Fedora on iPOD/iPhone

df81 · #1 24th May 2008, 07:28 PM

I just installed Fedora yesterday and haven't used Linux in several years. I was amazed to find out you can boot from a USB drive, which leads to my question here.

Has anyone done or know of this being done or tried?

I want to install Fedora on my iPOD since I can use my iPOD as a USB drive, so I'm curious if we can do that, I'm probably gonna screw my iPOD up when I get home but I'm gonna give it a shot. If no one has done it before, I'll post my failure on here for good measure.

I think that would be so convenient to have my phone, mp3 player and virtual computer all in one item. That would be well worth the $300 for the phone and embarrassment of being an iPhone owner.

A.Serbinski · #2 26th May 2008, 04:41 PM

You should be able to STORE fedora on it, but you most definitely will NOT be able to run it from the phone. The hardware is simply not compatible.

For running linux on apple portables, see the following:
ipodlinux.org (somewhat functional)
iphonelinux.org (planning stage)

A better alternative may be to wait for an ALP powered smartphone (like the upcoming samsung i800 supposed to be this summer -- also supports access garnet/palmos5 applications), or an openmoko smartphone.

Shadowofthesun · #3 26th May 2008, 09:53 PM

You can run ipodlinux, but AFAIK you can't run fedora or any other full-fledged OS. A.Serbinski is right, the architectures are like night and day/

clearer · #4 26th May 2008, 10:14 PM

Why would you want to try to run a desktopcentricish operating system on a device like an ipod anyway?

df81 · #5 27th May 2008, 08:39 AM

I'm either not clear on what you guys are telling me, or my intent is not clear.

I want to use an iPOD/iPHONE in USB Storage mode to boot a CPU from as if it was a flash drive. That's not possible? I didn't get around to trying it, I had a lot of work to do.

Example: I'm on the train to school, I'm listening to my favorite music. I get to school, plug my iPOD into my CPU and boot Fedora.

My assumption is that if I can use it as a flash drive, I should be able to install the Fedora to it and boot from it.

How I'm reading your responses is that I can't use my phone as a hand-held computer. If that's not the case, then thank you for stopping me from ruining my iPod.

Shadowofthesun · #6 27th May 2008, 04:20 PM

Ah, it appears that we all misunderstood you then.

Yes, you can use your ipod as a flash drive. You should be able to boot from it, but only if the computer's BIOS supports it (mine does not). Make sure you install the image from the command line in order to ensure that you do not overwrite any of your music files.

What the rest of us were saying is that you could not run fedora off of your ipod (instead we suggested ipodlinux) because of differing architectures.

df81 · #7 28th May 2008, 06:04 PM

Awesome, thanks for the information.

I guess I just wasn't very clear in the initial post. I was a bit worried though, because I consulted an Apple rep who warned me that doing this may somehow void my warranty. Though, I don't know why it would, because the product is supposed to function as a flash drive as well, so it's not like I'm doing anything to it that it's not supposed to do right? Maybe I should consult someone other then some kid at the store though.

A.Serbinski · #8 28th May 2008, 07:52 PM

Does it function as a standard flash drive? Or does it use a proprietary protocol (which I would strongly suspect, knowing apple)? If the latter is the case, then even if your bios supports booting from USB, then it still will not be able to read data from your device.

df81 · #9 28th May 2008, 08:25 PM

oh really? I'll have to look into that.