Re: [Sheflug] Stupid question maybe?

[Chris Warburton <chriswarbo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, 2007-04-22 at 23:51 +0100, Douglas G Mckendrick wrote:
> I've bought a playstation 3.  And have been reading about linux on the
> ps3.  If I installed yellowdog or even ubuntu now on my ps3, can I
> download and install other programs that never came with the the os?
> eg, Can I install say libdvdcss without worrying about the ps3
> architecture?
> Maybe an easier question..........does programs for linux work on all
> architectures? x86, mac etc?
> 
> Cheers
> 
> Doug

The PS3 uses a "Cell" processor, which is essentially a dual-core, 64bit
PowerPC (PPC) chip, like the ones in G3/G4/G5 Macs before they went with
Intel x86 chips, which controls seven other processing cores called SPEs
('Synergistic Processor Elements').

At the moment Linux can be run on the PPC core, but does not take
advantage of the SPEs because it involves massive parallel processing
which is tricky to set up from scratch, let alone incorporate into an
existing, cross-platform system like Linux (I also think the graphic
drivers are restricted so you can't get full whizz-bang PS3 graphics in
Linux yet, basically to stop people ripping movies from BluRay discs via
the graphics card's output). This means that any PPC Linux distro
(Fedora, YellowDog, Gentoo, Ubuntu [not officially supported though],
etc.) can work on the PS3 with a little fiddling, and there are some
distros, especially YellowDog, which remove the need for fiddling
entirely.

Because of this I can see no difference in running Linux on a PS3 to
running it on, say, a G5 Mac. Therefore packages compiled for PPC
(usually having a file name like program-name-<version>-ppc.deb or .rpm
or whatever) should work, as should interpreted things like Java,
Python, Mono, etc. (these would usually have a file name like
program-name-<version>-all.deb/.rpm/etc.).

Pretty much every Linux distribution includes compiling tools like
'make', so if something doesn't directly offer a PPC package but does
offer source then you can usually compile it yourself on the PS3.

If you really need x86 (PC) things, like proprietary software which is
only released for x86, then you could try emulating it with Qemu, but
that would go pretty slow.

Of course, this only applies to things you download from the web.
Everything that your distribution's package manager lets you install
should work on your PS3 system (if not then report it as a bug).

Thanks,
Chris Warburton


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