Some hackers have announced that they've discovered a way to access the 3D contexts on the Graphics Processor Unit of the PlayStation 3. If what they say is true, then this will allow homebrew developers to create their own 3D applications for the console. CNLohr posted a video on YouTube of the PlayStation 3 running some code in Linux.

Want to see the video for yourself? Head on over to the full article for more details.

Developing dedicated or multiplatform software through a virtually-emulated machine environment is not new in the coding world, but it's not exactly commonplace either. Coder MK2k (known for Sleep'n'Wake) decided it was high time to share such an experience with other homebrew developers.

So the developer created a custom, but variably open Gentoo Linux environment emulated through VMware coupled with pre-installed modules, Samba file sharing support, PSP toolchain, and PS2 toolchain. MK2k did this to provide an alternative to the Cygwin/PSP toolchain combo, which the coder had a bit of tiresome wrestling with.

What is this exactly, you ask? It's relatively simple in a sense. You run a localized version of a virtual machine emulator for your respective operating system, be it Mac OS X, other compatible flavors and kernels of Linux, or Microsoft Windows. VMware Player is compatible with all three. Virtual machine (VM) emulation then runs by setting up your host machine (the computer running the VM) to load up a virtual machine (the VM using your computer's hardware to run another "computer").

With the virtual machine set up, you can then do everything you would do to a newly assembled computer. Defining your hard drive setup (limited by how much space you actually have on your real hard disk) would provide you with a virtual hard drive, which can be further configured for partitions or operating system (OS) installation. Coders often use VM emulation to load OSes of a totally different kernel. Windows XP "VMing" Windows 95, Linux "VMing" Windows 98 or vice versa, for example.

MK2k provides a virtual hard drive for your use - much thanks to PSPUAE member FOL's hosting - which comes preloaded with Gentoo and tools to start you off. Of course, you are free to install your own Linux-compatible tools for your development preference, plus helper utilities for special testing or connectivity. The download runs a little under 1 GB in total, but the entire virtual hard drive has been divided further into files generally around the 100 MB range for short, dedicated download bursts.

A readme sits ready with the multiple file download list, and this is where you should start for more specific information on installation and running VMware Player. MK2k advises you to course through it while downloading the files, and if you're a particular about data integrity, you're even provided a checksum file reference to weed out defective archives.

Oh, and we suggest you also grab the Browser Appliance from VMware to browse the Internet from within the virtual machine emulation. It could help loads if you have more questions for MK2k or other devs who tried this contribution. Happy coding!

Visit: QJ.NET's PSP Development Forum

Visit the download site via the read link below. Also thanks to bobtentpeg for the tip!

Everyone knows that the CELL BE-powered PlayStation 3 can run a couple of Linux distros already, but it comes at a severe hindrance: the Hypervisor chip. This little culprit ensures that the Linux distros will never be able to access the RSX GPU core by NVIDIA, and it's made many Penguin-heads mad. Oh yes, us too.

Because of the huge hardware dead-end, Linux graphics capabilities are dead-awful even at the bearable performance points. Ubuntu, Yellow Dog, Fedora Cores (5 and 6) and Gentoo have all been unable to run Linux gamers' favorite games on Linux, which also includes WinE games and open-source titles.

So it comes to no suprise that Linux users have set up an online petition asking Sony to open up access to the RSX GPU core, or else. Will Sony even care? That depends. After a huge financial fallout from the PlayStation 3's lackluster beginnings, the giant may not be opening a window for open-source programmers to creating 3D games for the PlayStation 3 - unless they pay for the licenses.

Many geeks, however, disagreed that open-source games could undermine the "mountains of wonga" that the electronics giant can earn from the next-gen console - at least not yet. One Linux geek said, "Do they think people will code Gears of War 2 at home?" All they want to do is turn the PlayStation 3 to an experimental living room Linux PC...and play Pong.

So in an effort to fuel this petition and to sound the rally cry for the PlayStation 3 geeks out there, we're posting this up for the world to hear and for Sony to see. Whether they listen or not is really up to them. Hop on over to the petition site over via the "Read" link below.

