Users can run numerous tweaks and other iOS changes using the jailbreak process, but one user recently opted to go further to install the Ubuntu operating system on an iPhone. A person listed as “newhacker1746” on Reddit shared the experiment.
According to the user, the iPhone 7 used during the process was no longer running because of an issue in its internal storage. That’s why, via a USB ethernet connection, the user decided to try installing another operating system on the phone.
The method includes the jailbreak checkra1n tool, which is based on the “checkm8” unpatchable hardware exploit. Also, the kernel used to run Ubuntu on the iPhone does not seem to be compatible with other processors besides A10 Fusion, so it needs to be performed on an iPhone 7.
The user successfully managed to run the arm64 version of Ubuntu 20.04 (a popular Linux distribution) on the iPhone after a very long and complicated process. You can see the result in the video below, which shows the operating system booting on the phone in Command-Line mode:
Although this may not be helpful for most consumers, it’s still fun to see what Apple devices enable for jailbreak. Developers have also managed to run the Android operating system on an iPhone 7 using checkra1n, as reported by iDownloadBlog, which first spotted the experiment.
If you are an expert user, the instructions for running Ubuntu on iPhone 7 can be found in this Reddit post.