[Miniryu]

Did you guys hear that Playstation 2 is going to run Linux now? Consols are becoming more and more like PCs.

Originally posted by Miniryu:
<STRONG>Did you guys hear that Playstation 2 is going to run Linux now? Consols are becoming more and more like PCs.</STRONG>

where did you hear that? I think midway through a release is a bit late to use a new OS...

[[APi]TheMan]

Originally posted by Miniryu:
<STRONG>Did you guys hear that Playstation 2 is going to run Linux now? Consols are becoming more and more like PCs.</STRONG>

I know that it's possible to run *nix on a Dreamcast and I think I remember seeing it on PS2s somewhere, but I don't think that Sony is going to have them RUN the OS as opposed to whatever they run now. I think that Miniryu means that they are capable of running *nix.

I'll see if I can find some info.

[[APi]TheMan]

Actually, upon searching for a few minutes on google, I found this news story on c|net:

http://news.com.com/2100-1040-256683.html?legacy=cnet

I briefly scanned the article and it looks like Sony is set to release a version of Linux for the PS2 this June. Hmmm. Cool.

[Graymalkin]

The Linux release for the PS2 is not for use to play games on it is a development environment for doing PS2 development stuff. Games usually use realtime kernels in order to run needing little more than a little hardware interface, thread scheduler, and memory protection. The Linux environment for the PS2 it for developers to be able to have access to the system on a fairly low level in order to learn to best go about designing a game for the system. Console vendors have always provided development units for work in developing software for their hardware, in the PS2's case Sony chose Linux as their development platform. It's conventions are familiar to many people and there are no tricky licensing agreements, Sony can provide the OS with no roalties paid to anyone.

As for saying game consoles are becoming more like PCs, this has always been true. Console systems have always used commodity parts that were just soldered to a single circuit board and cut down on the extraneous components or ports. Microsoft's XBox uses an Intel P3 processor, the Gamecube has a PowerPC chip inside of it developed by IBM, while the PS2's processor is a MIPS processor with two external vector units (akin to AltiVec units). The Atari Jaguar used 68k processors, the Sega Saturn used two Hitachi SH-2 processors, the Dreamcast uses a SH-4 processor. Game consoles have always been the smaller cousins to full fledged PCs, until recently they were catagorically separate by using ROM media of one form or another and lacking hard disk drives for storage. Look up the specs on old video game consoles and compare them to the PCs of the same period (or whatever passed as a PC then) and you'll notice many of the components are the same, the game consoles were just dedicated to a single task and thus easier to build and cheaper.

[Jansar]

That's insane. I thought it would make more sense if they said that they were going to use the Xbox, since technically it is a real computer instead of a console.

[ARENA]

Originally posted by Jansar:
<STRONG>That's insane. I thought it would make more sense if they said that they were going to use the Xbox, since technically it is a real computer instead of a console.</STRONG>

Would it really make more sense in the XBox?
...I mean: XBox = Microsoft &gt; Running Linux? I don't think so.