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Linux Kernel Booting On the iPhone

Posted by Soulskill on from the there's-no-iphone-in-team dept.

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."

4 of 115 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Linux drivers? by cbrocious · · Score: 4, Informative

    It's being reverse-engineered, like everything else on the iPhone. None of the specs for iBoot, the baseband, etc are public either and the iPhone hackers have done just fine. I'm confident they'll succeed.

    --
    Disconnect and self-destruct, one bullet at a time.
  2. Re:Jailbreaking is jailbreaking. by omeomi · · Score: 2, Informative

    It's already running UNIX, it's just a matter of getting to that root prompt. And if you're willing to jailbreak the phone to install Linux on it, why aren't you willing to jailbreak the phone to install Darwin apps on it?

    The BSD subsystem isn't installed on a stock iPhone. Installing it is a part of the jailbreak procedure.

    --
    ZuluPad, the wiki notepad on crack
  3. Re:now my gmail acount is gona blow up by AmberBlackCat · · Score: 2, Informative

    can somebody translate this to english?

    This is my best effort:

    Before the iPhone came out, I used a fancy Japanese phone to play music and video. As soon as Linux is available for the iPhone, I will give my old phone to my wife. Then I will install Linux on the iPhone and use it for music and video, as well as games.

  4. Re:Purpose? by Ash-Fox · · Score: 2, Informative

    And the purpose of it, is? To run a GTK or QTe UI on it? Wow!

    They ported the kernel, not X.

    Linux is a great core, but unfortunately the UI bits are crap.

    Qt seems to be outdoing Microsoft and Apple's offerings in the UI department actually.

    I'll keep the OSX and the Apple UI on my iPhone. Thank you.

    Your phone wouldn't be usable at all with the current Linux offering at the moment anyway. I wouldn't expect anyone to want you to switch 'yet'.

    --
    Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.