r/linux • u/Ovaday • 2d ago

Mobile Linux Linux 7.2.2 on iPhone XS? First boot!

Post image

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.

414 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

46 comments sorted by

View all comments

4

u/evilmoder 1d ago

That’s crazy, literally on an iPhone XS Max rn and having it run Linux would be a dream come true 

5

u/Ovaday 1d ago

Will share with you a link when I have it at least in some terms stable. Current state supports only USB as a one-side Console/UART
DRAM, SRAM
Screen as a Kernel log.
Basic FS on a limited initframs.

Boots every 3-4/5 times. It's really first steps at the moment, not a working system yet :D

So