The team of tmbinc, Cpasjuste, stonersmurf and the rest of free60.org, who've been furiously at work porting Linux to Microsoft's Xbox 360 have just made two big releases getting us closer to the dream of having a full-blown Linux distro on our 360.

First, the Free60.org team released X.org drivers for the Xbox 360 hardware called xenosfb. X.org is the implementation of X Window System, the software used by Linux to render graphical user interfaces. This means that once distros incorporate these drivers into themselves, you can run these distros with better graphical compatibility, including higher resolution support.

And the second release is what I just talked about. Cpasjuste has released a Gentoo LiveCD (Full version - 608 MB) with these new drivers built into it. This means that you will be able to run the LiveCD with the GUI and with a lot more compatibility. The livecd uses the xenosfb drivers, plus it includes a powerpc toolchain so that you can compile and build applications on the 360 itself, without having to cross-compile applications on your PC and then transferring them to the 360. The Gentoo LiveCD contains the Gnome Desktop Environment.

Firstly, here's what the Free60.org team had to say about their new drivers:

X.org driver and a new LiveCD No April Fools' Day joke. We have released a preliminary X.org driver and Cpasjuste has built a new LiveCD which makes use of it. Unfortunately, support for Samsung drives and sound drivers are still missing.

The full article awaits after the jump!

In the short time between the first usable exploit for Xbox 360 consoles and today, we've already seen a lot of great achievements by people like tmbinc, Cpasjuste, and others. A few hours ago, a new shader exploit using the King Kong game was announced which will allow people to load XeLL and subsequently, any Linux distro without needing a serial connection with a PC.

This patch will modify the King Kong ISO to include a modified shader which will trigger the exploit. Once triggered, the exploit code will automatically eject the King Kong DVD. Just insert Cpasjuste's modified version of the Gentoo minimal LiveCD. Wait for a few seconds and it should boot right into a minimal Gentoo environment. While its only command line mode for now, you should expect a user-friendly distro like Ubuntu to be released after the necessary patches are applied.

In short, these are the things you will need:

• An Xbox 360 with an older kernel (4532 or 4548). Anything above that will not be affected by the exploit.
• A hacked DVDROM drive in the Xbox 360 so that burnt discs can be run.
• An ISO of the game King Kong (dumped by yourself hopefully, we don't encourage the use of warez)
• An ISO of the Gentoo minimal LiveCD (gentoo-xenon-minimal-2006.1.iso)
• The patcher to patch the King Kong ISO.

All in all, these things will make sure that you have a usable Linux environment on your Xbox 360. Finally, I'd personally like to thank everyone involved in this effort to make it what it is today (Felix "tmbinc" Domke, Cpasjuste, stonersmurf, xorloser and the whole free60.org team), we love you!

Anyways, here's the links for the relevant stuff. If something is considered illegal, it won't be hosted on our servers. Same goes with stuff which is in the grey area concerning its legality. As for the Gentoo ISO, we feel that we should link directly to sourceforge since the ISO will be updated quite frequently.

Download Link: King Kong Shader exploit for XeLL
Download Link: Gentoo Linux Xenon minimal LiveCD (Sourceforge Link. Click on gentoo-xenon-minimal-2006.1.iso on that page to download)
Link: King Kong Shader Exploit for the XELL Loader readme
Link: Gentoo Linux Xenon minimal-2006.1 readme

This is definitely in-depth and useful for newbies to Linux. On the Ubuntu Forums, Ciego has written an extensive tutorial for installing Ubuntu Linux on your PS3.

Specifically, this is an installation tutorial for putting Ubuntu (Edgy Eft 6.10) on a 60GB PS3, including a listing of everything you'll need to get up to speed and everything you could ask for about the programming you'll have to type in to get the darned thing up and running. As he mentions at the beginning of his tutorial, he's written his guide to cater to newcomers, so vets may find themselves scrolling through rehashed information.

