One user has shared a video showing the Ubuntu operating system booting up in the command line, as well as GUI mode, on their iPhone 7.

An Alternative OS on Your iPhone

The cool experiment, first spotted by iDownloadBlog, uses the full power of the "checkra1n" jailbreak to install Ubuntu on the phone through a USB Ethernet connection.

According to Twitter user @RowRocka, an iPhone 7 is required because the Ubuntu kernel is having issues with chips that power other iPhone and iPad models. The iPhone 7 runs Apple's A10 Fusion chip. 

In the video shared below, an iPhone 7 can be seen booting Ubuntu before the handset finally appears at the command line-based login interface.

However, the user wrote on Reddit that "one can pull all of this off without ever jailbreaking the phone," but stopped short of elaborating further. The experiment was updated before going to press to allow the handset to boot to the full Gnome-shell desktop interface, as evidenced by the video below.

How to Run Ubuntu on Your iPhone

For those interested in running Ubuntu on their iPhone, @RowRocka has shared all of the prerequisites along with a comprehensive list of setup instructions on Reddit. So, if you have any interest in running Ubuntu on a jailbroken iPhone 7, be sure to read his detailed instructions.

Related: Easy Ways to Install Emulators on Your iPhone

For the uninitiated, jailbreaking uses exploits in the iOS operating system to remove Apple's built-in protections. The checkra1n tool is required for successfully installing Ubuntu on a jailbroken iPhone because it's based on the unpatchable "checkm8" hardware exploit.

According to iDownloadBlog, this wouldn’t be the first time that checkra1n has enabled an alternative operating system on an iPhone. Last year, for instance, Project Sandcastle allowed the Android operating system to boot on an iPhone 7 using checkra1n.