A day after the PS3 Japan launch madness, all of us here at QJ had a chance to look back and see exactly what info we had missed. I had the responsibility of checking out the Linux side of things. And while the article which I wrote yesterday was pretty much spot on, there's a few more things which I could get out of the documents released.

So without further ado, I'll make a list of things which I've learned today:

How Linux will work: The PS3 will use kboot as its Linux bootloader. The way this works, you'll first have to download OtherOS installer (not released, yet) from Sony's official site. The next thing you'll need is a customised kboot "image". In case anyone's wondering, no, it isn't a picture. It's a single archive that will contain all the stuff needed to boot Linux.

The important thing to note here is that kboot, in itself, is nothing more than a sort of a loader which will use Lilo or GRUB to load the Linux kernel. I've noticed that neither kboot or GRUB are released for the PPC architecture. I don't know about GRUB, but I'll hazard a guess that Sony have ported kboot to the PPC arch, and since it's released under the GPL license, Sony will have to release its source code.

Moving on to the installation part, it seems that it will be pretty easy. I'll write up a small how-to here. Please refer to the already-released documents for the full instructions:

• Format your PS3's HDD into 2 partitions. The Format utility seems to be very intuitive and easy-to-use.
• Download the OtherOS Installer from Sony's Open Platform for PS3 site.
• Download the customised kboot image for your specific distro (Will be supplied with the distro?)
• Put both of them on an external USB device in a special folder structure using your PC.
• Plug it into the PS3 and select the "Install Other OS" in the PS3 menu.
• It will scan the external storage device and list the Other OS installer.
• At this point, going ahead and selecting the install option will install kboot (the bootloader) to your PS3's HDD.
• Bear in mind that kboot is almost like a secondary bootloader. kboot will be initialised by the PS3's own bootloader, which will be protected, to say the least.
• Once kboot is installed to your PS3's HDD, it's time to install the actual distro itself. Since the guide itself explains with the example of Fedora Core 5, I will be following it. The main reason is that I still don't know where the customised kboot image comes from. Will the distributions officially release them? Or will we have to go around looking for them on unofficial sites? We'll know more as time goes on...
• Anyways, once you've installed kboot, just go to the System Settings in the PS3's menu and select the default system as Other OS.
• Once you reboot your PS3, you will now be booted into kboot. You're almost there! All that's left is installing Fedora Core 5 after following the instructions on screen.

• You will be able to switch to the PS3's game OS from Linux.
• You will be able to use the Blu-ray drive to mount all types of discs including Blu-ray discs!