[Tfug] Playstation 3

[Jeff Breadner]

Steve wrote:
> I just bought a playstation 3; not to play games, but to have access 
> to the blu-ray, and to double as a media server.  I've had plans to 
 > build my own, but I don't have the time, and after talking to a
> friend that has one, I discovered it does most everything I want it 
> to do.  What sold me is that Sony makes it relatively easy to install 
> another OS on the thing.  Anyone done this?  I've found howtos for 
> fedora, yellow dog and Gentoo. 

I've installed Fedora and Yellow Dog, but found both lacking a little
bit.  I've got Ubuntu installed now and it seems to work a bit better
'out of the box'.

Unfortunately, depending on what resolution you want to run at, you're
in for a bit of a rude surprise; because Sony has locked down the
accelerated video hardware, video performance on the Linux side is quite
lacking.  Fortunately there has been some movement on this lately with
some work to accelerate the framebuffer video driver by using the Cell
processors, but it's still pretty unstable, things are prone to lock up
pretty easily.

Main Ubuntu page for PS3:  http://psubuntu.com/
Accelerated fb video driver:
http://psubuntu.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=5985  (there's been a lot of
development since this was written so do some more research before you
install anything)

I use MythTV with a few modded XBox front-ends, and until the
accelerated video driver came out, the old legacy XBox actually
outperformed the PS3 Linux install in playback of standard-def video.
With the new accelerated video drivers, I can now play back a
standard-def video stream upscaled to 1080p resolution with a minimum of
tearing/hesitation, though the stability isn't quite there yet.  Now,
the PS3 actually makes a decent MythTV front-end, even in the main Game
OS (recent Sony firmware has given DivX playback support), and it will
only get better with time.

cheers
  Jeff