PlayStation 4 Will Be Running Modified FreeBSD

[wraggster]

This discovery comes nicely alongside the celebration of FreeBSD's 20th birthday (http://bsd.slashdot.org/story/13/06/22/0130244/happy-20th-birthday-freebsd), for all the UNIX nerds. The operating system powering the PlayStation 4 is Orbis OS, which is a Sony spin of FreeBSD 9.0 (http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTM5NDI). It's not a huge surprise FreeBSD is being used over Linux, in part due to the more liberal licensing. The PlayStation 4 is x86-64 based now rather than Cell-based, which makes it easier to use FreeBSD. BSDs in general currently lack manufacturer supported full-feature AMD graphics driver, which leads to the conclusion that Sony and AMD have likely co-developed a discrete driver for the PS4. Some pictures of the development kit boot loader (http://www.vgleaks.com/some-details-about-playstation-4-os-development/) (GRUB) have been published too

http://games.slashdot.org/story/13/06/24/000250/playstation-4-will-be-running-modified-freebsd