OtherOS

OtherOS is a feature of early versions of the PlayStation 3 video game console, allowing user installed software, such as Linux or FreeBSD.

After OtherOS was removed, a class action lawsuit was filed against Sony on behalf of users, but was dismissed with prejudice in 2011 by a federal judge.

The judge stated: "As a legal matter, ... plaintiffs have failed to allege facts or articulate a theory on which Sony may be held liable.

Ultimately, in 2016, Sony settled with users who had installed Linux or had purchased a PlayStation 3 based upon the availability of OtherOS.

[5] The settlement was then rejected in February 2017 by judge Yvonne Gonzalez, citing two problems: the lawyers' high fee percentage, and the users' difficulty in collecting.

[13] Several methods of bypassing the updating and retaining the ability to sign into PlayStation Network have been discovered, most of which use third party DNS servers.

[14] George Hotz claimed to have created custom firmware for the PS3 called 3.21OO that re-enables OtherOS and published a video as proof.

Charges included violating the DMCA, the CFAA, copyright law, and California's CCDAFA, and for breach of contract (related to the PlayStation Network User Agreement), tortious interference, misappropriation, and trespass.

[23][24][25] On December 8, 2011, U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg dismissed the last remaining count of the class action lawsuit, stating: "As a legal matter, ... plaintiffs have failed to allege facts or articulate a theory on which Sony may be held liable.

[27] In 2016, Sony settled with American users who installed Linux or purchased a PlayStation 3 based upon the alternative OS functionality.

[34] A simple Linux add-on CD for the PS3 includes support for Fedora 8 and other operating systems that already claim to install natively on the PS3.

[45] Yellow Dog Linux is based on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux/CentOS core and relies on the RPM package manager.

Digital audio has been verified to function properly, however, the Nvidia graphics card is not supported beyond framebuffer mode.

For this reason many complex games are not possible on the PlayStation 3 through Linux, as access to hardware acceleration in the RSX is restricted by a hypervisor.

The rest of the system can run on an NFS share - hard disk access is currently not implemented, as well as some other features.

[55] Also, since the exploit runs the kernel with game privileges, graphics acceleration is now available, although it requires reworking of the nouveau driver code.