Entrevista al CEO de Terrasoft Solutions

Ryan Paul from Arstechnica spoke with Kai Staats, Terra Soft's CEO about Yellow Dog linux for the PS3.

In between Ars hand-wringing about the PS3 price, they did manage to publish some interesting information:

- PS3 "looks and feels like a real computer," and explains that "it is important to understand that the Xbox and Nintendo are not designed to be personal computers, the PS3 is."

- Staats "contacted the Microsoft 'Linux Lab' a few months ago, just to see what they might say [about YDL on 360]," and received no response.

- Unlike homebrew Linux solutions, Staats points out that "YDL 5.0 for the PS3 is not a hack," and argues that it is "the most complete, thoroughly tested, professional Linux distribution for the Power architecture."

- "Our work with Sony has granted us a unique opportunity to have in our possession beta PlayStation units (the same that the game developers have used) in order to work closely with the system to ensure a high quality end-user experience, from bootloader to halt, from installation to playing CDs and configuring the desktop."

- "I cannot emphasize enough that the PS3 is designed for Linux and [is] far more than a game box," he said. "Personally, I plan to remove my home DVD and CD decks and use instead a PS3 attached with my home theater for DVD, CD, MP3, and home computer—attached to a 5:1 14 speaker system with HD LCD. Elegant, simple, and powerful." (Staats quote)

- YDL's Windowing system e17 has rapid crash recovery to restore functionality if a program hangs

- [e17 is] "small, lean, mean, and fast," he argues that it "starts significantly faster than GNOME or KDE, consumes significantly less ram and less CPU is more responsive, more efficient and gets the job done."

- YDL 5.0 will ship with 2 DVDs for $49.95. Users that want installation support and a YDL.net account can expect to pay $99.95. Two weeks after the official release date, Terra Soft plans to make YDL 5.0 available for free download