[HN Gopher] Have an old iPad lying around? You might be able to ...
___________________________________________________________________
Have an old iPad lying around? You might be able to make it run
Linux soon
Author : tosh
Score : 267 points
Date : 2022-06-04 19:26 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| bbbobbb wrote:
| Unfortunate that only 'old' iPads. I would like that fir my 2020
| one. The OS is complete trash in my opinion and it is the first
| and last Apple device I have bought.
| zakki wrote:
| Original tweet:
|
| https://mobile.twitter.com/konradybcio/status/15319631309343...
| clarge1120 wrote:
| Apple has gotten pretty good at protecting the idevice class from
| Linux. There are millions of these old devices sitting on shelves
| unused, still in working condition, and useless.
|
| It should not take so much effort to make our devices useful
| after Apple has moved on from them. There are tons of uses for a
| capable device after the manufacturer has abandoned the customer.
|
| We need Right to Repair now.
| boplicity wrote:
| You may technically own Apple hardware, but its not yours in
| actuality. You have a "license" to use the software on it, bif
| of you can't change the software, you don't have control over
| it. It's not yours.
|
| This is how Apple steals from us: They let you buy beautiful,
| high tech hardware that requires their software. Eventually,
| they stop supporting that software, so the hardware (mostly)
| stops working. This is theft. Sure, it may be legal, but
| morally, it is wrong. So many old iPhones and iPads are
| languishing, when they could be used as Raspberry Pis (or old
| laptops) are often used: home servers, learning tools, linux
| devices etc.
| stevenjgarner wrote:
| This may be true with iOS devices but it is less true with
| macOS devices. I regularly repurpose my macOS devices with a
| nix installation, and I have not yet seen any discouraging
| move from Apple against this. Indeed none other than Linus
| Torvalds (the man behind Linux) has been known to use a
| MacBook Air for nix just because of its superior hardware - h
| ttps://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/srq2g/linus_torvalds..
| .
| clairity wrote:
| you've hit on why apple is spending all its time developing
| the ipad into a laptop replacement (despite relatively flat
| sales) rather than really improving macs/macOS. they keep
| saying they're not trying to do this, but it's been plain
| as day for a few years now (with the ipad pro).
|
| there's no precedent for ipads to "upgrade" to another
| OS/firmware, unlike macs, so customers can't claim anything
| was taken away from them. plus, macs are considered
| essential for developing for iphones/ipads, so apple
| doesn't want to disenfranchise ecosystem developers too
| much by locking down macs, especially when laptops are a
| dwindling segment anyway.
| randomopining wrote:
| Really they should release low level stuff for OS community
| to make linux for it, once the devices are past EOL. That
| would leave them an easy moral out, so I wonder why they
| don't do it. Maybe proprietary low level stuff that they
| don't want to share.
| oneplane wrote:
| It depends on how you see those devices. On one hand it's a
| block of hardware (like an appliance) on the other hand it's
| a CPU and RAM and storage etc. This is a weird gradient where
| the same could be said for routers (and we kind-of do that),
| but also for Smart TV's (which are left out in the cold,
| generally), and other devices with smarts in them (or: a CPU,
| memory and storage).
|
| The general problem lies with the utility for mass-market
| products, even if you re-purpose it, how widely spread can
| you do that? How feasible are most ideas on what to do with
| products that are end-of-life? A lot of existing things are
| just dumped and forgotten about like thin clients,
| settopboxes (same hardware as Raspberry Pis) and
| entertainment systems in cars.
|
| We like to point at manufacturers and products from well
| known brands but in reality it applies on a much larger
| scale, yet the infeasibility scales with it all the same.
| Some of it might be due to legitimate PKI-based lockouts,
| while other reasons might simply be the lack of broad
| interest and governmental policy.
|
| In an ideal world the specifications on how the devices work
| and end-of-life disablement of lockouts would be a reasonable
| bar to set; it'd be hard to argue that it's bad for commerce,
| and implementation-wise even PKI-based systems have easy ways
| to facilitate this. The cost would be enablement from the
| manufacturer's side and for some brands the connection
| between their brand name and a device they cannot control the
| presentation of. I don't know how to solve that but it's
| definitely a much larger problem than people in tech might
| think of.
| [deleted]
| ISO-morphism wrote:
| > ... for some brands the connection between their brand
| name and a device they cannot control the presentation
| of... larger problem.
|
| They should not have this control. Lamborghini doesn't get
| to stop crypto kids from using non-Lamborghini paint to put
| anime girls on their cars. Apple shouldn't get to stop
| users from using non-Apple software to draw pixels on their
| screens. The "their" refers to the owner of the product,
| not the owner of the brand.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| The equivalent here is if those crypto kids tried to
| flash the Lamborghini's transmission or engine ECU
| firmware with pictures of anime girls. That would
| definitely merit much closer scrutiny since if the
| vehicle ever crashes, who is at fault? Who is liable if
| the tranmission suddenly seized up and the vehicle plows
| into a group of children at a crossing?
|
| And if the ECU is destroyed during the crash wouldn't
| determining faulty firmware be impossible so Lamborghini
| would get blamed regardless?
|
| So then the only sensible course of action is to lock it
| down such that no one can ever change sensitive firmware
| without Lamborghini approval.
|
| This isn't limited to cars, a Linux iPad could suffer a
| catastrophic battery explosion on a flight which causes
| significant consequences, who is liable?
| oneplane wrote:
| You can put stickers and background pictures all over
| your brand devices too, that's not really a problem.
| We're talking about circumventing secure enclaves, which
| I'm pretty sure Lamborghini will sue you (and win) for,
| same as Sony and Nintendo for example.
