On April 1 (no joke) the 3.21 firmware will be rolled out, effectively wiping out anything you have put on your OtherOS-partition. The move is due to security concerns from Sony, apparently because of the hypervisor hack.

psubuntu.com will not shut down any time soon. There is still lots of useful information in the forums, and some of you might want to skip the update just to keep their OtherOS running. But we realize this is now a niche user base.

Although it took some effort setting up and optimizing Ubuntu on the PS3, this community has provided lots of useful information and tools to make it worth the effort.

Thanks to all those who have been involved.

the PSUbuntu team

There are lots of references to the PSUbuntu forums, including what the author have dubbed “the greatest moment in geek troubleshooting forum history“. So thanks to everyone involved in the community!

Gizmodo tutorial link

Using a tool called Sixaxis-Gui (application attatched to the forum post), you should be able to pair your sixaxis controllers with the PS3.

Tutorial thread

If you have tried watching a youtube video on a psubuntu installation you have probably been greeted with the message:

Hello, you either have JavaScript turned off or an old version of Adobe’s Flash Player.

The reason for this is that Ubuntu only includes completely free software, which excludes media formats controlled by patents or license restrictions.

While there is currently no Flash version for the PowerPC architecture, you can try installing the free SWF movie player Gnash and its firefox plugin to watch youtube videos:

sudo apt-get install gnash mozilla-plugin-gnash

Restricted extras

Another way to get Gnash is to install the restricted extras package. ubuntu-restricted-extras gives you a lot of useful functionality, like Java, common fonts and multimedia formats. Install with the command:

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras

Note that there is also xubuntu-restricted-extras (for Xubuntu) and kubuntu-restricted-extras (for Kubuntu).

See this forum thread for more information.

UPDATE:

SwiftBiscuit has posted a tutorial on how to use mplayer instead of gnash for improved youtube video playback. Using the Firefox extension Greasemonkey and this user script, you will be able to improve the quality of video playback on web pages.

Forum thread in PSUbunTutorials

Removing Tracker

Tracker is a nice search tool, but it takes a heavy load on your CPU while indexing. If you don’t need quick desktop search, you should disable or remove it.

Disable it by going to [System > Preferences > Search and Indexing] and disable indexing and watching. Under the Performance tab you can set Indexing speed to slow, and minimize memory usage.

If you want to completely uninstall Tracker, use this command:

sudo apt-get remove tracker tracker-search-tool tracker-utils

Drop Unnecessary Processes and Services

You should also consider dropping some of the automatically started processes on the system. From [System] > [Preferences] > [Sessions] you can disable unwanted startup programs. Here’s a list of examples of session services you can safely disable:

• Bluetooth Manager
• Evolution Alarm Notifier
• Network Manager
• Power Manager
• Print Queue Applet
• Check for new hardware drivers
• Tracker + Tracker Applet
• Visual Assistance

For more information, see the PSUbuntu wiki.

Other tweaks

Consider removing the wallpaper image and use a solid black color instead.

Another option is to install the alternative desktop manager Xfce. You can either install the Xubuntu desktop on top of your existing Ubuntu installation (sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop), or download the Xubuntu installer disc for a clean install.

You may also experiment with more lightweight window managers such as openbox or fluxbox.

Also see xbmc’s forum tutorial on how to reduce memory usage with the run level configurator sysv-rc-conf.

Share your tips on how to boost PSUbuntu performance in the comments or this forum thread.

Get your iso file from here: PlayStation 3 alternate install CD

PSUbuntu (Cell) development is going well, but a kernel package naming issue prevented it from being released along with the other Ubuntu flavours. Hopefully it will be ready for the next daily build.

We’ll keep you posted on updates as the 8.10 release date approaches.

Now they need some testers to check if everything works ok.

Download the 2.6.25-2.3~danm4 deb (normal or debug mode) from here: http://ubuntu.munckfish.net/linux-ports/

More info on Ubuntu-Cell mailing list

PSUbuntu development forum thread

You will need to install the graphical bootloader petitboot, patch the kernel and convert rpm-packages, but the detailed instructions should be easy to follow.

Forum post: Wifi Tutorial Alpha 0.1

The process:

Use the alternate kubuntu-8.04.1 release for powerpc.

You need to manually install the latest test kernel for PSUbuntu developers.

Miguel is using petitboot.

Edit your sources.list with these repositories:

deb http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports/ intrepid main universe restricted multiverse

deb http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports/ intrepid-security universe main multiverse restricted

deb http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports/ intrepid-updates universe main multiverse restricted

deb http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports/ intrepid-proposed universe main multiverse restricted

deb http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports/ intrepid-backports universe main multiverse restricted

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/kubuntu-members-kde4/ubuntu intrepid main

Finally enter

sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop

in a terminal

See the forum post for more information.