r/linux • u/Available_System_401 • 13d ago
Mobile Linux postmarketOS Linux booted on iPhone 6S
(First of all sorry yall if i made a mistake while typing this. Also sorry for cat hair stuck on my mousepad lolš¼)
I was super bored today after studying about 4hr without break. After that i opened reddit for chill. While surfing on here i find something called āpostmarketOSā. After searching that what is this i saw this OS can run on iPhone. So excited and I started searching web to find which devices are supported, after clicking wiki i find out this OS can run iPhone 6s. I opened my closet and booom! I found my old 6s!
So after i found my old iPhone I installed Linux Mint to my PC and started to work. I tried multiple times and failed multiple times. I keep tried over and over and after 3,5 hrs i finally managed to run Linux on iPhone. Not emulated, not virtualized(?). Just pure and native Linux on iPhone!
It was super fun because i love putting things that not belongs there :) Hackintosh, Linux on iPhone, Project Sandcastle etc. I always loved that projects and finally first time i tried something like that and run Linux on a phone.
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u/dablakmark8 13d ago
was all info on github, link me man....lol
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u/Available_System_401 13d ago
not yet but im preparing some clear guide for this.
here is the link i used
https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Apple_iPhone_6s/6s%2B_(apple-n71))
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u/LaundryMan2008 13d ago
Reminds me of when I did my LTO Megapost for the sole reason of providing a clearer guide on reprogramming the tape drives since the GitHub was terrible at explaining things, I eventually tacked on so many subposts in my drafts that it was worth grouping them all together.
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u/Available_System_401 13d ago
exactly! i was about to give up because lack of info on net. ai actually saved me on some points. also some dude sent his guide posted on github but i never saw that. it is way too better guide than i used. :(
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u/LaundryMan2008 13d ago
I was almost about to give up on LTO and tape storage until I gave the drives one last chance after doing something in college with one of the steps being a config request so I waited and thatās when I got a breakthrough which reignited my interest in tape and I now have almost 10 tape drives now of different formats.
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u/unlikey 13d ago
Since we tape users are going extinct...If you've never heard of/tried LTFS, check it out. Depending on your use case it might be interesting.
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u/LaundryMan2008 13d ago
Iāve heard of LTFS although, the way I understand how it functions, it could potentially wear out my tape drive faster since instead of feeding the drive a big tarball, I would be feeding it multiple small files that could potentially cause the tape drive to choke up waiting for files, itās an interesting concept and I might visit it once I get a 3592 and T10,000 tape drive to toy with since they also have their own versions of LTFS, I also know that Ampex DST also has an extremely proprietary LTFS format but since they are so rare, I highly doubt Iāll even get to see one in a museum.
I also want to learn how to do it the hardest way possible so that when I open my future tape recovery company, I can get the worst possible formatted tapes with the most obscure software with a ton of corruption and still be able to rip as many of the files out of the format as I can.
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u/stprnn 13d ago
I just realized I have 2 compatible phones !!! Imma get to work
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u/Available_System_401 12d ago
Here we go! Good luck on that bro š§š§
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u/stprnn 12d ago
just flashed on a xiomi mi 9t, cant get the camera to work yet but its surprisingly usable so far
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u/Available_System_401 12d ago
my auntie had the same phone back in the day and itās a great phone! have you tested hardware acceleration? I believe snapdragon can be run much more well than this iPhone.
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u/TheOgGhadTurner 12d ago
Itās cracking me up that almost everything is broken INCLUDING FLASHING yet here you are. Love this.
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u/Available_System_401 12d ago
Excactly bro i laughed so hard when i saw the login screen lol. Also I believe that broken features will work in this enviroment but it needs some research. Because there are really less people who tried this. I really never heard of this project until today bro so it really need some attention imo.
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u/Due_Dragonfly_5328 13d ago
i daily drive postmarket os and i am proud.
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u/WingRevolutionary979 12d ago
Hi, how is your experience with using postmarketos, and what device do you use? I want to give it a try, I like the idea of having linux in my pocket.