| sto_hristo wrote:
| Latest tablets rock some pretty spectacular hardware. It's so sad
| that the horrible OSes completely waste all that potential.
|
| Why is it so much to ask for a tables with an open OS?
| bitL wrote:
| Get a Lenovo M10 X605 and enjoy accelerated video on Ubuntu
| touch:
|
| https://devices.ubuntu-touch.io/device/x605/
|
| IMO the only tablet that works well on Linux.
| ngcc_hk wrote:
| That sound interesting. Seems quite low on memory and the 3rd
| generation is 3+128... is only 605 workable. I may give it a
| trial as it is very cheap experiment.
|
| The article mentioned iSH. It is sad that iSH and a-shell
| both are working but cannot run sbcl ... And ecl run but
| cannot load quicklisp. Hard to be used.
| bitL wrote:
| There is some YouTube video of X606F running on Ubuntu
| Touch as well but I can't tell what exactly works on that
| one.
| rollcat wrote:
| I don't know if it's wasted. Depends on what you expect out of
| your computing device. My partner is very happy sketching in
| ProCreate every day, but she'd find a hackable Linux device
| much less useful. I'm pretty much the other way around.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > she'd find a hackable Linux device much less useful.
|
| No she wouldn't. You're not forced to install linux on a
| linux-capable device.
| sto_hristo wrote:
| I expect an actual computing device, not a locked up console,
| which is what these things are.
|
| A device running on a real OS, in the sense of an actual
| operating system - the thing that just controls hardware and
| runs whatever you throw at it, will be found even more useful
| by your partner as it will stretch far beyond ProCreate.
| rollcat wrote:
| Name a hardware+pen+OS+app combo that beats iPad + Apple
| Pencil + ProCreate.
|
| Name it.
| sto_hristo wrote:
| You're missing the point. It's about what you can with
| that hardware. If the world was limited to ProCreate
| only, then we wouldn't be having this discussion. But
| there's much more to be done on that hardware and the
| only thing standing in the way is the artificially
| crippled OS that is really a platform for advertisements.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Oddly enough, that wasn't the problem framed.
| rollcat wrote:
| I'm sorry, but what _is_ the problem? We already own more
| general-purpose computers than we can carry, might be the
| problem.
| icehawk wrote:
| Unlikely, if all they want to do is draw on a tablet.
|
| For most people out there computers are the means and not
| the end. Any feature outside "helps me do X
| faster/easier/better" is irrelevant.
| olliej wrote:
| Ok, I'm feeling cynical here based on many complaints about
| support length.
|
| People are asking for legislation to allow firmware replacement
| after X years
|
| Why is no one asking for the more basic and obvious one, of just
| supporting the device for more than 12 months? Like you're never
| going to get anything meaningful from fly-by-night budget
| companies that don't even exist for a year, but I was just
| looking at the big non-apple tablet companies and they all seem
| to max out at like one year of major updates?
| sva_ wrote:
| > The EU might require OEMs to provide 7 years of updates and
| spare parts for its phones
|
| https://www.gsmarena.com/the_eu_might_require_oems_to_provid...
|
| I feel like maybe there should be rule such as, either provide
| x years of software support, or open source it. The best of two
| worlds.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Does anyone turn these old devices into a project and install
| cool software on it only to never use it again? I stop using
| multiple devices because having several iPads is as useful as
| having several phones. I install stuff to "give it a longer life"
| but without purpose I don't actually use it.
| Mister_Snuggles wrote:
| A number of people in the Home Assistant community use cheap
| and/or older tablets as wall-mounted control panels. Android
| tablets are well-represented, including many Amazon Fire
| tablets, but there are iPads in the mix too.
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| I love it that people have hobbies and interests to do stuff like
| this. As someone else here said: Apple is pretty good at
| supporting old hardware.
|
| Off topic (sorry): my iPad Pro with the Apple case keyboard and
| SSH and Mosh clients makes a good enough client for running Linux
| VPSs. For someone who wants to program on the run with an iPad
| this solution might cause fewer frustrations.
| abdouls wrote:
| This sounds very cool - I have three iPads with one not being
| used, would be very interested in doing something like this!
|
| Not exactly related to Apple or iPads but this reminds me of
| running a webserver on an old Android phone of mine. Created a
| port forward on my modem and used Cloudflare to set a DNS, it
| wasn't the fastest thing but pretty cool weekend project.
| simonmales wrote:
| Not an Apple person but would consider getting an old iDevice if
| Linux could run realibly.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| Would be cool if I could install some kind of linux on that old
| ipad 1 i still got laying around.
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| It's always fun but then afterward I'm left with a nuked iPad
| running elinks.
| digisign wrote:
| Have a ipad 2 here not turned on in ~five years. It could no
| longer handle any websites, not enough RAM. Would be great to
| use it for something, but it has an A5, not A7 or 8, according
| to Wikipedia.
| quag wrote:
| The best use I could find for my iPad 1 is to use it as a
| clock. It's a real shame I can't use it for anything else.
| omginternets wrote:
| I had the same thought! I don't know what I'd actually want to
| do with it, but the tablet form-factor is just begging for some
| creative attention.
| behnamoh wrote:
| I just installed an old clock app and use my ipad 4 as a wall
| clock!
| cube00 wrote:
| It will be interesting to see if there's legislation in the
| future to encourage companies to open up unsupported devices
| instead of relying on the efforts of enthusiasts to keep them out
| of e-waste streams.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| > open up unsupported devices instead of relying on the efforts
| of enthusiasts to keep them out of e-waste streams
|
| This article is about gaining the ability to run Linux on a
| 2014 iPad that is still receiving both OS updates and security
| updates.
| celestialcheese wrote:
| Yes, but just barely. https://everyi.com/by-
| capability/maximum-supported-ios-versi...
