[ubuntu-uk] PS3?

Rob Beard rob at esdelle.co.uk
Sat Jan 23 19:11:20 GMT 2010


red wrote:
> Hi
>
> I am wanting to get a media centre.
>
> Ubuntu
> Wine to run spotify
> Blue tooth
> Wifi
> Blue Ray
> Store my music and torrent on
> Possible burn media
> card reader
>
> Would PS3 do this>
>
>   
Not very well.  I got an 80GB PS3 for the kids for Christmas and decided 
to install Ubuntu on it.  The problem is the PS3 hardware is limited 
when running Linux, you're limited to 256MB Ram and the video is via the 
framebuffer and very slow.  It's not so bad for say, Firefox and 
possibly playing music but not much else.

You could at a pinch I guess connect a USB DVD/CD writer and a USB card 
reader (I believe only the 60GB model has the card reader) but I 
wouldn't recommend it.

You'll also struggle with Wine as the PS3 has a PowerPC based CPU not 
x86 as used on a PC.  So I certainly wouldn't go out and buy a PS3 for 
just these things.  If you were getting one say to play Bluray films and 
games then they are great.

I tend to now do media playback on my PS3 using it in the PS3 mode using 
the Cross Media Bar (XMB) which is what the PS3 runs by default.  I run 
PS3 Media Server on my laptop running Ubuntu and it will serve up media 
to the PS3, transcoding when necessary.  I also play Bluray movies on 
it, and occasionally music and a little bit of BBC iPlayer and web browsing.

It's worth also bearing in mind, the newer slimline PS3 won't run 
Linux.  Only the original 'fat' PS3 consoles will run Linux.  I settled 
on Xubuntu after trying Yellowdog.  Although the fat PS3 consoles only 
tend to have 20GB, 40GB, 60GB or 80GB hard drives, it is possible to 
replace the hard drive with a bigger drive, although on the PS3 by 
default you can only either allocate 10GB to Linux and the rest of the 
drive to the PS3 OS, or 10GB to the PS3 OS with the rest to Linux.  I 
hear from a friend it is possible to take drive out and repartition it 
manually but I haven't tried this, mainly because I'm finding 10GB is 
more than enough for what I want.

So don't get me wrong, the PS3 is a great console, but if you don't want 
to play games, then you might be better off building a media PC or maybe 
getting one of the little Acer Aspire Net Top PCs and a separate Bluray 
player.

Rob




More information about the ubuntu-uk mailing list