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-   -   How many people here bought a PS3 because of linux? (https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-general-1/how-many-people-here-bought-a-ps3-because-of-linux-862489/)

Parallaxis 02-13-2011 07:19 PM

How many people here bought a PS3 because of linux?
 
Just curious.

How many people here bought a ps3 because of linux?

Did it factor into your decision to buy the console? Would you have bought an XBox instead if the ps3 had no "other OS" capabilities when you bought it?

Just trying to gauge the linux community's opinion on this.

corp769 02-13-2011 07:23 PM

I'm not a gamer at all, but if I would buy a console, I would buy it just for linux. And to hack it further of course :)

easuter 02-13-2011 08:17 PM

Academic folk used to buy PS3s to make clusters...at least when they used to be able to run Linux. Pretty powerful machines, would definitely look at buying some if I ever had to build a cluster.

H_TeXMeX_H 02-14-2011 04:46 AM

It did factor in. Originally, I didn't want to buy it at all, because of the DRM. In fact, I didn't buy it, my brother did.

P.S. You can run Linux on them with the recent hacks, even on the slim, and with full privileges.

beyond_help 03-14-2011 04:50 PM

I too am not a gamer.

I bought a PS3 primarily for Linux, secondarily for playing Blurays (which I had received for Christmas that year).

If I didn't think that the Xbox 360 was ugly and it had Linux capability, I would have considered it. Further, if the Xbox did and the PS3 didn't, I would have gone for the Xbox--even though I think it's ugly.

I still would have had to buy a Bluray player though--and at the time, the PS3 was the cheapest so I probably would have ended up buying it eventually too.

Cheers!
Randall

sycamorex 03-14-2011 05:04 PM

The reason I bought mine a few years ago was to play games. Linux was something additional, which wasn't a deciding factor. btw, does anyone want to buy my PS3 - I haven't used it for a year or so:)

lumak 03-14-2011 06:11 PM

People buying PS3 for Linux didn't realize that it's almost useless as a PC machine. You have no access to hardware acceleration and not all the processors. This is why people were hacking the hypervisor and why PS3 eventually removed the option.

You would be better off buying a cheep $100 motherboard processor combo with on-board video and running that in your cluster.

Hell
for the price of the PS3 at the time people were using it as such,

you could buy 2 cheap $300 combos (with memory etc...) that would far out perform the cheezy functionality of linux on the PS3. Additionally, you wouldn't be limited on hardware, storage space, memory, processing power, etc. that the hypervisor kept you from using.


Honestly, I bought the PS3 because I was tired of trying to make windows games run with wine and figured I could get a reasonable media streaming machine and blueray player as well. But on second guess... it's kind of noisy for a media machine.

jefro 03-14-2011 07:21 PM

I decided to buy the xbox for my wife because of all the legal issues in the Sony, and will never buy a Sony product if I can help it because of their threats to fair use.

I would have considered the Sony just for the ability to run linux for me to use it also but I bought another computer. Basically I had to buy two things.

replica9000 03-14-2011 10:48 PM

I was happy that when the PS3 first came out it could run Linux, but it wasn't really what made the decision. I liked the fact that it could play PS1/PS2 games, and play Blu-Ray. Plus the graphics are better then the Xbox 360. I did hesitate to update for a while when Sony removed the Other OS feature. I planned on using it to compile some PPC Linux software, figured it might be faster than the Mac G4 I have.

H_TeXMeX_H 03-15-2011 01:48 PM

Just to be complete, I did buy an Xbox 360 and got a red ring. See my blog. I will not buy another. At least the PS3 lasted until now.

jefro 03-15-2011 03:27 PM

I think I read they were doing a warranty on the xbox for that aren't they?

szboardstretcher 03-15-2011 03:33 PM

I heard that GM is going to sell some new cars that will not allow anything but AC Delco radios in them. And if you do install something like a Pioneer, the car will phone home to their headquarters and inform them that you have installed illegal hardware. Then they have the right to sue you in court for modifying the car you bought from them, because when you opened the door to the car you agreed to a binding agreement with them.

:banghead:

corp769 03-15-2011 03:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by szboardstretcher (Post 4291865)
I heard that GM is going to sell some new cars that will not allow anything but AC Delco radios in them. And if you do install something like a Pioneer, the car will phone home to their headquarters and inform them that you have installed illegal hardware. Then they have the right to sue you in court for modifying the car you bought from them, because when you opened the door to the car you agreed to a binding agreement with them.

:banghead:

Can you give us a good reference and verification of this?

szboardstretcher 03-15-2011 03:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by corp769 (Post 4291866)
Can you give us a good reference and verification of this?

No.

The car doesn't exist. It's an analogy to show how stupid Sony is for blocking Linux out of the PS3 console that I bought and own. Kind of showing that if you bought a car and they said "Oh, even though you own our car, you cant change anything about it," you would tell them to get lost.

corp769 03-15-2011 03:48 PM

I know :D I was going along with it... I was hoping you would post a link to the sony PS3 web page or whatever..... LOL

replica9000 03-15-2011 10:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by H_TeXMeX_H (Post 4291733)
Just to be complete, I did buy an Xbox 360 and got a red ring. See my blog. I will not buy another. At least the PS3 lasted until now.

I bought the Xbox 360 off of someone when they upgraded to a newer version. First day I had it, an update came out, and I got a red light before the update finished. After I restarted it, it seems to be ok. Plus I had to configure my router to speed up online gaming. My two PS3s didn't need any special settings. I'm not a huge fan of Sony, due to many optical drive failures, but the PS3 is better than the Xbox.

Telengard 03-16-2011 12:45 AM

I bought a PS3 for gaming. I use my PC for Linux.

beyond_help 03-17-2011 11:22 PM

@lumak

If I didn't know better from using linux on a PS3 for the past 4 years, I might have taken you seriously.

I just had to share your comments with my LUG, we all had a good chuckle. I hope we were laughing with you, not at you.

Thanks for the laugh lumak.

Cheers!
Randall

lumak 03-18-2011 03:37 PM

It really depends on what you are using it for. OK yes, you probably could use it with no gui interface and only take advantage of the processors.

As a desktop PC, it is useless.

beyond_help 03-19-2011 04:34 PM

Well aren't you Mr. Negativity, lumak.

Actually, I use it with Fluxbox, Iceweasel, Geany, conky and Rox-Filer and without HAL. It's a GREAT light-weight desktop. Definitely for power users though, not your typical mouse monkey.

Cheers!
Randall


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