|
| I'm having trouble finding apples schedule for iOS updates
| for old devices, but in a year, this likely will be EOL.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| By which you mean it will begin receiving only security
| updates, like a first party device from Google or Samsung
| that is way less than half as many years old?
|
| If you buy the current 2021 Google Pixel 6, they will only
| guarantee that you will receive OS updates through October
| 2024, which is just ridiculous in comparison to a 2014 iPad
| that is still on the current OS.
| CommanderData wrote:
| Seems the EU has made a surprising strait of pro-consumer laws
| in the past.
|
| I'd love to see them carry on and add something like this.
| dontbenebby wrote:
| > It will be interesting to see if there's legislation in the
| future to encourage companies to open up unsupported devices
| instead of relying on the efforts of enthusiasts to keep them
| out of e-waste streams.
|
| Especially when paired with their refusal to do security
| updates in perpetuity.
|
| If we want to be "green", you want people to re-use these
| devices a long time, especially since China has control of the
| rare earth mineral rights to make new ones.
| hhh wrote:
| I don't see a world that maintaining everything forever is
| viable. Things should die, be it software, silicon, or flesh.
| dontbenebby wrote:
| Ok. Then don't try to make someone die, via the courts, if
| they do what they want with their silicon. It WILL die,
| eventually, when the physical components fail.
| UncleEntity wrote:
| Throwing away a perfectly good device just because they
| want to sell you a new one seems like such a waste to me.
|
| My last iPhone was out of support and had the replacement
| battery going bad before I went to the trouble of getting a
| new one. The worst thing is it was perfectly functional
| (aside from the dodgy battery which could have been
| replaced again) and I would still be using it if there was
| an option to not become part of some random botnet.
|
| All I really need is to make a phone call once in a while,
| check the emails and surf the interwebs -- don't need a
| whole lot of processing power to do that.
|
| But now everyone and their dog makes you use their crappy
| app if you want to use their services and they only support
| "supported" devices (even though they could easily run on
| the older hardware) so you're boned if you want some
| semblance of a modern life.
|
| Don't even get me started on how long I use laptops which
| _can_ be upgraded virtually forever...
| eastbound wrote:
| Similarly, software should automatically be open-source after
| 30 years.
|
| The more I grow old, the more I consider that OSS is the 8th
| marvel of the world. Millions of humans worked independently
| and created the hugest building of our civilization: Linux/Post
| gres/MySQL/Wordpress/Audacity/OBS/drivers/Nginx/Owasp/NPM/React
| /Angular, a stepping stone that powers everything and has even
| already _taken off_ from Mars (Perseverance's helicopter).
| wrycoder wrote:
| Lisp, gcc, gdb, pearl, python, apache, mozilla, git, etc.
| JasonFruit wrote:
| That would require people who in many cases don't care about
| the software to retain the source for thirty years, which
| would be burdensome.
| tyingq wrote:
| >Similarly, software should automatically be open-source
| after 30 years.
|
| I'm not sure how well this might work. It's currently easier
| for me to resurrect an old Z80 ASM program than to get a
| node.js V6 program working. Our complicated dependency chains
| will make future-retro hard.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| I had a similar experience trying to resurrect an old RoR
| project from the early 2010s. Maybe technically possible,
| but not the least bit practical... it'd be better to just
| start from scratch.
|
| Meanwhile, I was able to get an early 2000s mac Cocoa
| project building and running again in just a few hours,
| with the bulk of the work going into fixing deprecations.
| The main difference between the two was the number of third
| party dependencies... the Cocoa app had almost none while
| the RoR project had several tens when counting sub-
| dependencies.
| ufmace wrote:
| You're right about our existing OSS ecosystem being a marvel.
| I'm doubtful though about the merits of requiring software to
| be open-sourced after some timeframe though. IME, much
| proprietary software has very complex build and deployment
| pipelines and dependency chains and is very difficult to do
| anything with if you don't have a lot of specialized
| knowledge. I think it's rare for OSS projects to be
| successful without substantial effort spent on getting the
| dev and build systems to be workable for any random person on
| the internet. So who's gonna do the work to get these 30 year
| old projects usable?
| idle_zealot wrote:
| > So who's gonna do the work to get these 30 year old
| projects usable?
|
| The projects themselves don't need to be usable for the
| source to be valuable. I could easily imagine the source
| code of say a defunct MMO server being a useful reference
| for enthusiasts re-implementing their own servers.
| earthscienceman wrote:
| Absolutely. And yet the intellectual/philosophical
| underpinnings of that marvel are often demeaned, or
| neglected, even here on HN. The fact that the average person
| has no awareness that the software powering the vast majority
| of their technology was built for _free_ and that they can
| own it is mind boggling. They 're just told that the prisons
| they think are "computing" (Windows/Apple/Android) are the
| natural state of things.
|
| Stallman is a (rightfully) controversial figure, but the Free
| Software movement is one of the most important movements of
| our age.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| > " _They 're just told that the prisons they think are
| "computing" (Windows/Apple/Android) are the natural state
| of things._"
|
| Step 1, use diminutive gatekeeping scare quotes to imply
| that Windows and Apple users are not doing /real/
| computing.
|
| Step 2, use flamebait language where a house you got
| without paying is "freedom" but a listed building you
| bought from someone else is "a prison".
|
| Step 3, make up some fantasy about people being told "the
| natural state of things".
|
| Step 4, make sure to look down on average people with their
| lacking awareness, compared to you, an intellectual with
| your posturing understanding of philosophical
| underpinnings.
|
| > " _often demeaned, or neglected, even here on HN_ "
|
| "I'm the one being demeaned, you inferior clueless
| simpletons!"
