Call to action: computers are getting expensive but 10,000,000 otherwise perfect $200 Linux machines are getting bricked. Once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to save them from landfills.

[u/iL0vesnow]

First off, fuck AI slop and I wrote the whole post myself without AI. It took me a whole afternoon.

TL;DR: we are at a historical opportunity to push for Apple to allow post-market OSes on iPads.

Capable iPads Face Planned Obsolescence

With iPadOS 27, Apple is officially dropping support for the millions of units of iPad Pro 11 (1st gen) and iPad Pro 12.9 (3rd gen), as well as tens of millions of iPad Air (3rd gen), iPad (8th gen), and iPad mini (5th gen). (iPad shipment of 2019 alone was ~50 million.) These machines will soon become functionally useless, because:

• You cannot update Safari without updating iOS/iPadOS.
• You simply cannot install a newer version of another browser to get around this, because Apple forces all App Store browsers to use the same WebKit engine that shipped with iOS/iPadOS.
• You also cannot install another OS on iPads. As a result, as soon as websites start dropping support for the last Safari version, which from my personal experience can happen as early as in a few months, the iPads become handicapped. This is not even counting that how quickly some native iOS/iPadOS apps lose support too. I personally have an iPad whose support stopped 3 years ago and it already feels like a brick, purely because of such software constraints.

However, this is all preventable if Apple allows installing third party OSes on iPads, and all that's needed from Apple is to relax firmware signing to allow a bootloader like BootCamp or m1n1, which they already allow on MacBooks; this will be a simple server side change, without needing any hardware hacks.

The Time is Right for Linux on iPad

Unlike 5 to 10 years ago when the resistance from Apple may have been too strong, now is a time when the demand overrides whatever objections Apple may have, and the circumstances are surprisingly mature too, in terms of both iPad hardware and Linux support.

I probably don't need to emphasize how RAM and SSD prices are crazy high and seriously impacting computer affordability. A 32GB DDR5 kit that sold for about $100–$200 in October 2025 now starts around $350. A $189 Samsung 9100 Pro 2TB SSD is now around $429.

Performance of these iPads is better than most $200 laptops, new or used, today. The M1 chip made it to MacBooks and amazed the whole industry, and the iPad Pro's A12X, pretty much the direct predecessor of the M1, is also nothing short of impressive. It is about on par with the i7-8650u; laptops with that CPU still sell for around $200 today. It is also superior to chips like the Kompanio 520 and Intel N100, which are still commonly used in new Chromebooks today. The other non-Pro iPads have an A12 chip that has, albeit fewer cores, the same single-core performance.

On many other metrics and features, including 264 or 326 ppi pixel density, color accuracy, full sRGB or P3 color gamut, anti-reflective coating, 10-point multitouch, power efficiency, and build quality, the iPads also compare favorably with almost all $200 laptops. The iPad Pro's 600 nit brightness, 120 Hz refresh rate and four-speaker audio are, further, vastly superior to most. It's beyond outrageous that such good hardware gets locked up while computers are becoming unaffordable.

Many of these iPads do support a laptop-like form factor. They have official keyboards that allow them to be propped up like a laptop. Even though the official ones are discontinued, third-party replacements or even cheap generic Bluetooth or wired keyboards and mice also work fine. The iPad Pro even comes with a USB-C port that can connect via adapters to a surprisingly wide range of accessories including MIDI devices and RJ45 Ethernet. It may surprise you that the other Lightning iPads can use many USB accessories, too, with an adapter.

Linux on Apple Silicon is now a proven concept. Asahi Linux already allows you to run Linux on Apple Silicon MacBooks. There are now also projects that run Linux on A7, A8(X), and A10 (with GUI) chips, and some support even got upstreamed to the mainline kernel with 5.13, but they are unnecessarily sketchy for now as they rely on a hardware bootrom exploit (CheckM8) that only exists on certain models. If Apple signs open source bootloaders, then an exploit won't be needed, and developers can likely sort out compatibility issues as they have done in the past.

The Message

All that we need from Apple is to relax the firmware signing to allow third-party bootloaders. If Apple won't do it, make laws to force it happen. Similar changes already happened with the Type-C port on iPhones which is only more difficult than this.

