Twisted Monkey, along with others , are reporting the Sony is intending on shipping the PS3 HDD add-on, pre-installed with Linux, my favourite operating system.

This makes for an interesting proposition. If the hacker community gives it minimal work, Sony could find the PS3 being bought and used as low cost servers and desktop machines, while losing the profit they’d otherwise make selling games. Consoles are usually sold at a loss, and the profit is made up by selling about 2 games to each console owner. With a starting price of ~US$465 being rumoured, the initial buy up of PS3s will no doubt be by gamers, but give it 2 or 3 years, and a $150-$200 price drop, and you could see the dynamic for the PS3’s market changing. Imagine a beowulf cluster of PS3s : )