| smoldesu wrote:
| 1. Well, this is the root of the conversation around free
| software, especially in the modern age. I think many
| people would argue that Windows/Apple/Android users are
| indeed computing, but they're doing so on the behalf of
| Microsoft/Apple/Google. When those companies back up your
| files to their first-party cloud systems, that's not
| _your_ computation anymore. They have your data and can
| ostensibly do whatever they want with it. There may be
| quibbling to be had on this topic, but I think the
| original point still stands in context.
|
| 2. I wouldn't call it a prison, but it would be pretty
| disappointing to move into a listed building where the
| thermostat was locked behind an acrylic case. Simply put,
| it sucks when you pay for something and can't run
| arbitrary software on the _hardware you own_. I don 't
| really think most people would disagree here: having
| options is better than having none.
|
| 3. Is it really a fantasy? I doubt the average PC owner
| even knows they have options other than Windows, much
| less free ones. Maybe this is the HN US-centric mindset
| taking over again, but nobody in America really knows or
| cares about this stuff, for better and worse.
|
| 4. Pretty much all of your refutations so far haven't
| actually debated their core point, so I don't think it's
| fair to start throwing stones. Given the average vitriol
| of HN, I would say that many different people are "often
| demeaned, or neglected, even here on HN", be it Free
| Software advocates or proud Macbook owners. It doesn't
| make them any more or less credible, but their original
| point still stands: people on this website love to
| quibble about how atrocious OSS is when compared to
| $GLORIOUS_SAAS, despite the fact that the
| iPhone/Windows/Android device they're writing on is more
| OSS than it is proprietary.
|
| Whether it's Apple, Microsoft or Google, none of them
| deserve to inherit the future of computing. It's not a
| radical opinion, and I'd agree with the parent comment
| that it's pretty often overlooked on a forum about
| startup culture and business.
| skohan wrote:
| Step 1: join a conversation about the importance of FOSS,
| and the dangers of decreased awareness about its
| importance in society
|
| Step 2: re-frame it as the pro-FOSS side having bad
| manners
|
| Step 3: ???
| skrtskrt wrote:
| A free house that I can use forever without restrictions
| sure sounds a lot more like freedom than buying a house
| with significant restrictions on how I can use it.
| teddyh wrote:
| Most people seem to know that HOAs are troublesome and
| should be avoided, though.
| sigstoat wrote:
| HOA homes seem to sell fine.
|
| average people don't give a shit about this sort of
| thing.
| jrm4 wrote:
| I too don't like the idea of being "demeaning" and
| whatnot, but this is all _very_ simple.
|
| Home Depot sells you a hammer, and also in some way (even
| in a legally enforceable way) tries to suggest you can
| only build chairs with it.
|
| Anyone, ANYONE, who agrees that you're somehow wrong when
| you use it to build a table is a shill, a sucker, or an
| idiot. Full stop.
| rglullis wrote:
| As a strong FOSS supporter, I'd like to disabuse you of the
| notion that it was built for free. It was _not_ built for
| free. Saying that it was free cheapens the work of all the
| people involved in a project and gives the impression to
| end-users that open source is only a cheap knock-off of
| proprietary solutions.
| spockz wrote:
| Okay. So it was built freely, or given/contributed for
| free. I don't share this notion that free equals cheap.
| rglullis wrote:
| Sorry for bring pedantic, but it is still not the best
| way to frame it. I worked in open source projects for
| about half of my professional life, and I wouldn't be
| able to do so "for free". I also make a point of
| supporting FOSS development as much as possible, and I
| have not ever paid a dime for proprietary software.
|
| Free software is amazing and infinitely more valuable
| than closed source solutions, and we should never take it
| for granted or think that we are entitled for the time
| and effort of FOSS developers.
| jsjohnst wrote:
| > I have not ever paid a dime for proprietary software
|
| Sorry for being pedantic, but this is quite literally
| impossible, unless you've never bought a single piece of
| electronics.
| tehjoker wrote:
| A helpful analogy for me is how you can get penicillin
| free or cheap. It's extremely low priced but it's more
| valuable and should be treasured because of that low
| price not devalued.
| teddyh wrote:
| The air you breathe was _not_ made for free, many trees
| and ocean algae worked _very hard_ and used up a lot of
| solar energy to make that oxygen!
| freedomben wrote:
| I know they said it, but I don't think OP meant it was
| _built_ for free, I think they meant that it 's available
| to users/consumers for free.
|
| Nothing is free. All the FOSS I've built and give away
| "for free" cost me a lot of time, and time is my most
| valuable asset. So certainly it's not built for free, but
| it is given away for free (both as in freedom and in
| beer).
|
| Also important to note, not all FOSS or "free software"
| is given away for free. All that is required is that the
| purchase comes with the code and that code can be freely
| modified by the user.
| pietro72ohboy wrote:
| And the GNU project. Let's not forget their contribution to
| this story!
| squarefoot wrote:
| > Similarly, software should automatically be open-source
| after 30 years.
|
| 30 years seems a lot to me. I would rather force by law
| companies to open source every piece of firmware after some
| time (2-5 years?) it is declared obsolete or doesn't receive
| direct support anymore. The goal should be rather to prevent
| perfectly good hardware to become bricks and be thrown away
| than to help retrocomputing enthusiasts revive the few
| surviving devices decades later. I understand there would be
| huge legal implications but still...
| scoopertrooper wrote:
| I'm now trying to imagine a Mars helicopter solution that
| encompassed all those technologies in the stack. I could
| imagine the company I work for coming up with such a
| solution.
| hkgjjgjfjfjfjf wrote:
| rbanffy wrote:
| Can't wait. Seriously.
|
| Now we need Tektronix, ReGIS, and Sixel graphics on the Linux
| graphical console.
