Gaming on Linux
Hopefully everyone had a pleasant holiday season. Only weeks into the new year and already some interesting gaming news has happened.
Noted hacker group fail0verflow has hacked the PlayStation 4, running a custom Linux port on the system. Linux has been run on prior Playstation systems, usually via USB boot, but no one expected it to happen on this system so quickly, with rough estimates of a hack being months, maybe years, down the line.
A PlayStation hack should come as no surprise to gamers, not with the PlayStation’s history of lackluster security. Fail0verflow has hacked the PlayStation 3, as well as the Wii and Wii U before. PS4 uses FreeBSD and the browser Webkit, both of which are said to be relatively easy to exploit. The PlayStation’s online network has been prone to security breaches as well, with the latest incident taking place only three days into the new year.
Fail0verflow posted a video demonstration of their custom version of Linux running on Sony’s console, taken from a Lightning Talk at the Chaos Communication Congress in Hamburg, Germany in late December, and have released their Linux port on GitHub. Initially the group had little interest in the project, citing the Playstation 4 and Xbox One as little more than “glorified PCs.” However, while working with the system they discovered that in actuality it was not as close to a PC as they’d initially thought, yet similar enough to use to their advantage.
According to the fail0verflow:
“Linux on the PS4 actually makes a lot of sense, more than it ever did on any previous game console. It’s close enough to a PC that getting 3D acceleration working, while rather painful (as we’ve learned), seems entirely possible without undue amounts of effort (in a timeframe of months, not years), to the level needed for real indie games and even AAA titles, not just homebrew. And many thousands of indie and AAA games already run on Linux. Yes, SteamOS on the PS4 should ‘just work’ once the driver issues are sorted out.”
As “marcan” of fail0verflow put it: ”[W]e really think this is the way to go for the PS4. Write an exploit, point it to our loader, and you’ll get Linux (we’ll help you get it hooked up/debugged if needed). And if you want piracy, as usual, go away.”
Another item of note: Over the holidays there was an incident in which Steam users’ personal information was leaked due to a configuration error. The event, dubbed Steam’s “Christmas fiasco,” generated pages with private account information that included billing addresses, partial credit card information and more being shown to unintended users. Luckily, there was not enough information to allow the hijacking of accounts or credit card fraud. Still, many were alarmed.
It’s estimated that around 34,000 users were affected. Valve is taking the issue seriously and has issued an online notice about the incident, assuring users that they acted as quickly as possible and that everything is now under control.
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Hunter Banks has been a part of the Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE) Family for the past 13 years. When not writing about open source gaming, he’s working on creating his own games. Follow him on Twitter @SilvrChariot
I think it’s great that it’s been done, and the specs of the PS4 aren’t bad for a $300 Linux computer.
But you can get better graphics card driver support, plenty of computing power, and plenty of day to day usability – if not gaming – from a used $300 PC or even a carefully budgeted new one. I like the fact that hackers (in the non-evil sense of the term) are working on it, but I wouldn’t get one.
Mike S, I’d like to see that better used pc as well as that carefully budgeted new one as well. Please and thanks.
Everyone, well ok, most people want an all in one machine to play games on, do real work with and make video and phone calls from.
If Nvidia shield had all the android games and a Linux desktop it would be the toto machine for 200$
Goto machine
@Lizzi,
Ebay. I just went to computers, searched based on a $200-$250 price range with the “No Operating System Installed” option, and started looking. $250 + $42 shipping gets a used Dell XPS 8100 with an older Core i7-260, 8GB of RAM, older Nvidia GT(X?S? I can’t remember) 240 card, 1TB storage. Install your Linux distribution of choice, and you’re off to the races.
For a new machine, for anything that uses a lot of single-threaded power (like web browsing, which is what I do most) unfortunately Intel has AMD creamed. So the latest $60 dual core Pentium G4400 will beat the PS4 handily for most day to day tasks. Small motherboard, 8GB of RAM, mini case, integrated graphics, 500GB hard drive, and you’ve got something better than a PS4 for anything but gaming for the same price.
Neither of those machines will do cutting edge Linux gaming, but the PS4 won’t either because the powerful onboard graphics don’t have a good Linux driver.
I agree on the Nvidia Shield TV. If Nvidia had a page on their website with instructions for installing a mainstream Linux distribution on it, I would already own one.
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Our “Frequent Commenters Membership,” available through our Indiegogo fundraiser, gets you your own account on FOSS Force. You login to your account and all of your commenting is captcha free — and the post will automatically go up using the username you give us when we set-up your account. In addition, after we get ten or so of you signed up, each week we’ll offer a discussion topic which will only be available to logged-in members. And down the road, we have even more ideas we might implement.
The memberships are available for a $25 contribution to our Indiegogo fundraising campaign. This is just one way we’ve come up with to say thank you for your support. To claim your membership, just go to our Indiegogo page now and make your contribution!
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Oh, and whether you make a contribution or not, thank you for being a part of FOSS Force. 🙂