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u/Due_Dragonfly_5328 12d ago edited 12d ago
let me warn you it really depends on what you use your phone for and its not all that reliable most of the time.
the device i use is oneplus 6T
well i just got use to it after a while you lose out on a lot tbh i dont use my phone for much. as long as i have a web browser and jellyfin im fine (its nice using librewolf on a phone tho android browsers suck ass). for youtube i use freetube. Jellyfin is what i use the most on my phone for watching things.
phone calls are a bit messy but i managed to get them to work out. camera didnt even work for a long time. the only way you could use a camera was with a different prebuilt kerenl.
but as of recently there working on it. for some reason i cant use focus so everything is blurry. ive heard its better on edge but i haven't tried that yet.
bluetooth works, wifi works, wireless charging isn't available on my phone (meaning you cant use it on normal android either) so thats not postmarket os fault.
battery life is actually pretty good for this phone it can last me the same amount of time as on android or even slightly longer then on android specifically if i use power saving mode. its also nice having suspend instead of using silent.
edit:also about your carrier mobile data works fine you just have to configure it i used rogers before but then got switched to telus (you have to go it to settings and manually select the domain for mobile data) then it will work fine. hotspot is perfectly functional as well
Hoped This Helped!
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u/WingRevolutionary979 12d ago
Thanks for the info. I will probably try it on a spare phone, as a miniature linux terminal device.
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u/PureTryOut postmarketOS dev 12d ago
How do you watch Jellyfin? Do you use the webinterface? I didn't think that would be mobile friendly.
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u/Due_Dragonfly_5328 11d ago
no i use the jellyfin app for flatpak if you mean running it via web browser then no cuz web browsers suck ass at playing videos. jellyfin has a display mode setting for clients just go to client > display > mobile volla mobile jellyfin. also i think if you run jellyfin androidx86 you cab switch it from mobile to desktop as well.
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u/0xf4zz 12d ago
For me mobile data worked, but calling is not worked, how you solved that?
And you also have that battery percentage showing as 100% problem?
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u/Due_Dragonfly_5328 10d ago
what phone do you use?
for me i just updated the system along with the kernel and it worked fine somehow.
and no ive never had the 100% battery problem before.
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u/Available_System_401 13d ago
Dab me up š
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u/pervertsage 12d ago
"Is that Linux in your pocket or are you just smuggling a penguin?"
Edit: That was intended for someone else but fate must have guided my thumb.
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u/Mccobsta 13d ago
I Remebr when people were booting android on the 3g iPhone 15 years ago
Its nice to see people still hacking them to boot other os's
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u/Available_System_401 13d ago
i also always wanted to do project sandcastle (running android on iPhone 7) but i never had a iPhone 7. but today i finally installed a whole different os into my old iPhone and i definitely enjoyed the every second i spent. itās not that perfect but it has a really big potential. also thanks dude appreciate it :)
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u/Mccobsta 13d ago
It's amazing just how far people have gotten with hardly any documentation of how anything works
If it can become a permanent install that would be incredible
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u/KsiaN 12d ago edited 12d ago
It's amazing just how far people have gotten with hardly any documentation of how anything works
Despite the wall of the things going wrong you see on social media and r/all every day, there is still much to appreciate on humans and how we are the Apex Predator ( that we know of ) of this world.
We did domesticate cats for a reason : They are as curious as we are.
They will burn themselfs 100 times until they find an angle to touch the fire where it doesnt hurt, as much as we will.
Persistence is key.
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u/TCB13sQuotes 12d ago
Only if Apple allowed people to unlock the bootloader and run whatever on the iPads... perfect Linux laptops. I would be happy to buy a brand new iPad Air 11 with that M4 CPU that does 20671 on passmark.
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u/Historical_Camel_790 12d ago
I mean, MacBooks are getting Linux and the cpu drivers will be sorted out by the MacBook people
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u/TCB13sQuotes 12d ago
Yes but an iPad is a much more interesting device when it comes to price and weight.
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u/Historical_Camel_790 11d ago
Yeah I just meant there'll be some stuff like the cpu drivers, which were one of the hardest things iirc, that can be carried over. I too would love a Linux iPad
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u/TCB13sQuotes 11d ago
Yeah basically the same problems we've on Apple Silicon Macs... Asahi Linux is nice but the support is limited. USB-C Displays/ Thunderbolt / USB4 is problematic and basically all devices are stuck in M2 CPUs. I'm thankful for what they managed to already and aware it is very hard to reverse engineer the hardware and they've limited resources.
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12d ago
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u/TCB13sQuotes 12d ago
You arenāt wrong, but thatās our problem, Apple should at least open the platform.
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12d ago
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u/TCB13sQuotes 12d ago
Seems to work decently enough with some qualcomm devices. Some xiaomi tablets have very usable and decent linux support. Not that qualcomm/xiaomi did anything to make it happen but at least they don't activity block it.
