherOS for the same purpose, until the EU rejected the claim and reclassified it as a game console, and then Sony pulled support for OtherOS (it also being primarily a vehicle for piracy certainly didn't help).
Re: Linux for Playstation 2
#15If you didn't know, this was primarily a tax dodge for the EU. Since it ran Linux, they felt they could classify the PlayStation 2 as a general-purpose computer, which receives a lower tariff rate than game consoles. PlayStation 3 had OtherOS for the same purpose, until the EU rejected the claim and reclassified it as a game console, and then Sony pulled support for OtherOS (it also being primarily a vehicle for pira…
I can tell you that support for this went all the way up to Ken Kutaragi. I discussed it with him. He was also responsible for the Ethernet port. He had real vision for the platform.
It was more than a tax dodge.
Re: Linux for Playstation 2
#16I'm always happy to see Linux in unexpected places.
Re: Linux for Playstation 2
#17If you didn't know, this was primarily a tax dodge for the EU. Since it ran Linux, they felt they could classify the PlayStation 2 as a general-purpose computer, which receives a lower tariff rate than game consoles. PlayStation 3 had OtherOS for the same purpose, until the EU rejected the claim and reclassified it as a game console, and then Sony pulled support for OtherOS (it also being primarily a vehicle for pira…
For the PlayStation 3, another thing driving Linux's removal was that organizations were buying PS3s to use in data centers. But Sony sold them at a loss (IIRC over $100/unit loss, even being sold at $600 twenty years ago) and intended to make it up on revenue from games sold. They also didn't have nearly enough at launch because they were using a brand new processor (designed with help from IBM) and a brand new Blu-Ray disc format. That slowed down their initial production, and it had to launch in time to compete with the Xbox 360 (Pre-Christmas 2005), which also had a HD-DVD attachment.
Notably, the PS3 at launch was actually cheaper than some dedicated Blu-ray players, so some home theater enthusiasts bought them (few to no games), eating into Sony's revenue even more. It took several years for the PS3 to be profitable, but it won the format war.
Re: Linux for Playstation 2
#18If you didn't know, this was primarily a tax dodge for the EU. Since it ran Linux, they felt they could classify the PlayStation 2 as a general-purpose computer, which receives a lower tariff rate than game consoles. PlayStation 3 had OtherOS for the same purpose, until the EU rejected the claim and reclassified it as a game console, and then Sony pulled support for OtherOS (it also being primarily a vehicle for pira…
> (it also being primarily a vehicle for piracy certainly didn't help).
The piracy hacks never used OtherOS. The first piracy hack (the PSJailbreak dongle exploit) simply exploited the GameOS usb stack and wasn't released until after OtherOS had already been removed in a firmware update.
The only hack that ever targeted OtherOS was a complex memory glitching attack that was pretty hard to pull off. As far as I'm aware, that hack was only ever used by a few people for dumping memory, and those dumps were reverse engineered to find other exploits.
If anything, OtherOS might have slowed PS3 modding efforts down, as modders were wasted years banging their heads against the reasonably secure hypervisor. Turns out, GameOS had minimal security, and once you gained kernel access, you could boot backups without needing to touch the hypervisor.
Re: Linux for Playstation 2
#19It was a great indie development community, gaining experience on what it meant a console like dev experience, sadly spoiled by tons of folks porting emulators instead of being creative. Most like the reasoning behind PS3 Linux no longer having GPU libraries like the PS2Linux, only 2D acceleration, and eventually migration to FreeBSD as basis for PlayStation OS from PS4 onwards. Still have my PS2Linux kit.
> tons of folks porting emulators instead of being creative
On one hand this is something that annoys me a bit to this day - i am into original xbox homebrew games (bought a modded one last year specifically for this) and pretty much 99.999% of the homebrew software is emulators. While i can see the point until around mid-2000s due to the available hardware back then, emulators are by far the main target for any jailbroken console to this day[0], including modern ones - and i fail to see the point for that considering the availability and TV connectivity of cheap PCs (including some who are very small and yet very fast like those by beelink) or even Raspberry Pis, etc (not to mention way more versatile).
On the other hand it is because of the effort people put into these projects that everyone else who isn't interested into emulators (e.g. me) still have the tools and ability to use the hardware as they please instead of it becoming useless ewaste.
[0] the main exception, for whatever reason, seems to be Dreamcast. And very old consoles like NES, SNES, Gameboy, etc of course.
Re: Linux for Playstation 2
#20If you didn't know, this was primarily a tax dodge for the EU. Since it ran Linux, they felt they could classify the PlayStation 2 as a general-purpose computer, which receives a lower tariff rate than game consoles. PlayStation 3 had OtherOS for the same purpose, until the EU rejected the claim and reclassified it as a game console, and then Sony pulled support for OtherOS (it also being primarily a vehicle for pira…
I wonder how this performed compared to a DECStation 5000/240 running Ultrix.
That was my workstation for a student job. It had a MIPS R3000.
DEC probably would have lasted longer if they had bought MIPS instead of sinking all the effort into Alpha (and PRISM before it).