| samstave wrote:
| Please ELI5 Why?
| NKosmatos wrote:
| LOL, my only tablet is an iPad Air 2 and still gets some updates,
| runs most apps and is in a very good condition. Battery isn't
| what it used to be, but I can't complain keeping in mind that my
| trusty iPad has served me well all this years and has paid off
| its investment. Nowadays Apple is not making hardware like it
| used to.
| init-as wrote:
| Apple is making better hardware than ever. Like your iPad,
| devices get at least 5 years of updates and will generally run
| faster every year. Like you said the biggest noticeable
| difference is in the battery, but this is obviously a much
| harder problem to solve.
| Syonyk wrote:
| We should be pushing some of the "repair" legislation to include
| clauses about, "If you're no longer going to provide OS updates
| for a device, you must provide a way to install alternate
| firmware on it." We'd either get continued updates for devices,
| or a way to install something else. Either way is a win.
| derefr wrote:
| Wouldn't this necessarily include "devices" like nuclear-
| reactor control systems? Because AFAICT there's no clear line
| where a "computer" stops and something like that starts.
|
| I imagine there would need to be a special protections in the
| clause for "secure embedded industrial" devices like that --
| something like: "if opening your company's devices to free
| modification would create a national security risk, then your
| company is not _allowed_ to go out of business in the first
| place; instead, bankruptcy of your company will lead to
| immediate nationalization of such assets as are required to
| keep your devices up-to-date with secure firmware in
| perpetuity. "
|
| (It's actually kind of weird that there isn't already anything
| like this on the books in America; so it was possible for the
| private sector to e.g. shut down all the 5.25"-floppy-disk
| factories, despite military missile control systems still
| actively depending on them. You'd think governments would wield
| at least contract law -- if not legislation -- more eagerly, to
| protect "critical logisticla dependencies" like these.)
| Syonyk wrote:
| I haven't figured out the exact wording or requirements -
| feedback welcome.
|
| My goal is not to discourage "Fully Finished" sort of
| products - if you have some widget that does X, and you've
| optimized the firmware to do X, and it won't need to do
| anything else beyond X, then... OK, good job, please make
| more things.
|
| The target here is "consumer electronics" sort of devices -
| phones, speakers, fridges, washers, etc. And I don't think it
| has to be a "default unlocked" process, so much as "Some
| process to allow you to boot what you want." And if that's "I
| submit a blob upstream and they sign it so it can shim my
| kernel," well... not great, but OK.
|
| However, the reality for something like your scenario,
| nuclear control systems, is that anyone who can get close
| enough (physically or digitally) to one for it to matter
| isn't going to be hindered by some pesky firmware lock.
| derefr wrote:
| > anyone who can get close enough (physically or digitally)
| to one for it to matter isn't going to be hindered by some
| pesky firmware lock.
|
| I mean, being unable to modify secure embedded systems by
| getting close to them "digitally" is the whole _positive_
| point of the much-reviled-in-personal-computing Trusted
| Computing Base paradigm. If Intel CPUs can
| cryptographically verify that microcode updates come only
| from Intel, and that the bootloader ROM is signed by the
| manufacturer key stored in the CPU 's own TPM, then the
| microcontrollers in critical systems like these should be
| doing no less. "Unlocking" such a system to free
| modification by the installation IT administrator really
| does lose you some quite-powerful security advantages vs.
| having an end-to-end-secure logistical pipeline for updates
| direct from the manufacturer to your microcontroller, that
| not even the site admin can tamper with.
|
| Also, on a tangent -- with really-critical embedded
| systems, there _are_ ways to prevent _physical_ proximity
| from giving someone the keys to the kingdom as well. For
| example: making the system a distributed-majority-consensus
| system run across several secure installations, where you
| 'd need to physically penetrate several installations at
| once -- hopefully all with independently-designed security
| policies -- in order to get the system as a whole to do
| something else. Where any timing slip-ups would reveal one
| of the systems as faulty, and prompt an immediate [probably
| armed] investigation response.
| Syonyk wrote:
| > _...then the microcontrollers in critical systems like
| these should be doing no less._
|
| Should be, I agree. Though I would doubt that they _are._
| We 've seen plenty of malware packages related to
| industrial control systems over the past decade or so,
| which mostly rely on "compromising the workstation that
| programs PLCs and fixes their behavior over the network
| to meet the attacker's desires."
|
| My goal here certainly isn't to impact industrial control
| systems, but to generate less ewaste of "Well, we're
| bored with it, good luck!" end of life devices.
| derefr wrote:
| > Should be, I agree. Though I would doubt that they are.
|
| I think that's mostly to do with the fact that many
| industrial control systems still in use predate TCB or
| anything like it. "Why change what works", etc. Contracts
| for new designs, meanwhile, tend to specify all the
| security they can think of.
| Thorrez wrote:
| Sounds sort of like Richard Stallman's boundary on what
| software is required to be free:
|
| >The case of the toaster is very clear: we can't tell,
| except by taking it apart, whether it has a processor and
| software or a special-purpose chip. Since that we can't
| tell the difference, it makes no difference: therefore, a
| program that will never be changed is equivalent to a
| circuit. I don't care whether a toaster or microwave oven
| contains software.
|
| https://interviews.slashdot.org/story/14/05/05/2012218/rich
| a...
| derefr wrote:
| My point wasn't so much about "fixed function" devices
| like toasters, but rather about higher-level industrial
| IoT devices like commercial security-monitoring control
| systems, or electricity meters (the kinds of things that
| have embedded 5G radios); and also about complex,
| flexible-purpose, networked "embedded" systems like SAN
| hardware appliances or network switches.
