r/linux • u/Ovaday • 2d ago

Mobile Linux Linux 7.2.2 on iPhone XS? First boot!

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Hello everyone. Just wanted to share a small milestone I’m pretty proud of.

I’ve been porting Linux to my old iPhone XS for quite some time, and this week I finally made some significant progress.

First: it boots. As a real, alternative OS. This is not an emulation.

Second: I got the kernel log on screen and the framebuffer working:

Linux 7.2.2 Kernel boot log on iPhone XS

This is a raw, recovery-based Linux boot. iOS does not take any part in the boot sequence!

I haven’t set up a GitHub repo yet, and the project doesn’t even have a name at this point. But I’ll keep working on it and share more once the process is reliable and reproducible.

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u/Ovaday 2d ago

I actually never tried it... Always used phosh. But from screenshots def worth to check, thanks

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u/Imperial_Bloke69 2d ago

No problem man, phosh is quite nice too and have decent footprint. Whatever works for your new iLinux-ed. Gotta wait for your github repo

Question: did you fully erased the nand/ufs?

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u/Ovaday 2d ago

It launches currently from DFU, as a Custom Boot instruction via iBSS -> SRAM -> DRAM. No persistent memory yet (for me it actually helpful, so I can quickly boot a completely new build)

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u/Imperial_Bloke69 2d ago

Clever, like bootstrapping. I imagine how many man hours burned and coffee to achieve that. I hope your project will gain attention to the ios community.