UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hey,

I might be able to get my hands on a old iPhone from a friend of mine.

I was thinking... the iOS that is installed on that is UNIX based right?
Is there any way I can get the terminal to open up on that thing?
Or installing something like DSL on it would be cool... I mean, I haven't really looked at all the tech that's in an iPhone, but it works like a computer, so why shouldn't that work?
The question might seem stupid to you, but I'm a noob and I like to experiment

Can you run ssh on your iphone? sure, even an ssh server. Can you pop up an ssh window on your iphone? not really.

The underlying UNIX amounts to a device driver on an iphone. The graphical stuff is not a window manager as conventionally understood, it's a proprietary apple program that runs proprietary apple things in a proprietary apple way.

I don't think there's likely to be a Linux distribution that works well if at all with all the telephony stuff in an iphone. Most likely it'd just get wrecked.

If you want to try linux on an old iphone, your best bet is probably iDroid. I don't know much about it, but from what I've heard, it's very alpha.

FAQ - iDroid Project

However, if you want to play with iOS, you can jailbreak the device and use a terminal emulator to play with its innards.

Regards,
Alister

Thanks for the quick responses. I will definatly look into that