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

Apple's response

[betterunixthanunix]

In other news, Apple has responded by issuing an update which accidentally causes an iPhone running a Linux kernel to become inoperable. Apple apologized for this mistake, and is working on a fix.

Android.

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

For all those thinking "Android," check this from the blog entry:

If you're experienced with hacking/porting Linux and especially if you're experienced with porting Android, I'd definitely like to hear from you.

Oh, and read some of the blog comments. Man - I thought youtube comments were stupid, but this trumps even that:

Ok, not to sound too stupid with this question, but since the iPhone is running linux already... why not use whatever drivers are there already?

and:

I have a biiig question. i have windows and ubuntu, can i still install linux on the iphone? i suspect that files you published are only for mac osx

Oh - and the obligatory iphone linux comic

Re:Android.

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a biiig question. i have windows and ubuntu, can i still install linux on the iphone? i suspect that files you published are only for mac osx

This isn't as stupid as it sounds (though one hopes they RTFA'd.) I recall trying to put Linux on my Nintendo DS, only to find that installing it (without using additional hardware) required... Windows. I'm not sure if that situation has changed since, but it was a major disappointment and WTF at the time.

Slow Down Cowboy!

Slashdot requires you to wait between each successful posting of a comment to allow everyone a fair chance at posting a comment.

It's been 53 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment

Chances are, you're behind a firewall or proxy, or clicked the Back button to accidentally reuse a form. Please try again. If the problem persists, and all other options have been tried, contact the site administrator.

Is CmdrTaco a wanker or what? They never fix problems with Slashdot, they only introduce them. You remember the good old days when we had nice, workable, simple, user pages? Now going to your user page brings up a set of random shit pulled from various parts of Slashdot (a few comments you recently made, coupled with random articles from the past that appear to have no relationship to you whatsover.)

What a bunch of tools.

Re:Android.

[brianosaurus]

>

Ok, not to sound too stupid with this question, but since the iPhone is running linux already... why not use whatever drivers are there already?

<sarcasm>
What's wrong with that comment? If you recall from history, SCO stole linux to make Unix, which they time travelled back and sold to AT&T and Berkeley. Then Apple fired Steve Jobs, who put Linux in a black box and called it "NeXT". Then Apple bought him, made their own Linux, then retroactively created 6 major versions of FreeBSD as a front.

Then Darwin created a kernel (evolution my ass!), which he published steganographically in that ridiculous "Origin of Species". Babbage was the first to discover the hidden message when he was reading the book to to figure out why his engine got such bad gas mileage (he later discovered the flaw was that the car hadn't been invented yet, and pouring gasoline into a stationary computing engine wasn't getting him anywhere. But I digress.

Its turtles all the way down.
</sarcasm>

I used to be amazed at how many self-proclaimed geeks didn't know the difference between FreeBSD and Linux. How can you expect regular mortals to know what brand of unix-like subsystem Apple has running under the hood?

I'm a little impressed when non-technical folks know that there's some sort of open source unix behind the pretty Apple curtains, even if they don't get it exactly right.

Just like Richard Stallman says: who cares what they call it, as long as they didn't have to pay for it ;)

Linux drivers?

[naapo]

I wonder how they plan to get the hardware specifications for the necessary drivers from Apple. Booting Linux is not very useful, if you can't access most of the peculiar hardware in the iPhone.

Re:Linux drivers?

[cbrocious]

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.

Re:Linux drivers?

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

I wonder how they plan to get the hardware specifications for the necessary drivers from Apple.

The same way many linux drivers have been written. Reverse engineering.

Apple certainly isn't going to help - I imagine they've got the lawyer cannon trained already.

Re:Linux drivers?

[betterunixthanunix]

After a long enough period of time, yes, they will succeed. 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.

This is the only thing that could make me buy it

[Rikiji7]

If android and a mobile-hacked debian can use every single piece of hardware of it i will get one soon.

Join us now, and free the iPhones

[David Gerard]

It's the GNUphone come to life!

"Really, we're not out to destroy Apple; that will just be a completely unintentional side effect."

Dialing from the command line will be the killer feature. Just type dial voice +1-555-1212 -ntwk verizon -prot cdma2000 -ssh-version 2 -a -l -q -9 -b -k -K 14 -x and away you go. Simple and intuitive!

Re:Join us now, and free the iPhones

[The_Angry_Canadian]

Dont forget that you have to boot the correct kernel depending on what you plan to do. The choices being :

linux_2.6.26_AnwseringMode
linux_2.6.26_DialingMode

Re:Join us now, and free the iPhones

[moonbender]

Stop spreading nonsense! Everybody knows that a kernel maintainer updated his git repository with an experimental patch for the current release. It was all over this obscure mailing list last night -- try to keep up! After recompiling, all you have to do is figure out the right kernel boot parameters and compile and install a user mode daemon. After that, you can choose either answering or dialing mode at will by echo'ing ANSWER or DIAL to /sys/devices/system/phone_mode. Nothing could be easier!

Re:Cool.

[zenwaves]

Now we just need to get android running on it.

Yes, the iPhone OS is clearly too user friendly.

Re:Cool.

[pandrijeczko]

...but so locked down to the point of being programmer unfriendly?

Question:

[Lord Lode]

Is it possible to call people, and send or receive SMS messages, if you put linux on it?

Re:Why we ported Linux OS for iPhone?

[harry666t]

What happened to "because it's fun"?