I'm reaping the rewards of my OtherOS partition just by typing this. My PC's power supply is on its last legs and I can't use it anymore. This just happened yesterday. While the XMB's web browser is greatly improved lately, it still can't successfully post an answer on YA - (try it and see... "submit" and "edit" both go through as "edit") - but I can get around that and any other limitation the ps3 has as a PC by simply going to default system and booting up as a PC.
Until I fix my pc, I have a backup PC for web browsing. Ever notice all the google links your ps3 just downloads instead of showing, because they're PDF files? Doesn't happen in OtherOS. Need to edit video a little more professionally than EyeCreate can do? OtherOS. Need to transcode your video to a format that will work on your ps3? Ffmpeg, gtranscode and mencoder. And k9copy. (they are all much better than ps3video9, which like most free windows apps is malware that tracks what you watch)
Any application that has been written and released GPL to run on linux or unix operating systems, and able to run on a PowerPC architecture, can run in PS3 linux. There are good applications for practically everything you'd need a ps3 to do that it can't do on the XMB.
The main limitations are that the video card, the RSX, is not available for ps3 linux to use - so 3d games, no way. Video is also bad. The video memory is also off-limits, leaving you with only 256mb, in reality it works out to 210 to 220 mb because the XMB is actually still running.
But the point of OtherOS is to fill in the gaps of what your ps3 can't do. It does that very well.
I recommend PS Ubuntu which I use. Don't bother with Yellow Dog unless you have a usb external hard drive, and don't mind using a package system (red hat package manager) which is doomed to disappear from desktops. Ubuntu can be downloaded from
http://www.psubuntu.com
Now guess what I found last year some people who ported Quake2 to linux under ps3's ppc architecture. Now I can play Quake 2 on my ps3, with my sixaxis. I'm not sure but I think it's the first time a 3d-accelerated PC game has ever been run as a pc game on console. What's really impressive is, Quake2 requires video RAM, and ps3 linux has none, but still runs it perfectly.