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Debian Running On the T-Mobile G1

Posted by timothy on from the teaching-the-android-to-fetch-and-sit dept.

chrb writes "Following hot on the heels of the G1 root exploit, Jay Freeman now has Debian ARM running on the G1. The RC30 update has fixed the root hole, but with utilities and images already available to replace the flash image with your own signed code, it looks like the manufacturer-hacker arms race is on."

4 of 127 comments (clear)

  1. Isn't that the whole idea of an open platform? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    i.e., to enable hackers to experiment and thereby improve the platform further.

  2. Re:I'm confused... by Facegarden · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why on earth is there a "manufacturer-hacker arms race"?

    There isn't, it's BS, and none of the blogs seem to get is. So far as we can tell, google only fixed the root exploit because it was a serious security concern, because of how it worked. I don't think they are going to make a real effort to stop people from hacking their device aside from fixing security flaws. Even if they do, this is so far not an indication of that, contrary to what most sites say.
    -Taylor

    --
    Worldwide Military budgets: $2100 billion. Worldwide Space Exploration budgets: $38 billion. Really, world? Really?
  3. Re:I'm confused... by dlevitan · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Now, personally, I see no reason why T-Mobile would care whether you're running Android or Debian. Google might care because they want you running those nice Android apps which interface with Google because that's how they're paying for Android development. But I'm not sure that they have any kind of agreement which would require the makers of the G1 to make sure that the phones are tamper-proof.

    I doubt even Google will care. How many people will actually install Debian on a G1? How many people will actually install it and keep it on there? I doubt even 0.1% of users will do either. But these are also the people who will praise Google for an open platform and for not locking it up like the iPhone. They're also the people who'll probably create apps for Android that bypass Google. Will Google notice the drop in revenue? Probably not, and certainly not enough to offset the bad PR.

  4. Re:I'm confused... by chrb · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's Google's OS though.

    No, it was written by Linus Torvalds and thousands of other contributors, and released under the GPL. It's our OS. Google just borrowed it for a while.