|
| These types of devices _do_ receive regular firmware
| updates. And (certain models of them) _are_ required to
| operate in high-security environments, where the end-to-
| end logistical security of update delivery is part of
| what the customers of those systems are paying for by
| buying them. Also, in general, these systems have "no
| user-modifiable parts"; all the useful configuration for
| them is exposed on the outside, where nothing you'd want
| to do with them would require hacking them -- because
| much of the _point_ of these devices is to be a hermetic
| environment isolating the data they evaluate or carry
| from interference by third parties.
|
| Maybe the best example in this category would be an
| Intrusion Detection System. It's definitely a full
| computer! But if you're the sort of company that needs
| one of those, then you certainly don't want the IDS
| itself to have any exploit surface whatsoever --
| including at the firmware level. And you'd rather lose
| out on ability to install custom firmware on your own
| IDS, if that means that an APT loses the ability to
| rootkit your IDS.
| Thorrez wrote:
| Hmm, I'm not sure what the answer is. One idea is to
| regular devices for consumers differently than devices
| for businesses. That's not a full solution though,
| because there's lots of news about farmers having to hack
| their tractors to get them to work, which is evidence
| that even businesses want to be able to modify their
| firmware sometimes.
| Syonyk wrote:
| Thanks - I'd not seen that before, and I think it
| generally covers the principle well. I don't care if a
| fixed function device that does its job well can be
| updated, but I _do_ care if something like a fridge that
| talks to Google Calendar ends up obsolete with nothing
| but a warning message on screen because it 's out of
| date. Though why a fridge needs a screen anyway is beyond
| me...
| karottenreibe wrote:
| Sold to consumers vs sold to a company would suffice as a
| distinction IMO.
| ck2 wrote:
| They'll never legislate mandatory firmware open-source after X
| years
|
| but mandatory bootloader unlock after 5, 10 years seems
| perfectly reasonable to empower consumers.
|
| Could happen in the EU but will never ever happen in the USA
|
| And it's not just phones and tablets, there are millions of
| smart-watches out there like from Garmin that become
| paperweights
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| This times 1 million
| Jemm wrote:
| They will just push updates the incrementally cripple the
| device. They are already doing it anyway.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _you must provide a way to install alternate firmware on it._
|
| Seems like a common sense measure that shouldn't be conditional
| on whether or not OS updates stop. PCs have worked this way for
| decades, and some phones and tablets, as well. It's a shame
| that competition is limited like this.
| Syonyk wrote:
| I would certainly prefer that this be the case, but I also
| don't think it's particularly likely to pass as legislation -
| because there are plenty of devices that are sold at a loss,
| expecting to make it up on other later software sales.
|
| I believe almost all modern game consoles live in this space,
| I would expect Amazon's Kindle devices are in this category,
| etc. And while I don't _like_ this model and won 't
| participate in such ecosystems, neither can I deny that such
| things are fairly common and popular. Forcing open firmware
| on those would likely generate a much larger, and, frankly,
| better funded response to being able to maintain a locked
| down firmware for the useful life of the system.
|
| Picking specifically on the "no longer receiving firmware
| updates" category makes it much harder for those companies to
| argue that having to do this will hurt their profits or
| hinder their ability to recover losses on subsidized hardware
| - they literally don't care enough to bother updating them at
| this point, so it would be much harder for them to make these
| claims. You abandon a device once you're done earning your
| money back on it. I doubt Sony, for instance, still expects
| much return on deployed Playstation 3s. And it's exceedingly
| hard for Apple to argue that they're making any money on an
| iPhone 3GS or something, because it doesn't even run modern
| app store packages.
|
| So my logic here is that "you must unlock abandoned devices
| for those who care" is likely to be winnable, whereas "All
| devices must be unlockable from day 1" isn't.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| At least to me, starting out with the compromise is a great
| way to have effective policy neutered even further.
| cdmckay wrote:
| Yeah I like the idea of if it's no longer receiving
| firmware updates but I suspect the tech companies would get
| around that by releasing symbolic updates that just bump
| the version number.
|
| I would prefer something like after 5 years they have to
| unlock the bootloader and allow people to install anything.
| So you have 5 years to make a profit and then you have to
| open up the device.
| bacchusracine wrote:
| > I suspect the tech companies would get around that by
| releasing symbolic updates that just bump the version
| number.
|
| Wouldn't that be invalidated by games no longer working?
| They were very eager to move to cloud gaming, always on
| networking style DRM but once the servers are down and
| the games become less and less functional or stop working
| altogether that excuse goes bye-bye, doesn't it?
| parkingrift wrote:
| Who cares what these companies want or what their business
| models are? Dumb business models are dumb and it's not our
| job to consider their dumb business models when making
| legislation.
|
| We wouldn't even be having a discussion like this in a
| functioning democracy. But instead we're discussing whether
| the big corporate bribery machine will get in the way of
| completely reasonable legislation.
| bacchusracine wrote:
| >Who cares what these companies want or what their
| business models are?
|
| A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down. You're
| not going to convince Congress critters to do something
| that can legitimately be argued to hurt businesses. So
| you tweak things to create a minmax situation where the
| businesses can not be said to be injured and we still
| gain access to abandoned hardware and are able to
| repurpose it.
|
| The key is to go in with carefully charged words.
| Abandoned hardware is a good one. So is recycling
| electronics to extend their usefulness. How can companies
| argue they're being hurt by competition from abandoned
| hardware that is just e-waste unless it is allowed to be
| recycled?
| samstave wrote:
| I Too, chose this guy's dead legislation.
