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Forums - Sony - Sony's PlayStation 4 Is Running Modified FreeBSD 9

biglittlesps on 24 June 2013
walsufnir said:
biglittlesps said:
DucksUnlimited said:
VetteDude said:
ironmanDX said:
Why don't they just develop their own OS based around the hardware? They started the PS4 in 2007 wasn't it?


Sony sucks at software if that wasn't apparant. XMB is a great simple OS for TV's, but once on PSP and PS3, it got too crowded, slow, and irrititating.

From what I've heard the Vita OS is fantastic.



Yes, its true and the PS4 interface on this FreeBSD OS going to be even better. I think Sony is foucsing better this time with OS rather than sticking to simple.

 

The XMB was also based on freebsd but it was simple *and* had big memory footprint so it has to get better.


Memory was the reason for Sony to go with Simple one in PS3 but this time they have more than enough memory and good teams all over the world who is participating in every aspect of Game hardware so this time its going to so much better OS with Interface in PS4 which we already saw in some videos doing great.



GAMING is not about spending hours to pass/waste our time just for fun,

its a Feeling/Experience about a VIRTUAL WORLD we can never be in real, and realizing some of our dreams (also creating new ones).

So, Feel Emotions, Experience Adventure/Action, Challenge Game, Solve puzzles and Have fun.

PlayStation is about all-round "New experiences" using new IP's to provide great diversity for everyone.

Xbox is always about Online and Shooting.

Nintendo is always about Fun games and milking IP's.

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walsufnir on 24 June 2013
allenmaher said:
ironmanDX said:
Why don't they just develop their own OS based around the hardware? They started the PS4 in 2007 wasn't it?


An OS is a monumental task to develop, OSX is based off of BSD as well.  A lot of computer apliances will use linux or a BSD varient, but there are some comercial systems that are still around like QNX.  What almost all of them have in common is a general unix like foundation (and POSIX compliance).  So things like Direct X are irrelivant to everything except a windows device (the others use OpenGL which is what the hardware speaks anyway).

As  to the rest of the thread...

The interesting bit is that BSD has  very poor driver support from AMD.  BSD generally performs slower than linux on most tasks (except networking where it can be as good or better for serving up lots of web materials).

All of these non windows systems have very low overhead compared to a windows mahine. They need less ram, hard drive room, and fewer clock cycles for the OS.  A full fledged OS with all apps (ful office suites, etc..) in a recent version of Ubuntu for instance is 4-18 GB and comfortably runs in a gig of ram for most uses while multitasking.  Windows 7 is about 7 GB before you install a single application for comparison.  Windows 8 is 10-13 GB and needs 2 GB of ram.  A minimal linux/BSD/QNX install, like what console/appliance makers use is very small, Puppy linux runs in 165 MB of disk space and 128 MB of ram.  A minimal Ubuntu linux install like the steam box is using will likely end up needing  200-500 MB of drive space.

For the record, Android is Linux based, IOS is BSD based, Blackberry is QNX, etc..

I don't know what kernel the PS3 is based on.  I am damn curious what the WiiU's is based on, given the size of Nintendo (employees 5k) I doubt they have built completely from scratch.

What does a FreeBSD kernel mean for PS4? Decent system security, low overhead, minimal system resources for the OS. If AMD have made decent drivers for it, it should work well.


The overhead between Windows and a Unix running with Xorg and Gnome is mostly the same, also ram-usage. It's only better when acting as a server. Also there are no amd-drivers - Sony has a special team for drivers. Take a look at this guy: https://twitter.com/postgoodism

Also keep in mind that also MS knows of overhead - that is why the dashboard only uses 32 mb on 360 :)

Both have optimized drivers, API and in general kernels for gaming.



VGKing on 24 June 2013

Never heard of FreeBSD. How does it compare to Linus? Is it more open? Closed? About the same?
How will it affect users like us? Harder to develop apps? Easier?



VGKing on 24 June 2013
VetteDude said:
ironmanDX said:
Why don't they just develop their own OS based around the hardware? They started the PS4 in 2007 wasn't it?


Sony sucks at software if that wasn't apparant. XMB is a great simple OS for TV's, but once on PSP and PS3, it got too crowded, slow, and irrititating.

How is the XMB crowded? Its fairly simple and easy to find what you're looking for. It's already extremely easy to navigate. I doubt Sony or anyone will ever create anything that simple ever again. It's all about showing as much stuff in the home screen as possible now. Metro-Style. 



walsufnir on 24 June 2013
biglittlesps said:
walsufnir said:The XMB was also based on freebsd but it was simple *and* had big memory footprint so it has to get better.


Memory was the reason for Sony to go with Simple one in PS3 but this time they have more than enough memory and good teams all over the world who is participating in every aspect of Game hardware so this time its going to so much better OS with Interface in PS4 which we already saw in some videos doing great.

 

The videos whiched showed it looks like Metro? YES! :D Yes, the os will be better but it isn't that hard to make a better one :) I don't know what you want to tell me with the "all over the world"-stuff because it has nothing to do with the actual os, but ok :)



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walsufnir on 24 June 2013
VGKing said:
Never heard of FreeBSD. How does it compare to Linus? Is it more open? Closed? About the same?
How will it affect users like us? Harder to develop apps? Easier?


Never heard of FreeBSD.

 -most haven't ;)

How does it compare to Linus?

 -you can't compare it to linus but to Linux :) they are both posix-compatible and share a lot of software but different kernels and interfaces

Is it more open?

 -depends. with bsd you get code from the work of others. in linux if you alter this code you have to give your changes back to the community so that the software can evolve. in bsd you don't have to do this. i think it's bad but it's obvious companies prefer this.

How will it affect users like us?

 -in no way until ps4 gets hacked.

Harder to develop apps? Easier?

 - apps? sony will have an api-layer for this. easier? easier than what? but depends on the dev-environment by sony.



LemonSlice on 24 June 2013
Bladeforce said:
For the technically challenged this is a good solid, secure OS that will be a beast on PS4. I am wondering what POS microsoft are running theirs on


Windows 8. XD

At least for one of it's OSs, apparently.



walsufnir on 24 June 2013
LemonSlice said:
Bladeforce said:
For the technically challenged this is a good solid, secure OS that will be a beast on PS4. I am wondering what POS microsoft are running theirs on


Windows 8. XD

At least for one of it's OSs, apparently.


It's running a kernel based on Win8, not the full os we know of.



ethomaz on 24 June 2013

Guys...

Sony will use only the BSD kernel... the UI, APIs, drives, filesystem, etc... everything else will be proprietary created by Sony.

I have absolute certain we won't know it is a BSD kernel running in the back.



walsufnir on 24 June 2013
ethomaz said:
Guys...

Sony will use only the BSD kernel... the UI, APIs, drives, filesystem, etc... everything else will be proprietary created by Sony.

I have absolute certain we won't know it is a BSD kernel running in the back.


Guy... I think you are wrong :) I think some things aren't modified, e.g. the file-system. This is also not an easy task, they will use something usual. And hopefully ntfs-support built in :) And I think they will also use some existing drivers, like for USB. But performance-crucial parts are of course manually crafted.

Still, I want a shell on a ps4! :) But yes, we won't notice it's a bsd. MS will do the same with their win8-kernel.