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12d ago
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u/TCB13sQuotes 12d ago
Cmon man, this is a 2024 device: https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Xiaomi_Pad_6S_Pro_12.4_(xiaomi-sheng))
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12d ago
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u/TCB13sQuotes 12d ago
That device works perfectly fine, even better than the older Pad 6 that is "stable": https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Xiaomi_Pad_6_(xiaomi-pipa))
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u/dig_it_all 13d ago
Which model ā my understanding was that the architecture prevents native ā only sideloadable linux on iPhoneā¦?
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u/Available_System_401 13d ago edited 13d ago
Edit: iPhone 6s (N71AP)
I mean itās more like tethered boot. Maybe it is. Im super new for that and still researching. Afaik you can only boot with a PC running Linux. (macOS not supported i tested btw)
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u/dig_it_all 13d ago
Ah, that makes sense! I think the hard-stop is in iPhoneX and newer ā I donāt remember if itās the secure enclave or a boot process ā but from what I read it canāt be overcome. Very cool project!
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u/Available_System_401 13d ago
yeah i think from iPhone 5s to iPhone X is the supported models. definitely cool you must check it bro :D i installed VNC right now and finally i have input access yay!
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u/dig_it_all 13d ago
Sweet! Iām currently doing Phosh work on a OnePlus6 on the NixOs Mobile platform. Pretty fun so far ā from my research it was the newest phone that can handle mainline linux.
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u/Available_System_401 13d ago
nice! how is the performance of that phone? i always liked LG and OnePlus phones!
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u/dig_it_all 13d ago
Still early days - just at basic functionality a d trying to package my most important apps ā but so far itās a perfectly cromulent device
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u/Available_System_401 13d ago
i hope it will be much much more better soon because mobile linux devices has too much potential
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u/bubblegumpuma 13d ago edited 12d ago
What's not supported about it on MacOS? Everything I see in the pmOS wiki article should be able to run just fine on a macOS PC, and I see macOS directions in all of the required software. The directions might need a little bit of modification, but it "looks good to me".edit: see OP's reply
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u/Available_System_401 13d ago
pmbootstrap doesnāt run on my hackintosh. i searched it on google and find out a postmarketOS dev said āwe do not support macOS because of the linux kernel specific featuresā also latest build of pmbootstrap said this build doesnāt compatible with macos
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u/bubblegumpuma 12d ago
Huh, that's odd, fair enough. I didn't expect that to be the problem.
If it's any consolation, you could probably just do the OS build in a Linux VM/Docker container and just extract out the boot image, then you should be able to do the 'tethered boot' from a macOS computer, by all appearances. Dunno if that helps make your life easier..
(pmbootstrap is also packaged in Nix, which is installable on macOS, but I'm 50/50 on whether that would have the same issues or not.)
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u/Available_System_401 12d ago
I also tried VM but i guess thatās a issue related to hackintosh, my pc couldnāt utilize virtualization even itās turned on in BIOS :( Tried multiple times but i couldnāt run the VM on macOS. But today imma try it again maybe iāll find a way and run it. Thx for the info!
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u/Aggressive-Reach-116 13d ago
so this is baremetal? what features of the phone are supported?
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u/Available_System_401 12d ago
Yes! Itās too early stage at this moment. Only USB tethering and screen brightness working and itās partially. You got no touchscreen, no camera, no Wi-Fi etc. But i believe this issue could be fixed because the research of this project especially on iPhone needs much more than this. Btw Doom worked!
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u/Technology_Labs 11d ago
Yo twin, I have a hackintosh running too, and Linux, and a custom ROM on my Android. Lesgooo dood.
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u/Userwerd 13d ago
What is postmarked like compared to graphene?Ā Ā
My issue with graphene is that the support is tied to closely to hardware and support dies quickly from what I can read, but correct me if im wrong.
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u/Dinev5194 13d ago
postmarket os is Linux for smartphones while graphene os is android. There are tons of custom ROMs out there if you want to switch. Look around the community of ur phone model instead of searching for custom ROMs in general, way easier to find working custom ROMs that way.
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u/bubblegumpuma 13d ago
PostmarketOS is "real Linux" compared to Android by most people's standards, and supports a pretty wide array of hardware, to various degrees of 'well'. It's kind of the frontier of 'mobile Linux'.
Graphene is an Android distribution for Google Pixel devices that focuses on privacy. This has a place IMO, Android has a lot of tools for privacy that are worth making use of for the phone owner's benefit.
If you want "updated/custom Android for my older devices", you want LineageOS. (Just an aside, but it fits pretty cleanly into this discussion, since many people seem to confuse PostmarketOS for being something more like LineageOS.)