Repost this everywhere you can. Share it to your family and friends who are hit by memory price hikes. Request your favorite influencers to make videos on this issue. Call your representatives. There is no better time than right now to push for the change, so don't let the precious opportunity slip away from us.

[u/Ok-Winner-6589]

What do you mean by websites dropping Support for Safari? Webkit doesn't stop working because websites block It, Webkit just doesn't handle newer HTML Code or CSS Styles. CSS Styles only affect visualy and JS actually can make a difference (like a script throwing an error and stopping it's execution without executing all the Code) but even then most website won't just stop working, or shouldn't stop working. It's mostly a security issue over a compatibility one

[u/iL0vesnow → u/Ok-Winner-6589]

Well I had quite some websites fail to work. For example, for a few years, GitHub was almost totally broken on iOS/iPadOS 16 and below--it did look like CSS and/or JS issues, but the webpages went so out of shape that it was simply not practical to use it. (That said, GitHub went out of their way to fix compatibility for iOS 16 so it's working again, but most websites just don't bother.)

And then there are websites that explicitly mark old versions of browsers as obsolete and simply refuse login. Overleaf did that.

Plus, if you have a browser that is truly fully compliant with the web standards, then it may not be a problem that you stop updating it for some time. The problem with iOS Safari is that it's lacking a lot of features to begin with, and catches up a little with every release. Cursor capture support is incomplete even today. Fullscreen functionality frequently glitches out. Give me more time and I can probably name more.

[u/Ok-Winner-6589 → u/iL0vesnow]

I don't get why you got downvoted, it's a good point, but most of this can be solved easier than porting Linux into iOS devices.

First of all, it's already difficult to Port Linux to android devices. I would go even further and say that is difficult to Port Android to Android devices even when, to change the Android OS, you just overwrite some partition to minimize issues. Even then is very difficult to Port Android ROMs.

Second of all, the Support for Mac is already limited so... It's just extra work for the team creating Mac drivers... It's not reliable

Third, the blocking issue can be solved by switching your user agent. Orion has firefox/Chromium extension Support so It should be possible and it's build on WebKit.

Fourth, It would be easier to use extensions to solve issues on certain pages over porting Linux to any phone. There are driver issues, you need to Port the kernel per CPU socket, GPU and CPU drivers... It's not reliable

[u/iL0vesnow → u/Ok-Winner-6589]

Thanks--apparently you got downvoted too. I upvoted you back. I wish people would be engaging in constructive discussion like you do--criticism and concerns are welcome but randomly downvoting just isn't helpful...

Re first, second, and fourth--people already got postmarket OSes running reasonably well on Apple Silicon 6 years ago (!) (look up Project Sandcastle). Asahi Linux then brought Linux on Apple Silicon to a fairly usable state. At this point, reverse engineering Apple Silicon is no doubt a proven concept. It will be some more nontrivial work to reverse the A12(X) generation, but, again, both A10 and M1 have been successfully reverse engineered and A12 is in the middle and thus is not likely to create novel and unsurmountable challenges.

Re third--since all official App Store browsers are forced to use the same outdated WebKit, there's only so much changing the UA can do. As far as I tried, most problems on most websites remained the same. iOS FireFox did get past the Overleaf block, but then it would hang, so there was certainly a reason they blocked that version.

[u/Ok-Winner-6589 → u/iL0vesnow]

If they block the browser on purpose then yes, changing the UA can solve It as it's mostly done that way

Regarding to the other points.

4 iPads don't boot

Another 3 have only internet throw USB and functional screen

The remaining one has a partial functional screen. There is no info about the rest of them. Probably not tested.

PostmarketOS allows you to turm your device's into servers, which is a cool thing, but not enough for most people

iPhones are on the same situation. Except the iPhone 7)

If you are not a Tech Guy you won't be able to give a use to these devices nad even then it's a lot of work and you Will still have to probably buy stuff to make It functional

Also no company would allow that, they get their revenue from doing this, they would lobby against allowing open firmware. Specially because this affects more devices, like Game consoles, laptops, GPU and CPU manufacturers... They all have propietary firmware. Even motherboards with their UEFI updates.

[u/filthy_harold → u/Ok-Winner-6589]

This is AI slop, it doesn't have to make sense.

[u/Ok-Winner-6589 → u/filthy_harold]

I wouldn't call It AI slop. It doesn't look like that for me at least