androvsky said:
Except, obviously, hot air in sufficient quantity to convince Sony to remove linux.
Exactly. Why Sony would remove a feature to piss off a % of its userbase for no reason? Linux on PS3 is a entity Sony has no control over and was always massive security risk which is why RSX access was blocked out. Other than Sony releasing their own closed source linux distro their only choice is to remove the functionality. So they did, and then they ate their own shoes.
Even if Geohot is all talk it was enough to get Sony to make a move. It is just like the PSP scene, Sony removed homebrew early on due to Humma creating the Fastloader, Few years later Dark Alex arrives and not only creates CFW but him and a few others manage to fully bypass the IPL creating the Pandora. This forced Sony to make a new PSP hardware revision the 3000 series. However all of this was only ever possible due to PSP being exploited through non Sony code (tif) or from it being allowed (1.0-1.5).
In short there has been no exploits on the PS3, and the only way the security of the PS3 has been compromised so far is because of Linux. No-one has discovered any PS3 exploit yet so without Linux aslong as sony does not fuck something up their end to make the PS3 exploitable it will remain unhackable.