Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

We got Linux on the iPhone, iPad and other idevices

konradybcio.pl

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 181 posts

Re: We got Linux on the iPhone, iPad and other idevices

#31

Post by NeutronStar »

Synaesthesia wrote: post #23
ntoskrnl wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's say I have an iPhone 6 that stopped receiving updates. What do you suggest I do with it: - landfill - install Linux - something else?

Use as an iPod, it's got a headphone jack which is rather nifty, also still works fine as a basic phone, you can have the battery replaced quite cheaply.

And what do I do with my new phone? Just leave it there while I use the older iPhone? No. Realistically you'll use the new phone. The old iPhone is still not going to be used. So what do we do with them now? We install Linux or we just trash it?

Re: We got Linux on the iPhone, iPad and other idevices

#32

Post by extrememacaroni »

fareesh wrote: post #20

I remember being in an IRC regularly 10-12 years ago where there was a community that was semi-active about a project to port android to the iPhone created by David Wang (planetbeing). There were a few builds going around at the time which I tried out. This video had gone somewhat viral at the time which is what sparked my interest. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJj0kHQgC9w . It seems like that project eventually b…

wow that brings back memories. back then android was truly hideous compared to iOS, unless aided by 3rd party launchers.

Re: We got Linux on the iPhone, iPad and other idevices

#33

Post by fareesh »

fathyb wrote: post #22
fareesh wrote: post #20

I remember being in an IRC regularly 10-12 years ago where there was a community that was semi-active about a project to port android to the iPhone created by David Wang (planetbeing). There were a few builds going around at the time which I tried out. This video had gone somewhat viral at the time which is what sparked my interest. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJj0kHQgC9w . It seems like that project eventually b…

I remember flexing my iPhone 3G dual-booting iOS and Android back in high-school. The project was named iDroid: https://www.theiphonewiki.com/wiki/IDroid It taught me to create custom ramdisks and kernels for iDevices, which eventually landed me my first job as a digital forensics SWE.

yep that's the one

Re: We got Linux on the iPhone, iPad and other idevices

#34

Post by fareesh »

extrememacaroni wrote: post #32
fareesh wrote: post #20

I remember being in an IRC regularly 10-12 years ago where there was a community that was semi-active about a project to port android to the iPhone created by David Wang (planetbeing). There were a few builds going around at the time which I tried out. This video had gone somewhat viral at the time which is what sparked my interest. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJj0kHQgC9w . It seems like that project eventually b…

wow that brings back memories. back then android was truly hideous compared to iOS, unless aided by 3rd party launchers.

It was ugly for the longest time but ahead on several features. I remember the iPhone not having copy and paste for what felt like ages. A lot of the good stuff was on Cydia.

Re: We got Linux on the iPhone, iPad and other idevices

#35

Post by captn3m0 »

drexlspivey wrote: post #25
gruturo wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (to counter Apple's in-house planned obsolescence program) iPhones are famous for being supported A LOT longer than almost any other phone. There are manufacturers which abandon you after the 2nd year, and if you buy a model near the end of its sale period, that can mean as little as 13-14 months on a brand new phone. Some iPhones have been, are, or will be supported for 6, 7, even 8 years - which is ridiculously g…

I am still using my 2012 ipad with iOS 9 to watch youtube and Plex

Running iOS8 on my iPad 2 to read books and comics.

Re: We got Linux on the iPhone, iPad and other idevices

#36

Post by refracture »

fartcannon wrote: post #27
sgjohnson wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Batteries are consumable, and there's not a shred of evidence that Apple is purposefully downgrading battery life with updates.

Quoted post unavailable.

To be clear it's not that they 'downgraded' battery life, it's that it throttled power draw (and by extension performance) if the phone determined that the battery could no longer reliably power the device at peak draw.

Apple's failure to communicate this and give users the option to set power draw back to full (with an explanation of consequences) is exactly why they got sued and deserved to lose. It's up front and made clear in the battery settings menu, but it really should not have required a law suit to make that happen, they've nobody but themselves to blame for the perception that they were just being greedy and trying to coerce people into new phones by hobbling existing ones.

I will say on the user experience side I did appreciate that in the aftermath of this we were able to get a new battery in an affected iPhone 6S for free straight from the Apple store. Got some serious mileage out of that phone.

