Choosing a Linux distro for the PS3

Some comments and links on Linux distro options for the Sony Playstation 3.

Before you use any of these, you’ll need to install a boot-loader. Most distros have their own specific instructions for installing a boot-loader. I recommend Geoff Levand’s instructions for installing petitboot, which may be found here.

The best place to start, imho, is pdaXrom.

pdaXrom

Info: http://www.pdaxrom.org/index.php/Bootable_CD_for_PS3
Downloads: http://mail.pdaxrom.org/downloads/PS3/livecd/

A nicely polished little LiveCD/LiveUSB distro. Boots to X, has a small selection of useful software.

There is also a -dev version with PPU and SPU toolchains included.

One unique benefit of this distro is that your sixaxis/DS3 will work straight away using bluetooth. Once X has started, press the PS button (like you would normally under GameOS) and it should be recognised and work as a mouse.

(Another feature I’ve not seen elsewhere is that in the boot process the root filesystem is copied to the PS3’s video RAM, which is a clever use of the space. Half the VRAM is used for the filesystem, the other half as swap.)

Debian

Install instructions: here

This is my current choice of distro, because I’m not unfond of dpkg/apt and the the SPU toolchain is conveniently packaged – direct from the main repositories (gcc-spu, binutils-spu & newlib-spu should cover most of it). Sid closely tracks the FSF toolchain releases. Debian offers a lot of flexibility for installing as much or as little as you like. I don’t tend to use X on my PS3. (I don’t tend to compile on my PS3 either any more, but its nice to have the tools on there from time to time)

Ubuntu

There’s a guide to installing Ubuntu 9.10 here.

Info: http://psubuntu.com/
(appears to be a bit out of date – check the forums)
Downloads: http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ports/releases/9.04/release/

PowerPC is a “community supported platform” for Ubuntu, and it appears that there have been some problems in keeping up with the latest releases. That said, there appears to be an active PSUbuntu community. (I have not used this distro)

I know others that have used ubuntu-8.10-server-powerpc+ps3 to good effect.

It appears that the only SPU toolchain (re)packaged for Ubuntu is the ~gcc-4.1 set from the IBM Cell SDK.

Yellow Dog Linux

Install info: http://www.yellowdoglinux.com/support/installation/
Downloads: http://www.yellowdoglinux.com/support/downloads/
(good .au mirror at http://mirror.internode.on.net/pub/yellowdog/)

YDL is a distro that is targeted at a range of PPC configurations, including PS3. There is good community support available at the Yellow Dog Linux Community Board, as well as at PS3Bodega, and there are a number of third-party repos that provide a good set of tools, games and emulators for the PS3.

Fedora

I’ve not used this distro.

Geoff Levand has posted a guide to installing Fedora 12 on the PS3 here. Ken Werner has a guide here,

(For Fedora 11, see this post by Geoff Levand, and here by Ken Werner.)

FC9 is officially supported by IBM Cell SDK 3.1.

Red Hat

I’ve not used this distro on the PS3, and I mention it only because RHEL5.2 is officially supported by IBM Cell SDK 3.1 (although not on the PS3).

Gentoo

I have used Gentoo on my console in the past – it turns out that the PS3 is not well suited to lots of compiling. Who would have guessed?

It’s possible to install Gentoo directly from the kboot/petitboot command line – once the bootloader is installed and the HDD partitioned (from the XMB), start OtherOS, fdisk, mkfs, tar jxpf $stage_tarball and chroot.

Gentoo does make it reasonably straightforward to have an entire system built using gcc’s -mcpu=cell option, as well as making it reasonably straightforward to build cross toolchains (emerge crossdev).

hbr