Someone managed to get Ubuntu to run on an iPhone 7

By Oliver Haslam
published

Cydia ơn the iPhone
Cydia ơn the iPhone (Image credit: iMore)

What you need to know

  • One Reddit user has been able to get Ubuntu up and running on their iPhone 7.

Being able to take software and run it on a device that wasn't supposed to ever run it is something that people have enjoyed doing for years. The latest example is one Reddit user who managed to make Ubuntu run, surprisingly well, on an old iPhone 7.

What's more, that iPhone 7 couldn't actually run iOS because of a hardware failure. But apparently, Ubuntu is no problem at all. iDownloadBlog was the first to spy the Reddit post (opens in new tab).

Redditor newhacker1746 says that the iPhone can even go ahead and mount filesystems and whatnot, just like a real computer.

To be honest, I felt a lot of pride in using Linux for one of its classic purposes: repurposing otherwise-unusable devices. This iPhone would never be able to boot iOS again, as its nvme nand is completely dead. Yet, it boots Linux and mounts a filesystem over USB ethernet no problem!

This is all made possible thanks to the checkra1n jailbreak and the person behind this feat of madness explains more about how it all went down on Reddit (opens in new tab). Sure, this might not be something most people are going to set about doing – but it's pretty high up on my list of cool things people have done with old, busted iPhones!

Oliver Haslam
Oliver Haslam
Contributor

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too.

Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.