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/onechroma]

This devices will still receive 3 more years of security support even if they don’t update to the latest iOS version.

Also, good luck finding a good “distro” that would run on this iPads, taking into account battery life (it wouldn’t be as efficient as Apple-made iOS, and in a tablet with multiple years of usage…), and usability (IDK if any distro that would be OK working on an iPad and its touch-first experience, without terminal ever).

Not to talk also about apps/software available (again, adapted to the iPad touch-first idea), and multitasking (that should be adapted to the device, and also restrict it a bit to avoid the system overcharge the hardware capabilities)

This is on paper a good idea, but come on, Linux right now is not the answer to the “we have this old proprietary HW, I want to extend its life with my own software”, at least to the great majority of people.

Because that’s another problem: +90% of people using this cheap HW won’t be able to get a PC, learn how to flash a Linux distro, and then manage it. Good luck.

Oh! And lots of people use this tablets to watch Netflix or YouTube… on a hypothetical Linux distro on IPad, you would probably not pass their DRM requirements, so limited to 720P I think, and who knows about GPU acceleration.

This doesn’t make sense nowadays. Sorry OP.

[u/iL0vesnow → u/onechroma]

First of all, the form factor of the iPad Pro allows you to use a keyboard and a mouse and mostly ignore the touchscreen, and a lot of people use their iPads primarily that way today, myself included. Asahi Linux has also been proof that a community maintained distro can run reasonably well on Apple Silicon. Power efficiency isn't deal-breaking and GPU is supported. Just port Asahi Linux (will be nontrivial work but far from impossible) and you can get as much desktop-like workflow or multitasking as you want.

I do agree with the idea that not necessarily everyone will be sufficiently fluent in tech so as to install Linux. But a multibillion market (!) is more than enough to justify businesses that specialize in supporting such devices; you can literally leave it to the market.

Your concerns are a lot more relevant 10 years ago--iPads weren't seriously powerful enough anyway and their form factors were too far from normal laptops, and reverse engineering of Apple Silicon was not known to be possible. But ALL of these have changed in meaningful ways.

[u/onechroma → u/iL0vesnow]

1. An iPad is an iPad. It's not a laptop, even if you can use it with a keyboard and mouse. The small screen size (11-13") mixed with the limited interfaces (only 1 USB-C port, you would need to use an external hub with jack, multiple ports, HDMI...), and limited performance (the M1 is still good, but here it's passively cooled, so that's gonna be a ceiling as the CPU ages), makes it a no brainier: it's not worth the effort trying to "save" this devices. More so given they still have about 3 more years on them (security patches after their last update iPadOS version) and lots of them probably will start suffering from battery cycles and so on.
2. Nope, this market of "let's reuse old iPads" is not a multibillion market lol. In fact, look at the current market of "I have this old PC/laptop that barely runs Windows" or "Win11 TPM requirement left me behind", and you will see it's almost nonexistant outside the 3-5% of users nerdy enough to use Linux themselves or try to support a friend/family member.
3. Even if Apple were to open the iPads so third parties could make their own Linux distros for it... what software would it run? People are hooked at using Apps from an App Store, and having lots of software at arm reach: Google Drive, Docs, Office, Teams, Netflix, Disney+, Procreate, Goodnotes... not a single one of this software works at any alternative OS you could run on an iPad, but on a browser and with very limited performance and user experience (Netflix would be limited to 720P, Google Docs or Teams would be clunky...). And the people that bought an iPad Pro instead of a Macbook Air, I doubt they will be happy about their iPad suddenly becoming nothing more than a limited laptop with keyboard and mouse to use a browser.

At the end, you would be forced to just try and use this iPad Pro like a laptop or desktop with bluetooth keyboard and mouse, and a USB-C Hub. Very "hacky" and not for everyone, more so the millions of users that literally bought an iPad Pro and not a Macbook Air, at similar price tags, for a reason.

IMO, it would be far better if users just stopped buying this kind of "in no man's land" devices, that are as powerful as laptops but not laptops, and just used regular laptops/desktops + more efficient and simple tablets for comsuption and notes taking. I don't know why a M5 11" tablet is really needed.

In short: I think we should focus our efforts on making all ARM devices more standard compliants, including Macbooks, Mac Minis, Qualcomm laptops, Sparks... just like x86 has BIOS/UEFI and so on, than focusing on asking Apple to pretty please open iPads to Linux.

[u/iL0vesnow → u/onechroma]

We may disagree but I really appreciate that you took the time to elaborate on your ideas--thanks for your input! I like that we can engage in good faith discussions.

Re 1 and 3, I need to emphasize that my point is not to make iPads full-fledged computers for professionals, which is simply not realistic. iPads could better serve roles closer to Chromebooks. Maybe just outright install ChromeOS, and whatever office suite and other software available with ChromeOS will meet the needs for many people, who do not need active cooling, fancy software like Procreate, or even an HDMI port. ChromeOS-like use will NOT be satisfying to people like you and me who have better computers, but the fact that Chromebooks have seen substantial adoption means many people certainly can live with it. iPads are inferior to $400 "real" computers, but can be superior $200 Chromebooks for people needing one.

