A hacker managed to get Ubuntu up and running on an iPhone 7

newhacker1746 recently posted on Reddit about his attempt to get Ubuntu up and running on a jailbroken iPhone 7. The iPhone in question was jailbroken using Checkra1n, a procedure power users do to add in additional functionality to iOS. But newhacker1746 decided to take things several steps further by running a desktop OS (albeit in command line mode).

iPhone critics have often pointed to iOS's locked-down nature as a limitation. Initially, newhacker1746 was only able to get the Ubuntu CLI running. However, in a new update, the Redditor showcased the Ubuntu GUI functioning on his iPhone. Somewhat astonishingly, resolution scaling seems to work fine in portrait mode on the iPhone 7, and newhacker1746 posted the update on his progress from Firefox, on his iDevice. 

While this is an interesting achievement, it's important to moderate expectations. For starters, the Checkra1n exploit does not support newer iPhone models. If you have an iPhone 12, 11, or X series device, this hack will not work. Even if you do have an older iDevice, you'll likely void your warranty (if it still applies) and run the risk of bricking your device. Without further details from newhacker1746, we're also unclear about the extent of driver support, include GPU drivers.