It's possible to boot Linux on the iPhone but not much more, yet.
Over the Thanksgiving Holidays, an iPhone developer, who identifies himself as “planetbeing”, said he hacked the Apple smartphone to ran Linux on it.
While this is quite an accomplishment – even at this early stage where most of the iPhone’s functions like the touchscreen are still not accessible under Linux - I fail to find it useful for consumers who will certainly not hack their iPhone, other than unlocking or “jailbreak” it, for fear of not being able to use it as their primary phone.
Besides, despite being a closed platform, the iPhone operating system is a very capable one, fairly stable and is, by the way, Linux too!
Planetbeing and others efforts will eventually make it possible to run Google’s Android on the iPhone.
But some said this endeavour is a waste time; Taiwanese hardware maker FIC‘s Openmoko is an open source phone hardware platform much easier to work with. At first I agreed until I remember all the unnecessary things – too many and embarrassing to list them here – I have done out of pure interest, joy or passion. So despite the iPhone Linux immediate impracticality, more power to you, planetbeing.
One more thing, why Linux on the iPhone? Because we CAN!
Planetbeing demonstration video of how to install Linux on the iPhone follows:
