Bring a family iPhone 4S back as a retro media player — ideally iOS 6 — entirely from Linux. No Windows, no iTunes.
The short version of the good news and the honest news:
- ✅ No Windows needed. Linux's
libimobiledevice+idevicerestoredo everything iTunes did (backup, restore, factory-reset, recovery/DFU, media). Some of it (ideviceinfo,idevice_id) is already on the box. - ✅ Wiping the passcode is a normal restore, not a hack — DFU/recovery mode + restore the latest signed firmware (iOS 9.3.6). It's the family's device; this is legitimate reuse.
⚠️ Activation Lock (if it was signed into iCloud) needs the family's Apple ID — the legitimate path, and the one boundary we don't cross.- ❓ iOS 6 is the dream but not yet a plan. Apple stopped signing it; getting it onto an A5 needs saved blobs (unlikely) or a special downgrade method (powdersn0w-class) that must be verified first. Reachable fallback: iOS 9.3.6 + Phoenix jailbreak.
Full orientation, the verified-vs-research breakdown, and the next-session plan: CLAUDE.md.
This is the right-to-tinker ethos, lived: your device, your hands, retro by choice — the same
spirit as the cartograph project. The 4S era was peak jailbreak, and libimobiledevice is the
open-source descendant of that scene. We're standing in a good lineage.