Before anything else, he does mention some things you'll need for installation:

• USB Mouse
• USB Keyboard
• 256MB USB Thumb drive (Any storage device that the PS3 can handle will work. Adjust commands accordingly)
• The Addon CD iso
• Gentoo Live CD BETA for PPC iso
• Otheros.self

In any case, feel free to visit the read link, as well as download the Addon CD file below. Trust us, you'll definitely learn something from the tutorial, and learning is always a good thing.

Download: [Addon CD ISO]

With Linux making big inroads on the PS3, it was only a matter of time before people started messing around with it to unlock new functionality. And Linux users would know that MythTV is one of the must-have applications if you're deciding to use your PC as a PVR. While people had reported installing and using MythTV successfully, it's biggest point (recording and replaying recorded TV) was moot since the PS3 didn't have a TV tuner.

It was only a matter of time before someone tried a USB TV Tuner and successfully put together a working set of drivers for it. And that someone would be Takeshi Yaegashi who has been successful in patching the Plextor ConvertX PX-M402U's Linux drivers to work properly on the PS3. The problem was that the original GO7007 Video4Linux2 drivers didn't run properly on a 32bit userland/64bit kernel environment.

The released patches will patch the GO7007 Video4Linux2 drivers and the Addon CD to improve compatibility with the said environment, which is common on all PS3 Linux distros. What you'll have to do is patch the drivers, then patch the Addon CD file and finally compile the kernel given in the Addon CD. If this sounds a bit difficult, you can wait for distros to appear with this patches built in.

I would expect Gentoo to be the first with the patches, seeing how they're already thinking of including MythTV on the Gentoo Live CD. If you do understand the consequences and want to go ahead with this, download the patches, the new Addon CD, patch both of them, and then use the new customised kernel with your distro. Expect a thorough how-to soon!

Download: [GO7007 Video4Linux2 driver - (wis-go7007-linux-0.9.8.tar.bz2)]
Download: [Patch for the GO7007 driver - ps3-go7007.patch]
Download: [New PS3 Cell Addon CD (20061208)]
Download: [Patch for the Addon CD - ps3-compat-ioctl32.patch]

The number of Linux distros for the PS3 keeps increasing steadily. After already having heavyweights such as Fedora Core and Gentoo gracing their presence on the PS3, we now have Debian being released for it.

And make no mistake, while many of you might have never heard of Debian, it holds as much, if not more respect than the distros already out. And in case you didn't know, Debian could be called the father of Ubuntu since Ubuntu was originally started as a fork of Debian. The major advantage of Debian is its stability which is already proven by it being one of the top operating systems in a server environment.

Anyways, what's great is that this OS is released with a livecd environment, which means that everyone who is scared of Linux can give it a try, without being afraid of it modifying your system. As a live CD, all you need to do is install the kboot bootloader and select OtherOS as your default OS. After that, just burn the Debian CD as an image on a CD-R and insert it in your PS3 when it boots up. Once Debian starts, you can enter a number of parameters to customise your boot environment.

• live - Boot Debian Live
• yuv480i - Boot Debian Live in 480i video mode
• yuv480p - Boot Debian Live in 480p video mode
• yuv720p - Boot Debian Live in 720p video mode
• yuv1080i - Boot Debian Live in 1080i video mode
• yuv1080p - Boot Debian Live in 1080p video mode
• yuv576i - Boot Debian Live in 576i video mode
• yuv576p - Boot Debian Live in 576p video mode
• WXGA - Boot Debian Live in WXGA video mode
• SXGA - Boot Debian Live in SXGA video mode
• WUXGA - Boot Debian Live in WXUGA video mode
• install - Boot Debian-Installer in normal mode
• expert - Boot Debian-Installer in expert mode
• rescue - Boot Debian-Installer in rescue mode

You can install it by typing 'install' at the boot screen. Or you can check out Debian as a live cd by typing 'live'. The live cd environment which will boot up has a minimal GNOME desktop along with a bunch of utilities including the Firefox browser. The login details for the live cd are as follows:

Username - casper
Password - live

Remember that these details are for the live cd only. If you decide to install Debian on your PS3, you will get a chance to set the user details yourself. The otheros.bld which you must use for the kboot installer should be downloaded from the link below. So make sure to extract that file using a utility like WinRAR and using it with otheros.self.

