Linux-based Gaming Console?

That would be awesome. If Sony did it.

As a community project, it wouldn't get all the really nifty games. Unless you could get some Serious Indy support behind it... then it'd be one of those "exclusive" consoles that all the "game snobs" play with. ;)

See Indrema.

Once you added "upgradeable" to the list of would-be features, I had to start laughing. The greatest advantage of consoles is the fact that their hardware is fixed, which ensures a consistent experience across the board. All you're suggesting is an alternative form factor PC, which means developers would still have all the driver and installation incompatibility issues of contemporary PC platforms.

Whoop-de-do.

See TuxBox Project.

Every time this idea has been suggested and implementation attempted, it has failed miserably.

You can almost do that sort of thing with regular PCs already. All you need is a bootable-CD based distro like Knoppix and have the game boot along with it. IIRC it's been done before. Stick the CD in, turn on the computer, watch it boot Linux and then the game runs right off the CD.

The problems with this are that the boot time is long due to having to autodetect and setup hardware each time, hardware configuration can't be stored over multiple boots, and there is less space on the CD for the game media due to the space requirements of the OS.

To solve the boot-time problem you could standardise the hardware and then focus the kernel-on-CD for that hardware, eliminating the need for detection. But there would still be the media limitation problem. Using DVDs would help. You could include a HD and have the OS live on that.

The only difference you have left between this and a regular PC is that you can't upgrade this. Take away that restriction as you suggest and you have a PC. Now what's the point?

You want a console that uses Linux. What does that even mean? (BTW, Linux on XBox has been done.) The problem Linux has with games is that not many people are bothering to port them. Adding a new "Linux console" to the market won't help at all, it'll just dilute the market, making it harder to get things ported to your favourite platform. C-Junkie is right that if this sort of console were to happen it would need to already have some major backing. But, since most consoles are fairly specialised, to suggest that they should switch to such a general tool as Linux is a bit of a backwards step for them.

I'd love to see the Linux game market open up. Unfortunately a Linux console isn't likely to help or even happen unless someone like Sony can save serious bucks by employing it. Even then, chances are games for the system wouldn't be generally compatible with the regular PC systems we all know and love. Then what's the point? We're left with yet another standalone console with software that's incompatible with anything else. Nothing's changed.

The money that a company like Sony would save by using Linux as an O/S would be null when compared to the money they'd lose on the console. Consoles don't need an OS anyways - all they have is a thin layer that provides a way to load the executable, a way to manage savegame data, and some consoles have a couple of resident libraries to make the programmer's life easier (but most things are statically linked into the executable). The average game console gets dick amount of consideration when it comes to the OS.

Again, see the Indrema. Failed miserably (would've been cool tho).

TuxBox looks like it's doing absolutely bupkiss these days.

Linux is free, and time is cheap when you're not supposed to be spending it at work. If you wanna try it, do it. Hope it takes off, and you prove us all wrong. Just be aware of the grim realities of the situation.

(afterthought: Linux for a game operating system would be at its 100% best when you had absolutely no idea that it *was* linux. The less interaction with the OS and the more interaction with the game that the player has, the better their experience will be.)

I wonder if it would be a better idea to get more mainstream PC games to run on Linux before branching out onto different platforms.

Doesn't stop that being a damn good idea though, a games console running on a freeware operating system wouldn't make any difference to the consumer, but the potentially lowered price certainly would.

Thinking about a console in terms of its OS is a Bad Idea. Consoles are about putting in the game, turning it on, and playing. Once you mention that it runs some OS, even if not pertinant to the end user, it becomes a toy relegated to the niche market of geeks.

If you want to disguise a PC and call it a console, why don't you just get MAME and Build your own arcade machine instead?

Linux is not an OS, its a kernel, in order to build a console that uses it, you would have to find a way to connect a processor (not necesarily an x86), some memory, a video board, sound board and a cdrom together, then probably have some flash ROM which contains the Linux Kernel, which would be in charge of managing the devices mentioned, during system boot the system looks for an executable file on the cdrom and runs it, the executable then uses system calls in the kernel in order to do its job, of course, it's not as simple as it sounds.

What about ps2 linux?

http://playstation2-linux.com/

sure, you need an old ps2, it is hard to find a kit [and they cost $200], but they do run linux, and it is a game console

you learn a lot about the hardware, and you need to be really serious about it though

PS2Linux isn't good for a number of reasons, actually.

1: hard to find
2: expensive
3: not prolific
4: PS2 is going out soon

It would be succesful if:
- The distro was built for every optimization towards the included hardware.
- Everyone has their's built the same. Software customization such as a custom background is allowed of course, but no major hardware changes.
- No major OS changes. Nothing like 'your game can't play because you don't have latest distro. Please upgrade'.
- Full factory production + Expensive advertising, to be considered a mainstream console.
- One company only. Like sony, nintendo etc. Can't have different companies with different versions. Maybe in the matter of PSX - PSOne.
- Graphics on par with current mainstream consoles. Same price. Same amount of development.
- Less PC like. Extremely easy to use. No desktops, no mouse, no cursor. Just simple. Flip it on and go, basically.

And there are many things that could make it original.

In other words: IMPOSSIBLE.

Well... I don't know... Linux is awsome, no doubt. And it seems to me that linux is designed more for specialized applications then general use. Being an operating environment for a console seems like an ideal implimentation.

Think about it.. easy access to files. Your game API could just be SDL combined with OpenGL. You could have a custom setup and everything. Write it for one set of hardware, and you wouldn't have to have all the funky load time things.

It makes perfect sense to me, but it would have to be a small start up company that would create it to have a cult following, like the GP32. Then after each revision, it would become more and more popular. Sell them as kits or just the instructions if they wanted to build their own. Or atleast just the case, and sell larger hard drives or something online.

It could be done, just not on a huge scale at first.

It's only going to happen if Sony does it. And if Sony did do it:

1. It would use Linux only as a kernel and for file I/O
2. It would definitely use proprietry graphics code and probably sounds code too
3. It would almost definitely not be intel-based

In other words, the games would not be remotely compatible with existing desktop Linux systems - they are more likely to make it compatible with existing (e.g. Playstation) systems.

Gamers would not know it had Linux on (as Win32 on XBox). Gamers would not care.

Mark