Look, there are reasons to have a Linux port on the cell-based PS3. Mostly research and scientific software development. But for regular folks like you and me, the only reason we would want Linux on our PS3s is for one thing and one thing only: media playback.

The problem is that the only usable players with enough codecs, VLC and Mplayer, have compatibility problems with the PPC-based PS3. Thankfully, with the newer PS3 firmware versions, except the MOV container incompatibility, it supports all other major media files already. And for the MOV container, I just use the $20 Quicktime Pro which is able to re-wrap MOV h.264/AAC videos to MP4 without re-encoding in 1 minute time.

So what I really need is Flash 9 support so I can run Hulu.com and watch “Arrested Development” in the TV instead of the browser. But the PS3 browser only features Flash 7, and the Linux PPC ports doesn’t have PPC Flash 9 plugin support either because Adobe doesn’t care about it.

So honestly, as a normal user, I see no reason whatsoever to run Linux on a PS3.