iPhone Linux

Computers & Mobile Technology

The iPhone dev team, hard at work as usual, announced a successful iPhone Linux port today. It’s still at a very early stage, but the kernel boots on first and second generation iPhones and the first generation iPod touch. A framebuffer driver and a working Busybox installation point to an exciting open source future:

What we have:

– Framebuffer driver
– Serial driver
– Serial over USB driver
– Interrupts, MMU, clock, etc.

What we have in openiboot (but hasn’t been ported yet):

– Read-only support for the NAND

What we don’t have (yet!):

– Write support for the NAND
– Wireless networking
– Touchscreen
– Sound
– Accelerometer
– Baseband support

If you’re a Linux hacker and want to pitch in with the porting process, hop on the #iphonelinux IRC channel at irc.osx86.hu.

iPhone Linux – Official Announcement

It’s just a demo at this point, but if you can’t wait to see this running on your own phone, here’s what you need:
Installation Instructions
iphonelinux-demo.tar.gz

6 thoughts on “iPhone Linux

  1. Justin Ried says:

    I’m really impressed that they managed to create such an elegant and functional bootloader, as much as the Linux port. The amount of talent on that team never ceases to amaze me.

  2. mono says:

    How about its stability?

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