| whatshisface wrote:
| > _How can companies argue they 're being hurt by
| competition from abandoned hardware that is just e-waste
| unless it is allowed to be recycled?_
|
| By pointing out that the products they are currently
| selling could be replaced by the reanimated spirits of
| the products they sold last year. Labor performed without
| a transfer of money to go along with it is not counted in
| the GDP or taxed, in modern mercantilism it is better for
| $100 to circulate in a day to produce a little value than
| for $1 to circulate in a week to produce much more value.
| Angostura wrote:
| > Who cares what these companies want or what their
| business models are?
|
| The people who bought and got value from systems that
| otherwise wouldn't have been developed?
| reaperducer wrote:
| While most apps no longer work on the really really old iPads,
| e-mail still does!
|
| I have an old launch day iPad (that makes it over 12 years old)
| that does just fine for checking e-mail on the couch.
| louwrentius wrote:
| I have an old iPad 3 - first retina model - and although
| unsupported for many years, still works fine. It feels like such
| a waste to dispose of it, especially because of the screen.
|
| But running Linux on it is not going to make it live longer, what
| kind of usability would we have?
|
| What remains is repurposing it as some kind of monitor /
| Dashboard device maybe. Or just return it to apple for recycling.
| tiahura wrote:
| The article suggests the Air 2 doesn't receive updates. The Air 2
| runs iPadOS 15 just fine.
| Mister_Snuggles wrote:
| I was just about to say that the Air 2 isn't all that old.
| According to Wikipedia, it's almost 8 years old.
|
| There are two of these in my house. Both are still perfectly
| usable, the batteries are fine, and it still receives software
| updates.
| olliej wrote:
| There example hardware includes a 2014 era iPad 2 air which per
| wikipedia is still getting updates?
|
| Honestly I find the Asahi linux folk much more interesting,
| although of course the hardware is actually explicitly open so
| step 1 for them isn't "get around the device security"
| highwaylights wrote:
| I don't like saying this, but the way solutions like this are
| presented makes me really uneasy. I think it's a laudable effort,
| and it's noble that the authors want to reduce e-waste, but I
| feel like they should make really clear right at the outset that
| at least some of the features they take for granted are negated
| by this.
|
| I'm thinking most specifically about the integrity and security
| guarantees around enclaves and official vendor patch support
| (i.e. the things most users wouldn't realise were missing and
| could endanger them). I would assume once this ships it'll be
| able to update same as any other linux device (with security and
| feature patches), but the average user may not realise how much
| those updates were protecting them.
|
| There's also likely to be a very vulnerable gap between Linux and
| the hardware elements that will need to remain open because
| that's what the exploit relied on in the first place (in this
| case, checkra1n, if I'm reading it correctly).
| hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
| Can you provide any case studies where enthusiast ports of
| embedded devices were exploited en masse in the way you seem
| concerned about?
| trasz wrote:
| Aren't security enclaves used mostly for things like banking
| apps, instead of the parts of security that actually matter to
| end users?
| midislack wrote:
| Is this just a tech demo or can we download the code?
| neilv wrote:
| One reason it's good for PostmarketOS to support lots of old
| models of devices _well_ (rather than, say, just new Pine and
| maybe Purism) is that it avoids the risk of mobile open source
| Linux failing altogether, should 1-2 device vendors somehow drop
| the ball. This has happened multiple times before.
| johnklos wrote:
| Once Linux is running on these, the BSDs won't be far behind.
|
| While there are Linux projects for every conceivable device, they
| often lose momentum and die off. The BSDs, on the other hand,
| don't. A NetBSD port for an iPad will stay as up-to-date as for a
| Raspberry Pi 4, eventually 5, et cetera.
|
| Can't wait! A portable ARM device with a good screen and
| excellent battery life will be quite useful.
| SwampertX wrote:
| You probably meant a portable ARM Linux device; I think it is
| just difficult to get a team of Linux developers committed to
| fine-tuning the battery efficiency of the Linux (maybe a
| specific distro) for the tablet, so I am not hopeful about
| having an excellent battery life, as much as I would want it to
| happen.
| emilfihlman wrote:
| What makes the difference?
| trasz wrote:
| My guess is the approach to development: things that can be
| fixed get fixed, not replaced. In FreeBSD, for example,
| rather fundamental changes get introduced when necessary -
| compare FreeBSD devfs with a... somewhat 1970's approach used
| in Linux - but they don't happen "just because".
| prvc wrote:
| >Linux support could give some of these devices a second life as
| retro game consoles, simple home servers, or other things that
| low-power Arm hardware is good for.
|
| An iPhone running Linux bare metal with (hopefully) working
| drivers for its i/o components would have so many possible uses
| it's not even funny. I guess "other things" is pretty
| comprehensive, but its using an Arm instruction set is very much
| besides the point.
| pabs3 wrote:
| Note that this relies on the checkm8 bootrom vulnerabilities,
| which cannot be fixed on existing devices as the bootrom is
| physically read-only. AFAIK, there isn't currently an open source
| exploit for the vulnerabilities. The closest is checkra1n:
|
| https://checkra.in/
| saagarjha wrote:
| The exploit is open source; the chain afterwards to patch iOS
| is not.
| pabs3 wrote:
| Do you need that chain in order to run Linux?
| saagarjha wrote:
| You are free to substitute your own chain that redirects
| control flow at boot :)
| earthboundkid wrote:
| They should pass a law that you're required to support an
| internet connected device for at least two years, then there's a
| three year period where you don't necessarily have to support the
| device, but if you don't, you're required to release a jailbreak
| for it. Then after the five years, if you haven't released a
| jailbreak, you can't still sue anyone else who does it.
| robbintt wrote:
| I am not sure where the boundary is, but it should be required
| to not encryption lock your devices from custom firmware/data.
| sirius93 wrote:
| This is cool.
