Linux on iPhones

Dec 01, 2008

Kristian Kissling

A Linux Kernel 2.6 runs on Apple's iPhones (first and second generation) and the iPod Touch (first generation).

The developers of IPhone Linux now included the OpeniBoot bootloader. A readme describes the necessary steps to install OpeniBoot and run Linux on the Apple mobile phones.

The readme warns, however, that you should know something about how an iPhone works before attempting the installation. Otherwise you risk it not booting at all. Apparently the iPhone loads an image in recovery mode that installs the OpeniBoot boot manager.

Note that a number of drivers still don't work. Nand doesn't have write capability yet and there's no WLAN, touch screen support or sound. The modules that do work include the frame buffer and serial drivers. The long-term goal is to introduce Google Android on the iPhone.

Download the data from here, which also includes a video.

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