Hey all. It's been a week or so since I've posted in this section, sorry about that, life has been a little busy
Anyways, I figured I'd post some of frequently asked questions I get from other users along with their answers. Most of these questions are PSP-centric but a few will be Linux basics. Even if you don't have any of these questions you could still check em' out and learn a bit
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Q. Is there anything special I need to do to make my PSP connect in Linux?
A. 99% of the time, no. Set it to USB mode and plug it in like you normally would. If your Linux kernel is anything recent (i.e. 2.4 and up) and your USB works your system should work fine with it. You may have to mount it manually on older distros, if so, the PSP memstick filesystem is the vfat derivative. If you're running a relatively new or up-to-date distro it'll likely mount the PSP automatically and place an icon for it on your desktop.
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Q. How do I work with .zip and .rar files in Linux?
A. It's a known fact that lots of homebrew comes in these formats. Zip is easy - your usual compression tool should be able to create and extract .zip files. I use Ubuntu derivatives so therefore I use Ark, use whatever is appropriate for your distro. For .rar files, you'll need an app called 'unrar.' This is a commandline application but it's very easy to use. Your distro will probably also have a GUI frontend in the repos somewhere.
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Q. What do I do when homebrew comes in a WinZip self-extractor (.exe) ?
A. Change the file extension from .exe to .zip - it will now open as a normal .zip file. NOTE that this ONLY works for WinZip self-extractors.
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Q. The PC-side PSP management application (example, Sei's PSP Tool) I want to use does NOT have a Linux version, what do I do?
A. See next question.
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Q. How do I work with homebrew that comes as a normal .exe installer?
A. You use Wine and hope for the best. Usually, if it comes in an installer, it's likely going to be a Windows PSP management application (such as Sei's PSP Tool.) In this case, it SHOULD run in Wine correctly. You may have some issues with USB, I'm not positive on how that'll work for you. If you have a specific app you'd like to use just feel free to ask me in this thread.
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Q. What is Wine?
A. Wine is a Windows to Linux compatibility layer, similar to Cygwin on Windows. It allows Windows executables (.exe) to run in Linux. Wine has been in development for quite a long time now and it has an amazingly high success rate, so chances are your app will run in it with little or no extra tweaking.
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Q. How do I convert videos / music to PSP's format in Linux?
A. FFmpeg is a set of codecs and utilities that can encode, decode and convert lots of various sound and video formats, including MPEG Layer-4 and DivX/XviD. You can find more info here:
FFmpeg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Q. Okay, but what about WMA/WMV/AVI/MOV?
A. Check out a package called 'win32codecs' for your respective distro. It'll get you sorted. Keep in mind that the legality of this package is questionable as it is basically direct ports of codecs included with Windows.
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Q. I have a DVD I'd like to rip and convert to PSP format. This DVD is encrypted, how do I read it in Linux?
A. Check out a selection of packages with the name 'libdvdcss' for your particular distro. Generally, you'll only need the 'libdvdcss2' package to decode DVD encryption. Keep in mind that the legality of these packages is questionable.
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Q. What is OGG/Vorbis?
A. OGG is a container format for music and video, it's similar to Windows' AVI. Vorbis is usually the codec for the sound and/or video contained within. OGG/Vorbis retains higher sound and video quality than MPEG2/3 and WMA/WMV, while running very similar bitrates to it's MPEG*/WM* cousins.
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Q. Can the PSP play OGG/Vorbis?
A. Unfortunately, no, it cannot. However, using FFmpeg you can convert OGG to whatever format you need for it to be PSP-compatible.
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Q. How do I work with EBOOTs (changing icons, sounds, name, etc) in Linux?
A. As far as working with normal (homebrew) EBOOTs goes, I couldn't say. For working with PSOne EBOOTs you can use the Linux version of Popstation.
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Q. I've downloaded such and such app and it's a Linux version, it came in an installer as a .run file. How do I install this?
A. Okay, it's easy. First you'll want to crack open a terminal and cd to the directory where the file is held. First you'll want to set the file as executable:
chmod +x name_of_file.run
Then, type this:
./name_of_file.run
The ./ operator tells Linux to execute the .run file. Also remember to use tab-autocomplete to help simplify typing out the names of these files, they tend to be quite long.
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Q. I've downloaded such and such app and it's a Linux version, it came in a tarball and it's got some .sh scripts. I have already extracted the tarball to a directory, now how do I run this?
A. See the above question, it works both ways. First, cd to the directory with the shell scrips, then:
chmod +x name_of_file.sh
Finally, we execute it:
./name_of_file.sh
And there you have it!
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Q. I found an app I want to use and it's Linux compatible but it needs to be compiled from source. What do I do?
A. Check the compiling instructions for your particular distro, it varies. Also, make sure you have the required compiler packages installed, the page with the source tarball will usually list the required packages. Your distro may also require a few additional packages to do a compile.
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Q. I have more questions!
A. Feel free to ask me in this thread. I'll try to answer them to the best of my ability. Alternatively, you can fire up your IRC client and go to irc.freenode.net and join the channel for your particular distro. People there may also be able to help.
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I'll keep adding to the list as is required
Linux PSP FAQ!
Linear Mode
