Jailbreaking their iOS device allows iPhone users to run several tweaks and modifications not available on stock devices. Now one jailbreaker has installed the Ubuntu operating system on his jailbroken iPhone 7.
The experiment was shared by the user identified as “newhacker1746” on Reddit. The user says the device used in the experiment was an iPhone 7 that was no longer working due to issues with its internal storage. So, the user decided to attempt to install another operating system on the device, using a USB Ethernet connection.
As noted by 9to5Mac, the process requires the jailbreak tool checkra1n, which is based on the unpatchable hardware exploit “checkm8.” Also, the kernel used to run Ubuntu on the iPhone isn’t compatible with other iPhone chips beside the A10 Fusion used in the iPhone 7.
it was a long and complicated process, but the user finally pulled off running the arm64 version of Ubuntu 20.04 (a popular Linux distribution) on the iPhone, as seen in the video below.
After a really long and complicated process, the user successfully managed to run the arm64 version of Ubuntu 20.04 (a popular Linux distribution) on the iPhone. The result can be seen in the video below, which shows the operating system booting up in Command Line mode on the phone:
Sure, this isn’t usable for most iPhone owners – and we advise against jailbreaking your iPhone – but it’s cool to see what folks can do using their jailbroken devices.
If you’re an expert user with an old iPhone 7 laying around, you can find the instructions for running Ubuntu on iPhone 7 in this Reddit post.