Re: We got Linux on the iPhone, iPad and other idevices

#37

Post by robin_reala »

fartcannon wrote: post #29
neilalexander wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hardly like updates are being released deliberately to worsen battery life. The more features that get added, the more CPU cycles are used therefore battery power is consumed more quickly. This should be a surprise to no one, little less a technical audience like HN. Even the battery throttling saga a couple years ago was largely with good intentions (in that it's better to run the phone a bit slower than it is…

They were sued and lost for exactly this reason. https://www.npr.org/2020/11/18/936268845/apple-agrees-to-pay...

The technical explanation was that CPU speed scaling spikes would exceed the old battery’s ability to supply power, causing the phone to reset. Apple’s decision was that a slower phone was a better user experience than a phone that randomly reset when you tried to do something that required a high CPU frequency.

The upshot of that is that, yes, your phone got slower as it aged due to a software update. The battery life certainly didn’t suffer (if anything it would have improved it slightly). But it’s a little bit more nuanced than “planned obselescence”.

Re: We got Linux on the iPhone, iPad and other idevices

#38

Post by jraph »

woojoo666 wrote: post #6
tmikaeld wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There will be millions of no-longer-supported Apple units out there, it makes sense to give them a second life with Linux rather than throwing them in a landfill. And linux on it would not run Apple apps, it would run Firefox or Chromium.

I think they are just saying if you buy an Apple device to install Linux on it, you are still supporting Apple (including their walled garden approach). Not to mention Apple is constantly fighting against these sorts of hacks so you'll always be playing mouse in their cat-and-mouse game

I completely agree with this line of thinking. That would almost makes me against this kind of projects. However, thinking about the consequences completely flips the coin for me:

- without these projects, Apple will still continue doing whatever they are doing

- I don't expect many people to actually buy a new iThing because of these projects. Maybe they'd buy second hand iThings on which Linux is guaranteed to work. So Apple is not making new money with this

- Yes, they may save some devices from the landfill

- it might show Apple that yes, opening their devices a bit may actually increase their sales (but I would not count on it)

If I ever need a tablet and these projects work out without too many drawbacks, I'd actually probably consider getting a second hand iPad and install Linux on it. At this point I'd rather avoid both Android and iOS. I'd probably look into Pine64's (and other such manufacturers) devices first though.

I hope these projects will help save 2 old iPad 2 sleeping somewhere in my family. These otherwise perfectly capable devices are worthless now just because of one thing: the old version of Safari combined with the fact that Apple forbids browsers with alternative browser engines on these devices. That's so dumb.

And I'd probably prefer using existing devices than buying new ones if possible.

So, yes please, port Linux to the Apple devices!

Re: We got Linux on the iPhone, iPad and other idevices

#39

Post by nerdponx »

bogwog wrote: post #18
Gigachad wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A somewhat newish iPhone would be more powerful than the raspberry pi. And I have got good use out of the pi for hosting game servers for small numbers of users. You can also get old apple devices way cheaper than new equivalent single board computers.

And the iPhone has a built-in touch screen, wifi, bluetooth, two cameras, internal storage, a GPU, a bunch of sensors, a giant battery, physical buttons, speakers, microphone, a giant market for third-party peripherals, cases, chargers, mounts, etc...AND it's way easier to get your hands on an iPhone (especially an old one) than a Raspberry Pi today. Sure, getting everything to work in a Linux port wouldn't be easy,…

I wonder about the implications of running them in an "always-on" configuration. Would it be possible to remove the battery and run them entirely on AC power? If you could do that, you might be able to have some pretty nice low-power home servers.

Re: We got Linux on the iPhone, iPad and other idevices

#40

Post by rtpg »

alistairSH wrote: post #17
rtpg wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So loads of people have testified that using old Androids as long term computing devices just doesn't work cuz the machines can't deal with being on all the time. I wonder if iPhones and the like are any different on this front. Would you be able to build up a little serve farm of these things?

That's kind of weird, since phones are generally on all the time when being actively used. I guess it depends on what active/sleep "modes" are available - ie can Linux on Apple run processes with the screen asleep or whatever. As long as it's plugged in, it should be workable, maybe. But, in my mind, you wouldn't try to build a server farm out of 5+ year old iPads. Instead, you'd continue to use them as consumption d…

I believe what people have said is that the components can’t handle continuous use (instead of basically idling on user input). Even when being in use for the most part these machines just are rendering some textures onto the screen and the cpu is not doing much
Post reply on HN