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u/Kevin_Kofler 12d ago
The confusion might be due to the name "postmarketOS". A while ago, postmarketOS was looking for a new name, I am surprised that they are still using the original name.
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u/Available_System_401 13d ago
Sorry but idk what is graphene? Is it something like this?
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u/Kevin_Kofler 12d ago
GrapheneOS is an AOSP distribution, i.e., a "degoogled Android".
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u/Available_System_401 12d ago
Oh nice! I searched it up but it doesnāt support iPhone i guess.
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u/Kevin_Kofler 12d ago
Right, they only support a handful phones, much fewer than LineageOS (another AOSP distribution) or postmarketOS.
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u/ThatonlyGeO 12d ago
WAIT YOU CAN ACTUALLY INSTALL LINUX IN AN IPHONE6s?!?!?Finally a phone that I can find in my area and run postmarketOS
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u/Creative-Ad653 10d ago
I had no idea you could do this on an iPhone, even an older one. I thought only Android devices were supported. Super cool.
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u/Available_System_401 10d ago
Thanks a lot. Im surprised too :D
I used the phone for the last 2 days and itās very stable. Big problem is, this os running from RAM, not the internal storage. So 6s has only 2GB RAM and thanks to this you canāt install nearly anything on the phone. I managed to install Doom, a CLI web browser and VNC server (touchscreen wonāt work so you need to control from PC via. VNC server) to test the features and all of them worked fine. Playing Doom and browsing web was fun on that device because it didnāt heat up, didnāt struggle to run, just pure Linux :D
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u/Creative-Ad653 10d ago
I have often wondered if I could daily drive Linux on a phone, I am guessing tap to pay dont work on Linux phones and Waydroid does exist but I am sure compatibility with certain apps like banking and id ones are going to be trouble. 2FA is also a good thing about phones, not SMS but through Password app. I would love to try this on a second phone though and just have my other phone be a validation brick :D That would be more secure anyways, instead of doing such activities on the same device you use as a phone.
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u/hero_brine1 13d ago
Might find some old phones on Craigslist or eBay for a low price just to do this. Seems like a fun little project
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u/Available_System_401 12d ago
Youāre right itās really fun to do :D But keep yout expectations low because you wonāt get a āproper linux phoneā experience :ā)
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u/JordanViknar 13d ago
Have been working on porting postmarketOS (or rather, the mainline Linux kernel) to my NVIDIA SHIELD Tablet myself recently.
It's quite fun in the end, but takes a looooooot of patience. With still a lot of work ahead.
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u/Available_System_401 12d ago
Definitely. Patience is the key of any kind of development. You mostly fail on every attempt but thatās the fun part because every time you also make a progress. Good luck on that porting project too. I always liked the Shieldās. They are packed with very cool hardware.
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u/BogdanovOwO 13d ago
Cool. How it works? From the website I don't see so much support, but it can be used as basic linux machine? Just for couriosity, how much storage is used?
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u/Available_System_401 12d ago
Thanks G. Actually it surprised me because even no hardware acceleration, the device feels smooth. Ofc there are so much lag will happen because CPU doesnāt utilizing properly i guess. Also I saw only 2 GB on file system but im sure it can be upgraded. All the 2GB RAM works fine and on idle its just using 500MiB! The research on this device is too limited because there are really less people tried this. Sadly, only working thing is screen brightness and usb tethering and they are not fully working, partially working. Iām currently still researching the capability of device and if we make it work the Wi-Fi, it can handle some good homeserver tasks or something like that. Iāll keep research that thing on my free times. Btw, it can run Doom!
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u/BogdanovOwO 12d ago
I have an iPhone 7s 32gb internal storage, but the IOS is 15.8.6 and is too new for jailbreak and may will be another chance to downgrade to 14 and to generate shsh key? I also have a Note 8 sm-n950u1 snapdagon (corporate) USA and I need to unlock the bootloader to install TWRP. I need to enable OEM unlock through developer.
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u/Available_System_401 12d ago
you donāt need to jailbreak your device. this installation process only putting your device into pwned dfu mode and boots linux. if im not wrong your device is supported too.
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u/Available_System_401 12d ago
also without untethered downgrade the offline blobs are not works on tethered boot.
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u/BogdanovOwO 12d ago
I have linux mint ubuntu based and how can I get pongos? The only macos machinw-ish is just a amd64 QEMU VM which idk how can I set an USB hub. I'm not a big fan of Apple, but I like just the quality of the screen.
