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   I gotta tell you the truth, if I do one more "next-gen madness" piece of editorial with two dozen stories mashed into a single post, I'm gonna go cuckoo. If I haven't already. Like 25 years ago. But anyway, I decided to take one story at a time from here on, and to start off (actually continue) this next-gen madness, how about some... PlayStation 3 emulation? (as it turns out, there are also a couple of dozen stories on this topic, but what the hell!)

   After a not-so-smooth launch that drove the waiting crowds into a frenzy, leading people to do some very evil things to those poor geeks (check the last story), Sony's PlayStation 3 was finally launched in North America last week. And with it came the scanned PS3 manual, the PlayStation Network (accessible from anywhere, and not so free for third-party publishers), the PS3 Store (with some PSX games), the PS3 backward compatibilty list, the PS3 SIXAXIS controller that doesn't time out, the PS3 HDD replacement, the banned PS3 European imports on eBay, and of course the smashed PS3 (looks pretty solid, compared to the Wii).

   Phew, where was I? Ah yes, emulation. There's actually two things to talk about here: games emulation, and other kind of software emulation. In both cases, the starting point is running an alternative operating system, so let's start with that.

   Even before the console's launch, it was already known that the PlayStation 3 would allow you to install alternate operating systems. But only afterwards did the first such "Other OS" - Fedora Core 5 Linux - become available. The installation procedure for Fedora Core 5 (or any other future OS) on the PS3 is not quite simple... at all. So before you do anything (stupid), make sure to read every little thing you find on the "Open Platform for PlayStation 3" website. Yes, it's been updated, so now you can actually see how the "Other OS" installation works, in theory.

   In practice, a more detailed installation procedure for Fedora Core 5 can be found on QJ.net, along with various requirements and warnings you should again check in advance. If all goes well, it should look something like this.

   So now that there's Linux on PS3, what could possibly be the next step? Why, emulating Windows under Linux on PS3, of course! Microsoft, eat your heart out, because Windows XP seems to be running a-ok in those pictures there. My next step would have been to see if any MMOs (well, one in particular) can also be run on PlayStation 3, but then again I live in Europe so for now I can only watch what others are emulating. Which brings me to... the games. The non-PlayStation games, that is.

   And once again, what could possibly be the next step? Why, emulating Nintendo games on the PS3, of course! Sony, eat your heart out, because Mario is trampling all over your shiny new system, thanks to Linux' ability to run MAME - and thus plenty of old arcade games.

   More traditional Internet browsers can also be used on the PS3, instead of the console's restrictive browser. And soon enough more operating systems will be ready to boot on Sony's console. The next one will be Yellow Dog Linux 5.0, scheduled for release this Sunday on November 26 (check the link for details).

   So there you have it, the PlayStation 3 is now officially one big open platform, if not a full-fledged computer!

   And I have officially gone cuckoo.