Petition for the public Release of Linux for the PlayStation2

[ Japanese | English | Italian ]

We will continue this signature-collecting campaign to celebrate the revolutional success of Linux. Please sign up!

• View list of supporters
• Facts and Rumors about Linux on the PlayStation2
• Frequently Asked Questions:
  1. It's GPL! I thought Sony MUST release it. => Wrong.
  2. Will I be able to pop my self-made CD-ROM in and boot Linux? => No.
  3. How will Linux boot on the PlayStation2?
• Number of signatures of each area. [updated 2001/May/04]

What's New

2001/May/09 Wed

• Today, the reservation of PS2 Linux was sold out in 8 minutes!
• I was waiting before 14:00. I found that the web site saying that "it is now maintained." I thought they were changing the page just at the time. But few minutes later, I found the page of how to order, and I was signing in the form. After the moment, I recognized that I was on a waiting list... I think it was around 14:10.
• Now I should know how people feel in other countries than Japan.
• Let's try to gather more signatures to ask SCE Inc. to release more "Dev Kit"s.

2001/May/08 Tue

• Yesterday, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCEI) announced on their Japanese website that the number of the first lot of "PS2 Linux Dev Kit" increased to 2,000 sets (1,000 originally). They will also be able to ship those "Dev Kit" with PlayStation2 (SCPH-18000) and the memory card (SCPH-10020), because many users wrote on the web as they will buy with them. They start the reservation order page at 14:00 on May 9th (Japanese standard time).
• This is the news only for Japanese market.
• I think that Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCEI) still has an ability to release their "PS2 Linux Dev Kit" to other countries. Let's try to gather more signatures than Japanese!
• On Tuesday, May 8th, it past just 2 months since we started this campaign on this site (English page started on March 8, and the Japanese site started on March 4). In this 2 months, the number of signatures reached 7,300, and SCEI annuonced about "PS2 Linux Dev Kit". Thank you for your cooperation.

2001/May/03 Thu

• Hey, can you believe this? They are saying that PS2 Linux Kit is only available in Japan. Is this because the number of signatures is less than in Japan? C'mon SCE, we'd love to run it all over the world!
• Total number of signatures reached 7,000 yesterday. Thank you for your cooperation.

2001/Apr/29 Sun

• Wow, they uploaded the screen shot. Are they using GIMP already? [updated April/29].

2001/Apr/27 Fri

• Here is the "dmesg" message lines of the experimental version of Linux... [found on April/27].

2001/Apr/26 Thu

• Today (April/26), SCEI announced the release schedule of "Linux Development Kit for PlayStation2", at their web page (this page is written in Japanese). Probably, the announcement will be translated in English. This is the result of your powerful support for this campaign, I think. Thank you very much.

How this campaign is going.

Maybe, this is due to our limited ability of announcement in English. There is indication of this, because after I posted an article about this petition to comp.os.linux.misc, the number of signatures increased slightly. Please link this page from your website. We'd like to see the number of signatures reach 10,000.

The signature should not be limited only those of Linux guru or professionals. We want to see all of future users of Linux, programmers, CG designers, game players, and internet users in living room will join this act.

PS2 Linux will bring a great impact to Linux community and business. As many people already indicated,the PS2 is a powerful yet cheap platform compared to X86 PCs, (SCE Inc. is getting their income with its hardware only, these days. It is very clear contrast against with the rumor), and provides very stable computer environment. It can display its graphics to TV sets by default, and the hardware is already in the customers living room. It has integrated DVD decoder inside, and its Graphic Synthesizer can display 60 frames per second of full screen 3D graphics.

Now the porting of Linux to PlayStation2 is being done by only few people according to a source. They have to make difficult decisions with trade secret issues, and have to estimate how much support will be avaliable for their activity. They could not get an confident answer with them. Thus it is very important to gather enough support and send them the messages to encourage their activity.

Don't wait silently. No need to talk at Slashdot. (It's fun, though :-). Signing up here will make the rumors come true.

Thank you for joining us and reading my bad English.

There has been rumor that Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.(SCEI) has successfully ported the Linux kernel and supporting GNU environment to their PlayStation2 platform. Recently, these rumors have been confirmed from sources close to the company. Furthermore, it has come to our knowledge that conservative fractions in the company are hindering the Public Release of the port, fearing revelation of their trade secrets and not seeing the advantage for SCEI releasing the software. Nevertheless, many people inside SCEI would like to see the port made public and need the community's assistance. Therefore we are running a petition in order to demonstrate the community's interest for Linux on the PlayStation2.

It is our goal to collect 100,000 signatures world-wide and hand them to SCEI. When we reach the 10,000 mark, we'll contact SCEI.

If you agree to our goal, please sign the petition.

Problems or suggestions? Mail oliver@fakeroot.net

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