Hacking group fail0verflow has announced that PS4 owners can now successfully use the console to boot a Linux kernel-based operating system. While the group had been running Linux on the console for months now, this is the first time they have made the exploit public. Find out how you can put Linux on your PS4 below.
It's worth noting that with the released kexec loader and kernel (and an exploit) you should be able to replicate our 32c3 demo.
— fail0verflow (@fail0verflow) March 3, 2016
The 32c3 demo they’re referring to here is the demo that was shown at the 32nd Chaos Communication Congress event, held on 30 December 2015. The demo ran Gentoo with Linux kernel 4.4, systemd 228, using the Xfce desktop environment, which is fairly light on resources.
In order to boot Linux on your PS4, you first need to make sure you have firmware version 1.76 and the ps4-kexec loader, as well as the ps4-linux kernel forked from Linus Torvalds’ branch. Finally, you’ll need the leaked PS4 BadIRET kernel exploit. Having some experience in compiling kernels helps, too.
Are you going to run Linux on your PS4? What are you going to do with it? Let us know in the comments below.