Linux Kernel Booting On the iPhone

mhm was one of many readers to note that the Linux 2.6 kernel has been ported to the iPhone. "Planetbeing, one of the iPhone devteam members, has been working on porting Linux to the iPhone (along with a custom bootloader called OpeniBoot). Today they managed to boot the kernel! Video showing the boot process has been posted. Instructions and binaries are available on the project blog."

Comments

Re:The rockbox problem

[93 Escort Wagon]

> However, it is more likely than not that by the time they succeed, a new version will come out, and we will be back to square one.

Yup, this is the situation rockbox finds itself in. No currently shipping hardware can run rockbox. And few of the existing ports ever get finished before the devs apparently lose interest in old obsolete hardware and begin porting to the new shiny.

This seems to be the situation with a LOT of OSS projects. Some person (or group) thinks "what would it take to put Linux on an iPhone?" or "what if I made my own Linux distro that fixed all the problems I see in distro XXXXXX?" They work feverishly at it, get it more or less working, then get bored and stop caring.

There's nothing inherently wrong with that - but given how often it happens, I'm not sure why most of this gets classified as "news" on Slashdot or Digg or wherever. Should it ever get to the point where they have a usable Linux-based OS running on the iPhone - then maybe it's approaching "news".

Now if some group managed to get Hurd running on an iPhone's hardware... that would be news! Stallman would love an OSS iPhone - he could probably carry it around in his beard.