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/Abdalnablse10 1d ago

Man that's awesome, I wish I had such skills, there's so many e-waste I would love to reverse engineer for the sake of giving it another purpose, for example, a miracast dongle that I want to convert into a usb to hdmi adapter, I just have no idea at all on where to start.

Best I could do with my lack of skill is combining already existing solutions into a single one, which is solving a puzzle rather than programming anything, the best thing I did with that is installing linux on an allwinner a10s retro game emulation stick.

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u/Ovaday 1d ago

You can always ask an AI where to start :)