PS5 turned into Linux Steam Machine, but only on older unpatched firmware

Andy Nguyen, known online as theflow0, has shown Linux running on a PlayStation 5 and used it to turn the console into what he describes as a Steam Machine. His clip shows Grand Theft Auto 5 Enhanced running with ray tracing at 1440p and 60 FPS, which is enough to move this project beyond a simple boot demo.

Andy said 4K HDMI video and audio are working, and all USB ports are functional. He also said his current setup runs at 3.2 GHz on the CPU and 2.0 GHz on the GPU, while a higher 3.5 GHz and 2.23 GHz configuration is possible, though his PS5 Slim reportedly overheats too quickly at those clocks.

Source: Andy Nguyen

This is also a follow-up to the recent PS5 ROM keys story , which led to fresh talk about broader jailbreak progress. As we noted at the time, leaked ROM keys alone were not a jailbreak, and Nguyen now makes the same point from a different angle. His Linux setup still needs a full exploit chain to work, so this is not something that suddenly opens the door for every retail console.

Only works with older PS5 firmware

Nguyen said the setup only works with a full chain exploit such as Byepervisor, which is aimed at older firmware. The public Byepervisor repository says that support for PS5 firmware in the 1.xx to 2.xx range . That means this remains limited to a small pool of older, unpatched systems.

Andy even submitted a merge request for Mesa to add PlayStation 5 GPU support. Hopefully this isn’t the only way modders will unlock this console, and we get a real console-PC hybrid before Microsoft’s new Xbox .

It’s worth noting that PS5 hardware is relatively easy to buy and customize into a full PC. AMD used to sell a board called BC-250 for cryptomining, which essentially featured the same hardware as the PS5, and it does not require any special tricks to run.

Source: Andy Nguyen

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