| margarina72 wrote:
| Looks great, I cannot wait for when they will have a working
| version at least basic so I can give life to a bunch of dead ipad
| that are otherwise perfectly functional if it wasn't for ios on
| it...
| judge2020 wrote:
| I wonder if we could also force the manufacturers of mixing
| boards and synthesizers to allow us to flash our own linux
| installations. I bought it but I want to use it for a different
| use case than what they design and support.
| masswerk wrote:
| Is there anything like this for 32-bit iPads?
|
| (I've a pristine example, which has been reduced to an alarm
| clock, since most websites don't support its browser anymore.
| Most of the apps have also lost their backend. Certificates are
| also an issue. The battery is still fine and a charge lasts for
| more than a month, as it is decoupled from the Internet for the
| moment. Would be a pity to have to throw it away...)
| asdefghyk wrote:
| In my "limited understanding " of "web tech"? I thought it may
| be possible to use some kind of manipulative? and/or filtering?
| proxy to allow old ipads to use modern websites. This proxy
| could be remote like on a amazon or some other server somewhere
| OR as a embedded device that just operated on wifi. My
| background is as a electronics engineer who worked in embedded
| software dev ( few years) and then as a software test analysist
| (many years) . I have several "old" ipads ...
| s800 wrote:
| You could use a squid proxy elsewhere to uplift the
| crypto/cipher/PKI, which would get you browsing the full web
| again- however, you'd potentially fall victim to an unpatched
| Safari based exploit.
|
| http://www.squid-cache.org
| ck45 wrote:
| I'm using my old iPad mini as an ebook reader for tech books.
| For fictional books, I'm still a happy Kindle user, but I never
| liked reading technical books esp. with tables or images.
| Before finding that usecase, it almost ended up as a digital
| picture frame, which feels like a waste.
| the_cat_kittles wrote:
| maybe my hoarding of old ipads will finally pay off? i have about
| 40 of them if anyone needs em
| lostmsu wrote:
| Are any of them still viable for iOS development?
| mysterydip wrote:
| No. Apps are limited to newer iOS versions, which are limited
| to newer hardware.
| sitzkrieg wrote:
| how the heck did you end up with that many
| tluyben2 wrote:
| Not the PP, but for instance, I get everything from the
| people in my town; every laptop, phone, tablet that they
| bought a newer substitute for. I have a museum for 60-90's
| systems and I never found modern (after 2000) that
| interesting, however, now I have 100s of those too including
| many iPads.
| the_cat_kittles wrote:
| ewaste recycling
| tylergetsay wrote:
| my guess is they make iPad apps
| sitzkrieg wrote:
| me too but four zero? imagine the rats nest of chargers lol
| munchenphile wrote:
| Not the same game, but I used to work as an Android dev
| for an imaging company. We had to physically test our
| apps in meatspace with the real device camera and we had
| to support hundreds of devices.
|
| I had hundreds of Android devices hooked to a dozen or so
| dev machines in a test farm. A test script would run. The
| active device's screen would turn green. Then a QA
| engineer would have to physically scan a bunch of
| different things. Then the next active device would turn
| green and they'd do it again. And again. And again. I
| probably could have automated more with a moving conveyor
| belt and a custom lighting system, but I would've put a
| lot of QA people out of work...
|
| This was during the "bridge" period between
| android.hardware.camera and android.hardware.camera2, so
| I had to write a wrapper library bridging the two APIs.
| About half of our users were on the old API, half on the
| new. It was a mess. There was no CameraX provided by
| Google at the time.
|
| Obviously Android has way more device diversity, but I
| can easily see 40 iPads getting accumulated by even a
| small iOS shop that's taking their user experience
| seriously. The company that I worked for was actually
| quite small, yet we amassed dozens of iDevices and
| hundreds of Android devices. The CTO would require every
| camera crash to be fixed, even if it were on a random
| developing market junk phone. We had so many single-
| device workaround in the camera wrapper lib it was
| insane...
| rockyj wrote:
| This is so good. I have a old iPad and a PS3, they work well but
| I cannot do anything on them. Companies should just let you
| install Linux on hardware they do not want to support.
| alexklarjr wrote:
| I heard that like 2 years ago. Still "soon". Knowing linux
| community they will spend another 2 making different
| "organisations" and then claim "success linux run on ipad!" when
| it boots with zero devices supported and 90% loss of performance
| and battery life. Then it will die.
| rvz wrote:
| He's right you know; and it's true. This happened when
| checkra1n was out and we saw a tech demo with 'Linux' on an
| iPhone 7 [0]. Then we have it running a Ubuntu GUI on an iPhone
| 7 a year later. [1]
|
| However, want to do this yourself? [2] Follow these
| straightforward and simple _' prerequisites'_: First get a
| cross-compiler, git clone, patch, patch, kernel setup,
| CONFIG_ABCD=XYZ, make build, DFU blah blah blah and after days
| of trying to duck tape everything, it still crashes as it only
| works on an iPhone 7.
|
| Nothing has materialised in a straightforward 1 click multi-
| device install like checkra1n has but for _' Installing Linux'_
| on it. Even 'checkra1n' was supposed to be _' open-source'_ and
| that still hasn't happened since. If anything goes wrong or a
| bug happens then restore everything and start all over again.
|
| > Knowing linux community they will spend another 2 making
| different "organisations" and then claim "success linux run on
| ipad!" when it boots with zero devices supported and 90% loss
| of performance and battery life.
|
| This is the likely case on what is going to happen. It is still
| _" coMiNg vEry vErY SoOn"_.
|
| [0] https://blog.project-insanity.org/2020/04/22/linux-with-
| wayl...
|
| [1]
| https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/kvmsfd/success_iphon...
|
| [2]
| https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/kux9xx/success_iphon...
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