Debian-style installation arrives on iPhone

After typing his fingers to the bone, overworked iPhone developer Jay "Saurik" Freeman has finally finished his long-awaited Cydia release. As Freeman puts it, the iPhone is a 667MHz computer with 128MB RAM and at least 4GB of flash. So why not use it as a Unix workstation?

Motivated by the relative limitations of the existing BSD subsystem, Freeman decided to port Debian's APT to the iPhone -- tweaking items to work better with the iPhone's relatively messed-up network settings. A UIKit front end, Cydia, provides a GUI for users to select and install programs -- basically Installer.app for fully leaded geeks. Cydia isn't limited to command-line software. It should allow installation of any and all software package types.

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Source: http://www.saurik.com/id/1

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iPod Family UNIX / BSD iPhone

After typing his fingers to the bone, overworked iPhone developer Jay "Saurik" Freeman has finally finished his long-awaited Cydia release....

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kris33

This is amazing. I simply had to submit it to digg:

http://digg.com/apple/Debian_APT_installation_arrives_on_iPhone

February 28 2008 at 8:49 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Daniel Vargas

toto Dave: Everything that's old always comes back as the new. Check out the Mario Bros. on the iphone. I'm just saying that I hate the fact that a friend sends me a hilarious photo and it cant be viewed with a cutting edge phone... come on now, that precious $600 phone cant view MMS... It will gladly take you to the viewmymessage.com website. Im sure we all love that process. Apple should've been made that the basics. They feed you old updates such as multiple text and expect you to be glad.. no way, not me man,, I'll take it and kick em in the butt for delaying such a basic app.

February 28 2008 at 4:53 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

bmueller

This is really cool ! Having apt-get update and apt-get upgrade on my iPhone. As a Linux user from kernel 0.9 and Fink user on Mac OS X this is really what I need.
This will speed up the availability of applications on the iPhone enormously ! Soon we will have all the GNU stuff available and everything that is now available on the Mac via Fink. The iPhone will be THE mobile application platform.
Actually, I don't see the need for having Linux on this hardware. Why the hell ? This is BSD anyway ?!?
And now it will have all Linux applications ported in no time. Who needs a BlackBerry ? What for ? That's a tool of the old days, Stonehenge, gone ;-)
Apple is back, using the virtues of the old Apple II :
Creating an OPEN platform, that everyone wants to develop for ! And it pays !!!

February 28 2008 at 2:28 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

j0nkatz

Just what I needed...
Some janky linux crap to load on my iPhone.
BSD 4 EVA!

February 28 2008 at 2:04 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Marc

I made some screenshots of the GUI App:
http://www.marc-seeger.de/2008/02/opensource-installerapp-pendan.html

Looks promising :)

February 28 2008 at 1:48 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

mrengles

Wow. Just installed... This makes installer.app a bench warmer.

February 28 2008 at 1:29 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

2 replies to mrengles's comment

Ivan

tried installing - and phone stuck on reboot screen with loading circle going and going

February 28 2008 at 1:48 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Jay Freeman (saurik)

Hey, I wrote Cydia, and I can now say that this problem was real for some users, but has now been fixed. I hope people who had this problem are willing to try again after they have restored.

A quick summary: If you used BossTool to move /Applications and then upgraded your phone to a newer firmware, you ended up with two copies of Applications, which confused my installation scripts.

More information (maybe) can be found here:
http://www.telesphoreo.org/ticket/10
http://www.telesphoreo.org/ticket/15

February 29 2008 at 9:11 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Dripps

What the heck is Debian APT? I didn't know I was missing something but I'm sure it will add to the functionality of my iphone so bring it on!

February 28 2008 at 1:21 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

2 replies to Dripps's comment

JaXX

Here's for you my friend:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Packaging_Tool

It's part of Debian's (and it's variants such as Ubuntu and some new comers) packaging system.
It manages, like other packaging systems, pre-checks, dependencies, pre/post install scripting, rights managments of tarballs of files, usually an application, or a part of some underlying libs.
As it depends on unix like functionality, APT/DPKG has been ported to other families of unix, therefore, you can have an OSX made version such as Fink (and/or Macports ?)

that's how I end up apt-get'ing on my iMac as often than on my debian servers and ubuntu lappy...

February 28 2008 at 1:33 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Bob S.

If the developers who use it are really conscientious, it can be a good thing. But Nokia's Internet Tablets have used it for years and it's hell. Horribly designed and configured, especially in cases where developers assume dependencies are likely to be already installed. The miserable installation system on that is a very big reason I gave up on the Nokia and bought an iPod touch. If this implementation is more like Fink on OS X, then yes, it ought to be a more pleasant experience.

February 28 2008 at 2:00 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

JaXX

ah, my bad, it's hopfully written both on saurik.com

February 28 2008 at 1:07 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

JaXX

err 412MHz :-)

February 28 2008 at 1:05 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

1 reply to JaXX's comment

ETJ

Oddly enough, Apple underclocked the iPhone.

February 28 2008 at 5:02 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Daniel Vargas