Tutorial: [Partitioning and readying your PS3 for Linux]
Link: [Debian Live CD + Installer ISO]
Link: [PS3 Cell Addon CD (For otheros.bld)]
Link: [QJ.NET PS3 Linux forums]
View: [Debian on Wikipedia / Debian on DistroWatch]

I'm sure all of you have been having fun with Linux on your PS3. A few of you might be happy with Fedora Core 5/6, the others have probably moved on to Yellow Dog Linux. Now while they're not bad in any sense, they do have problems which are associated with any RPM based distro- dependency hell. I'm sure that any of you who've tried to install any applications would have faced the problem of missing dependencies sometime. And it's all too common to have a few packages totally missing from the repository which means that you have to search for their respective RPMs on the net, download them and install them separately. While functional, this can get a little frustrating over time.

My friend Jake just bought a PS3, and he wanted to install Linux on it. Since he didn't know much about Linux, it was my responsibility to help him with it. His requirements - Install a distribution which is easy to maintain and run. He wanted to make the full use of his Linux install, so he needed a distro which wouldn't hold him back with frustrating problems. Among his biggest needs was an office suite, a good web browser, and above all, a no-hassle media player which would allow him to play all his videos on the big screen.

One look at the current situation of Linux on the PS3, I knew it wasn't going to be Fedora Core or Yellow Dog since they seemed to have lots of problems when it came to media players. The only solution was using a distro which had a better package management system, and did its work without bothering you, the end user. And what luck! The folks over at Gentoo.org had just released a Live CD plus a few more things for the PS3. Having used Gentoo extensively, I knew that this would be the solution to my problems. Here's a few personal thoughts about Gentoo:

Why Gentoo?

1. Theoretically, faster than any other distro.
2. Modular distro, so you have full control over the installation.
3. It teaches you more about Linux.
4. You can update it whenever you want, don't have to wait for the latest version of the distro like Fedora Core 5/6, Yellow Dog Linux 5
5. Huge community of people, and the best documentation among all Linux distros, so you'll never have unsolved problems.

Criticisms of Gentoo:

1. Long installation process
2. Takes long to install applications since they have to be compiled from source
3. Difficult for anyone new to Linux since they get overwhelmed with all the stuff given to them.

Why Gentoo for PS3?

1. Best distro when compared with Fedora Core 5/6 or Yellow Dog Linux because of no RPM/dependency/repository hell
2. Easy to install ANY application - emerge . It will download source of all dependencies, install and setup everything.
3. Will get the latest updates first, and you will be able to download and install it without any problems.
4. It won't take time to install applications since hundreds of binaries already available through Portage Overlays. Thus, you will get applications compiled specially for the PS3, not just a regular PPC computer. The advantages of this will be big once GCC is optimised for the Cell processor.
5. You can ask for help while installation through irc, or ask someone to install it for you remotely!

As you can see, the above reasons cover up 2/3 criticisms of Gentoo. Therefore, it's not difficult to see that Gentoo is the best distro for the PS3. Don't get me wrong, Gentoo is an overwhelmer for any newbie to Linux, but since I'm very comfortable with it, I decided to set it up on his PS3. What followed was a nice command-line installation procedure and lots of fun configuring and setting up the system. Jake, who had already got a great head-start to his Linux journey, was having fun checking around the system, installing applications manually, and in general, doing whatever he had intended to do.

Now while the Gentoo guys had already published instructions for the installation, we went ahead and changed a few steps since we thought that they could be made easier. After all, not everyone loves vim :). Anyways, here's the link to the Gentoo install instructions. Have fun installing and checking out Gentoo on your PS3. At this point though, let me warn you- The installation isn't for those who've never spent time at the Linux command line. While the instructions can be understood and followed by everyone, we'd prefer it if total newbies stayed away from it for a little while, until we sort out the wiki and add lots more Gentoo-specific content. You can also ask for help in our forums where me and other Gentoo users will be eager to help you out.

View: [Gentoo Install Instructions]
View: [QJ.NET's PS3 Wiki]
View: [QJ.NET's PS3 Linux forums]