ucLinux Port to the PSP

[DustinFraze]

Oh, first post.

MacOS may be more user friendly, but your comment implies you havn't used Linux much! Basically, linux has a massive number of open source programs that can be made (often with no modification) to compile on any different version of linux you may be using. By version, I mean whatever platform you might be using it on. Linux can run on the old PowerPC mac processors, Intel and AMD x86 chips, and just about every single other chipset used in the last 10 years.

The point of using linux over a different os is that it can be adapted to almost any purpose, and a really psp-oriented gui could fairly easily be constructed to fit this version of linux for the psp!

It would be great to get BII working better, because any development for the psp is cool, but linux is a massive, massive thing to get working - it opens up so much other stuff.


All versions of linux are sortof textbased, underneath, but on top of that you get all the good stuff.

UCLinux is a special type that doesn't require a certain chip on the motherboard, I think it's called a real-time clock, or something... Anyway, normal linux kernels do need one, UClinux doesn't, so it's more easily ported to portable devices (like the iPod!).

Phew. I'm going to bed.

Oh, and podzilla probably wouldn't work very well, it's integrated quite tightly into ipod linux, isn't it? it probably uses all sorts of iPod specific hardware things. However, if you really, really wanted, you could get the source and slice all the ipod bits out and compile it. Good luck with that .
In theory, any linux app could be adapted to work (and work well, not like an emulated version of windows!) on the psp, if linux would work in the first place.

Dom

That "certain chip" is the memory management unit. It is also why "any linux app could be adapted to work" is a falsehood. I'd be *really* surprised to see X working on this thing.

However, I don't mind not having X. Awesome development.

[kyle2194]

Hellow DCMain. Welcome to DCEMU!

[csd-san]

X could work. Maybe not horribly well, but I really think it could... seeing as all PSPs have the same internal hardware, this could be optimized like hell. I hope nobody expects to have a heavy desktop environment though.

[pakkman781]

uClinux is a linux specially build for devices without memory management units or embedded systems. In otherwords, it runs on very limited hardware

This is great! Finally, linux natively on the PSP! Perhaps we can get a windowing environment like GPE running on it, then a good web browser!

[CoderX]

Great a Linux Kernel running nativly on PSP.

Ill have to create a nice eviroment for it native to the psp.
Linux is my Home, ill take this little app to the next level

Give me a week and ill have a psp Linux GUI

O wait, no sorce

[Cap'n 1time]

cool. opens up alot of possibilities for future applications on the psp.
miniGUI is always a possibility (works wonders on my old pocketpc)
http://www.minigui.org/whatis-os.shtml


Also I just read somewhere that dillo has been ported to minigui meaning a web browser is certainly possible.

[dcmain]

Hellow DCMain. Welcome to DCEMU!

Thanks!

And, DustinFraze, I admittidly don't know much about uclinux, and have no idea where that realtime rubbish came from, but I can't think of a good reason why some form of X couldn't run. As a said though, I don't know much about what limitations uclinux has.

Regardless, it's cool, and I just hope this guy releases the source soon, fully working or otherwise, so we can tinker with it .

[StealthCP]

It does look pretty cool, however, I have reason to suspect it's fake. I hope I'm wrong, but it looks like a console print program to me. Forgive me if I'm wrong.

1. When loading it from PSP iR Shell, it has the exact same amount of free memory (21512k) as if it were booted from the XMB menu.
2. It supports sleep mode, even whilst it is loading ramdisk.
3. It takes the exact same time, all the time to arrive at the Kernel Panic, at which point the PSP should have stalled, and not function with the shutdown code.
4. When uncompressing the kernel, it does not access the memory stick. In total, only one flick of the memory stick access LED is seen upon startup.
5. When using a process monitor, it is using virtually no resources at all, and has very little output.

As I said before, I hope I'm wrong, as a large group of my school's PSP club are Linux users, and they are eagerly awaiting a usable version of the kernel.

[dcmain]

Oh dear, that is some damming evidence...

there's no reason why it shouldn't take the same amount to time to panic each time, but the rest is a bit suspicious. Damn it, it's very suspicious.

Especially the memory & sleep mode ones. Some of my homebrew doesn't even support sleep mode, which makes it seem very unlikely that a pre-alpha linux kernel would.

It may very well be fake, which would be a real shame. I hate faking.

[DraconumPB]

FYI guys, I did once brick a 1st-gen ipod with this software... so beware! I think it was an EARLY version. but what happened was, I got in a boot-loop where it wouldn't boot either the ipod firmware OR the uclinux firmware... so... all I'm saying is, be really careful and I'd advise against using it until it's extensively tested.

Not to knock this software effort, it's really incredible, but as stated, it can really mess with your PSP if something goes wrong.

BY THE WAY it would be silly for someone to fake this. It already runs on ipod. I've tested it before. There's no reason why someone would claim that it would run on a psp when it actually doesn't