[Cialug] Linux on PS2/3

[Daniel A. Ramaley]

On 2009-04-30 at 21:16:47, Randle Boyd wrote:
>Is anyone running Linx on a Play Station 2 or 3?  If so, how is the
> performance?

I have the Linux kit for PlayStation 2. I played with it a little bit, 
but quickly decided it was a waste of my money. The PS2 just has too 
little memory to be a useful computer. And the Linux that came with it 
was based off a Red Hat that at the time was already ancient. Basically 
the experience of running Linux was somewhat underwhelming.

If Debian supported PS2, i'd probably put that on there just for the fun 
of it. There is a mini-Debian fork "BlackRhino" that is for PS2, but it 
is from 2003.

I imagine that if someone wanted to learn about packaging a Linux 
distro, building something based on current software for the PS2 might 
be a good way to learn.

At one time i also had Linux running on my DreamCast. To make that 
happen i got to learn how to build a cross compiler. Circa 2002 when i 
was working on that, getting Linux running on DreamCast wasn't easy. I 
think i got up to the point of having a bootable CD that had BusyBox 
and a few other small applications installed. It was marginally useful, 
but with no read-write local storage required mounting storage over the 
network. And as with PS2, the machine had very small RAM that made it 
less useful as a general-purpose computer than it could have been.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dan Ramaley                            Dial Center 118, Drake University
Network Programmer/Analyst             2407 Carpenter Ave
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