2009 August

Sony has announced last week that the much awaited, much rumored PlayStation Slim will finally be available in the stores, come September.

PlayStation 3 Slim

According to Sony sources, it will come with a 120 GB drive and will be 33 percent smaller, 36 percent lighter, with a price tag of $299.

Read more about it at Slashdot,  Gizmodo and also here.

Here are the basic items you need if you wish to install Linux on your PS3:

1. A Linux Installer CD and
2. A PS3 Console
3. A (spare) set of USB Keyboard and Mouse

Since you found my blog and you’re reading it, I assume you already have the item #2 and #3 listed above.

Moving, therefore, on to item #1, I strongly recommand that you go with Ubuntu Linux 9.04 – I’ve personally installed it on my PS3 early this month (I was using Ubuntu 8.xx earlier) – and I can swear by the fact that once everything is setup, it works quite well. As a matter of fact, I had to face, and struggle with, some glitches in terms of getting everything up and running and I’ll try my best to save you from facing the same problems.

If my experiences (or rather, mis-adventures) with installation of Linux on my PS3 are anything to go by, one of the biggest problems with this is finding a reliable version. I’ve really lost count of how many different versions I downloaded over the past few months, how many CDs I wasted, and worst of all, how many hours I spent trying to install dud versions, only to find that they don’t work in the end.

In order to save you the trouble of finding the right version, I have uploaded a copy of the working Ubuntu 9.04 image file on my blog and you can download it here. (600 megs+ so it can take a while to download, depending on what sort of connection you have – it typically takes about 5 hours for me, on my DSL connection.)

I know I need a better photograph (coming soon), but there is the default Ubuntu 9.04 login prompt on my PS3 (console on the right)