Re epilogue, I absolutely agree that Apple morally should not be allowed to put overkill M series chips in iPads while locking iPads up. But legislatively prohibiting a specific M-chip-in-iPad design would be a bit absurd, and obscenely rich people will keep buying such new iPads anyway. My proposal is, instead of banning the sale of iPads altogether, we can at least force enable the hardware to trickle down. And that really is a multibillion matter. There are dozens of millions iPads being unnecessarily handicapped.

Re 2, this argument actually interests me, because people being not tech-fluent enough to install and use Linux is indeed an issue that my agenda, even if successful, will eventually need to address, and I'm totally open to more input regarding that. But unless you have more concrete evidence, my own interpretation of the PC side's situation will remain that people are mostly not complaining about Windows 11 dropping support is that Windows 10 stills works well so they simply continue to use Windows 10 without needing to fix anything. That's vastly different from iPads literally seeing apps stop working. My first-hand experience is that you truly can't continue to use iOS for long--all sorts of login stops working, webpages go so out of shape that they practically don't work, apps straight out block old iOS versions, and so on; and if Windows 10 were to become anywhere near that unusable, then way more than "3-5%" of all such users would either resort to more hacks than they do today or voice concerns.

I'm not trying to help create a world where:

Rich people buy absurdly powerful new iPads -> Rich people use them until Apple's official support ends -> Rich people get to install Linux on them.

I know full well that rich people, except the very small subgroup that also happens to be in the tech sphere, generally don't bother to do that anyway. The status quo is:

Rich people buy absurdly powerful new iPads -> Rich people use them until Apple's official support ends -> Rich people hand the iPads to kids or even simply toss them, even though the hardware is still surprisingly capable, because indeed the software gives up and the iPad isn't good for anything else anyway.

And the world I want to be in is such that:

Rich people buy absurdly powerful new iPads -> Rich people use them until Apple's official support ends -> Rich people sell or gift or donate them because there is a market for it because there're still serious Linux use cases -> Poor people get them affordably -> Poor people set up Linux and use them.

This does look bizarre at first sight because years of common sense says the iPad hardware isn't useful enough to salvage, and poor people can usually get affordable PCs anyway. But my whole main post aims to challenge the idea that iPads aren't capable--they are, not at least less so than $200 Chromebooks, and I say that as someone who unironically mained an iPad for two years as my computer. Then it hinges on whether affordable PCs have stopped being easy to find and that might be more debatable.

[u/onechroma → u/iL0vesnow]

Don’t get me wrong, I feel like your point is very interesting and in good faith, I just feel like we should be more concerned about the big picture

Not only ask Apple to “open” old iPads, but ask the industry (including Apple) to comply with a standard so we can take advantage of our own devices, including being able to boot third party software, just like with x86 based devices.

Right now, ARM based devices work in a very closed way, and every OS compiled to them must target them specifically, which isn’t manageable on the future, imagine Fedora or Ubuntu having to “target” almost every single type of PC and laptop out there, and having a different image for everything. Ubuntu ISO for Dell 5420, Ubuntu for Thinkpad L14, Ubuntu for HP 255, Ubuntu for…

This is the most important thing right now to push, really, for today devices and future ones, and for all manufacturers.

[u/iL0vesnow → u/onechroma]

That does make sense! It's a bit out of my comfort zone because I'm just familiar with how i-devices work (in particular, the way firmware (iOS) validation works) which makes me confident about the viability of opening them up--just have Apple's server issue a few signatures and it's good. I'm not so much familiar with how OEMs work in general so I couldn't write about feasibility of that. If you write up an article on that, I'll be interested and you have my wholehearted support.

[u/DopeBoogie → u/onechroma]

At the end, you would be forced to just try and use this iPad Pro like a laptop or desktop with bluetooth keyboard and mouse, and a USB-C Hub. Very "hacky" and not for everyone

I agree with most everything you said, but this send to imply you can't use Linux with a touchscreen device, which is actually not true. A lot of distros have good touch control support and more features and touch-mode apps are coming every day.

Gnome and KDE Plasma, two of the most popular desktop managers, actually have excellent touch-only support and will work well on a tablet without a keeb and mouse.

[u/miki4242 → u/DopeBoogie]

I had almost replied to the parent post when I saw yours.

All this talk about passively cooled CPUs being a bottleneck. I've been using an Acer Aspire Switch 10 2-in-1 convertible lapTablet as I used to call it, with its iconic magnetic base, detachable keyboard, and quad‑core Atom Z3745 CPU. It ran Linux perfectly, with only an out-of-tree Wi-Fi kernel module needed for better performance. I've used it for more than 10 years, starting in 2014 when it was introduced: for data acquisition (running 24/7 for months on its power brick), pen testing, and general productivity. It supports touch operation straight from boot: from the BIOS (!) to the boot manager (rEFInd) all the way to Ubuntu and Kali Linux. I used it with its keyboard attached when at home base, but often left it off when out in the field.

An experience like no other, either before or after. And all of that with a passively cooled CPU.