User successfully runs Ubuntu on a jailbroken iPhone 7

The jailbreak process lets users run several tweaks and other iOS modifications, but one user recently decided to go further and install the Ubuntu operating system on an iPhone. The experiment was shared by the user identified as “newhacker1746” on Reddit.

According to the user, the iPhone 7 used during the process was no longer working due to a problem in its internal storage. That’s when the user decided to try installing another operating system on the device through a USB ethernet connection.

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 doesn’t seem to be compatible with other chips besides A10 Fusion, so it needs to be done on an iPhone 7.

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:

Although this may not be useful for most users, it’s always interesting to see what jailbreak enables on Apple devices. As noted by iDownloadBlog, which first spotted the experiment, developers have also managed to run the Android operating system on an iPhone 7 using checkra1n.

If you are an expert user, the instructions for running Ubuntu on iPhone 7 can be found in this Reddit post.