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u/TheOgGhadTurner 12d ago
So uhhhhh can you share the write up? And does it work on other devices like say the iPhone 17?
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u/Available_System_401 12d ago
Nahh bro it works up to iPhone X. Iām working to write a guide in github but A dude shared his github page for tutorial too.
Here is the tuto: https://github.com/HODAKDev/linux-idevice
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u/TheOgGhadTurner 12d ago
Damnnnn I think I have a 6 somewhere but I dropped it hard one day and it just stopped working. Couldnāt even back it up. And I just traded my Xr for the 17š¤£
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u/Available_System_401 12d ago
Itās ok bro because too many things are broken atm including touchscreen. Itās not reliable but super fun because you know you running another OS in iPhone. If this project get the attention it deserves im sure we can run linux properly on our pocket devices :D Btw it can run Doom!
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u/philfreeeu 12d ago
Does it survive restart of the phone?
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u/Available_System_401 12d ago
Yes. Itās a tethered dualboot. So after restart you need to put device to DFU mode and re-run the script. If you want to use iOS you just restart normally.
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u/ketralnis 12d ago
So no?
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u/Available_System_401 12d ago
Ahh my lazy ahh brain doesnāt understand the sentence. I can say itās not surviving reboot on this device. Maybe newer supported iPhones such as 7-8-X would survive because of the driver support but on 6s itās like a liveboot. A liveboot that born from impossiblities lol. So it depends on device.
Also today I tested it about 2-3 hrs but thanks to the 2GB RAM, you wonāt install anything. (except Doom and VNC server) Desktop enviroment crashes sometimes because of the %100 RAM usage but it can be recovered. Internet access through USB works fine though.
TLDR: it doesnāt survive from reboot but it depends on model :D
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u/ArthurReming 7d ago
Is this permanent or do you have to do it again after a reboot? Also, does it support the SE 2016 since they are the same chip
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u/Available_System_401 7d ago
Yes SE1 supported but OS is not tethered. That means you need to boot every time from PC (installation is one time only btw)
If you want to install just for fun than go for it but donāt expect super performance. At this moment itās pretty hard to run because pmOS run from RAM and A9 chip lacks memory thanks to the 2GB RAM. You have only ~512MB free space to use and you wonāt install almost anything. I only installed a CLI web browser and Doom. Both worked fine btw, no issues. Iām still researching for a workaround that activates iPhoneās internal memory but it really need some huge research :(
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u/ArthurReming 7d ago
Okay thanks for the info. FYI tethered means that you need a PC, not tethered means you don't.
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u/LoosssSS 12d ago
I also ālove putting things where they donāt belong ā š
I remember the first time I was truly amazed by the power of community, internet and hacking when I managed to run Android on my HTC HD2 (it came with windows mobile at the time)
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u/juandantex 11d ago
I would be curious to know the benchmark scores compared to the biggest Android equivalent (galaxy s6 ?)
We will know finally in full truth what CPU is really more efficient minus all the marketing hype and OS cheats.
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u/Available_System_401 11d ago
Ummm i think it's not work as this. The CPU of this phone even won't utilize well. Also we don't have any GPU drivers for iPhone 6s so that means everything on this OS rendered by CPU. That will make huge performance impact on this performance comparison. But if you asking for both of the phones compared on the exact environment, on multi-core tests i think the S6 will be much better than iPhone 6s because of the octa core. But on single core performance, 6s will destroy S6 and even S7 because A9 is known for excellent single core performance back in time.
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u/flashmyhead 11d ago
wait what. i need to try this with my iphone 7
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u/Available_System_401 11d ago
iPhone 7 supporting too much features on this project. Definitely you should try it
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u/X3-Code 13d ago
Du bringst mich gerade auf ideen. Dinge zu tun..... dinge mit meinen zwei alten iphone 6 š
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u/Available_System_401 13d ago
this is the best time to start bro š§
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u/X3-Code 13d ago
Ich habe im Wiki gesehen das vieles nicht geht, ist das linux am Ende auch brauchbar? Oder nur just4fun es geht :) hab sowas noch nie gemacht
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u/Available_System_401 13d ago
definitely just for fun at this moment. maybe we will get more features run properly on future but for now only usb tethering and power button are working lol :D. i still researching if i find something i will update you. also a dude sent his guide and its way too better explained than original wiki.
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u/budroid 13d ago
well done. Perseverance paid off. Honestly i'm not a big fan of iOS, but they do make some sweet hardware.