IPhone Linux

[vimeo 2373142]

Embedded above is a demo video of an iPhone running a Linux 2.6 kernel. The iphone-dev team has created a new bootloader called OpeniBoot. The bootloader lets you boot into a Linux console, which you can talk to over a USB serial device. They’ve got busybox working, but there is no touchscreen support yet. The instructions are not that difficult and include how to back up your settings. It works on first and second gen iPhones and first gen iPod Touch. This is a very early port, but the future is wide open… Android iPhone?

22 thoughts on “IPhone Linux

  1. Wait, so you end up with an iPhone with no touch screen? Doesn’t the thing only have 1 physical button? As much as I love linux (run it myself), I hope to god you are good at morse code ;)

  2. I think the point here, is that its now possible to run linux on the iphone. whatever the support it has now, even later, shouldn’t make this hack useless.

    The people who’ll be interested in this kind of hack in the early stages won’t really want to be messing around typing commands into a small touchscreen interface to gain progress, hence the usb serial interface they’re using.

    Of course touch screen support will come, eventually, thats just a matter of time but I’d really want and expect it to be solid before the mass jump in and start to brick their iphones.

  3. What are peoples obsession with Adroid? it’s a lame ass Java platform running atop of Linux.

    There are “other” Linux devices out there that… OMG! allow native code!

    Piss off your Java fanatics.

  4. Aircrack on the iphone would be cool. I have the Japanese knockoff so it doesn’t really matter to me; I also don’t use a cell phone so double dukers.

    Also it only does implementation and dictionary attacks on WEP and WPA so instruction speed doesn’t matter(no significant AP is going to use a common word or words for a key(s).

  5. This opens whole new world on iPhone, but as stated above at it’s current form it’s pretty useless, but you must start from somewhere.

    So, gratz on success and I hope you get touch screen working and get iPhone to run all our favorite apps :-)

  6. Well they should be able to get it to work seeing’s that just tonight i found somthing new and cool on my jailbroken iphone there’s a vmac emulator that acctually uses the touchscreen yes running old old school mac os on my iphone and uses the touch screen so ya if they can do that than this shouldnt be as hard as we all think.

  7. Bravo!
    I have already tired dealing with the huge,slow iPhone OS!!!
    It is really a good news!
    It ‘s for me to have a full-function linux console…
    Hopeing eagerly…
    (I a Chinese and i know that my English is really poor…so please forgive me…)
    鄙人早已厭倦iphone那累贅般的系統。
    這真是一個好消息~
    余僅僅需要一個全功能的linux命令行…
    嚴重期待ing
    :)

  8. Would love to start developing for this.. just too bad that I can’t open the iphonelinux.org anymore :/
    Anyone here who knows if that is temporary or permanent?

    Cheers.

  9. @TJHooker: My understanding is that the Marvell wireless chip in the iPhone can’t do monitor mode, let alone monitor mode with injection.
    Breaking WEP isn’t *that* cpu intensive, but it would probably be better on a device that small and power-hungry already to either use the GPU as a coprocessor or offload some/all of the actual cracking to another machine, possibly via the 3g cell wireless.
    The reason I don’t think it can do monitor/injection is that the ZipIt can’t, and it is claimed to have the same chipset.

  10. Great ap – may try boot loader – I do know one of the electrical engineers who worked on the i phone – and developed a tight linux system at the pocket rocket linux site – more phones, handhelds, PDA and tablets running more OS’s is a good thing unless yer name is Gates

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