Hi, This is not true - PS2 Linux provided full hardware access to the graphics hardware via the SPS2 library, which just mapped a bunch of hardware registers into your userland address space.

The IOP chip was restricted but that wasn't really a big deal for most purposes, as it was generally only used for I/O.

Hi, maybe you could have bothered to read the other post from me?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11433163

So you could not write VU code? Sounds pretty useless if true.

On the contrary, the goal was to give enthusiasts a taste of what programming a games console might look like, not offer devkits for free.

In any case, it seems my memory was playing tricks on me.

The higher level APIs I am talking about was SPS2 and then there was Libps2dev as well.

The VU were actually available, I completely forgot about it.

You can delve into the old site, some guys did manage to mirror it, before Sony pulled the plug.

http://ps2linux.no-ip.info/playstation2-linux.com/coding-on-...

Personally I think the main reason for Sony's delusion with the community was that instead of trying to make games, many were using their PS2Linux kits to turn the PS2 into routers, cheap GPUs or cheap PCs.

The community was never as vibrant as the XNA one in terms of game coding.

Well, if you could program VU1 you had as much low level API as anybody else, that's my point.

As for the whole Linux support - I remember Kutaragi pushing the PS2 to become a home computer. Even its devkits (T10000s) were looking like PCs and had a "workstation" mode. PS3's "other OS" seems to be a vestige of this policy.