4 ms·

I was out of school for quite a bit by the time the PS3 came out but I remember installing linux on mine and being pretty excited to program on it. I did a lit

I was out of school for quite a bit by the time the PS3 came out but I remember installing linux on mine and being pretty excited to program on it. I did a little bit, but it ended up being a super PITA because I didn't want to put my PS3 on my desk and give up playing games on it on my TV. Because I wanted to keep it with my TV I had tried to use it with Bluetooth KB/Mouse so I could use it from the couch. And well typical Linux you always end up spending time on the most mundane thing. Bluetooth on the PS3 in Linux at that time didn't seem to work right. That to me is like peak Linux right there. At some point I had said to myself "I wanted to play with the cell and instead I'm working on Bluetooth" and I lost interest cause of course I had real work too. Then eventually Sony disabled the whole thing.

mjevans 2y ago
It's really not 'peek Linux' it's just that many manufacturers refuse to even provide specifications for using their product (basically it's API) without charging money and/or requiring an NDA etc. This makes any third party trying to support them face nightmare after nightmare of unknowns, and a complex device like a computer of any sort is nearly always a complex web of interlinked mini-computers each doing their own thing. Like the damned bluetooth chip; which worse probably has government regulated transmission compliance stuff baked into it's software rather than hardware. That adds a whole other nightmare you might see with various firmware blobs and driver support, most often seen with other WiFi adjacent projects such as OpenWRT (and supported hardware). It would be very nice if some law enforced free 'edge technical specification' for all products to anyone who buys them or a product containing them. That would help a level and fair market for competitors as well as right and ability to repair for consumers / device owners. That sounds a lot like effects desired by most (many?) Libre software licenses, like the GPL (and LGPL), and Creative Commons.

mjevans 2y ago

It's really not 'peek Linux' it's just that many manufacturers refuse to even provide specifications for using their product (basically it's API) without charging money and/or requiring an NDA etc. This makes any third party trying to support them face nightmare after nightmare of unknowns, and a complex device like a computer of any sort is nearly always a complex web of interlinked mini-computers each doing their own thing. Like the damned bluetooth chip; which worse probably has government regulated transmission compliance stuff baked into it's software rather than hardware. That adds a whole other nightmare you might see with various firmware blobs and driver support, most often seen with other WiFi adjacent projects such as OpenWRT (and supported hardware). It would be very nice if some law enforced free 'edge technical specification' for all products to anyone who buys them or a product containing them. That would help a level and fair market for competitors as well as right and ability to repair for consumers / device owners. That sounds a lot like effects desired by most (many?) Libre software licenses, like the GPL (and LGPL), and Creative Commons.