SSH windows via PuTTY running on the author’s MS Surface. A tear was shed by tech admins around the globe.
The Royal Smart People over at XDA have handed the world a little slice of freedom via their new Jailbreak for Windows RT.
Clorkr’s original exploit made waves earlier this month, but it wasn’t until XDA user netham45 packaged the whole thing up (about a week ago) into a tidy .bat file that the vulnerability truly brought power to the people. As of today, the refined version 1.1 works with the most recent updates to RT and will jailbreak almost any Windows RT device in a minute or less.
This isn’t your Mom’s (read: iPhone) jailbreak. Don’t expect to install Hackulous and grab all your favourite games for free. In fact, this jailbreak doesn’t allow copying Microsoft’s App Store programs at all – that’s not the intention, and hopefully never is.
So what does it do? Well, dear reader, it permits the desktop-mode interface to run anything compiled for Windows ARM (not x86, but read on). Some very kind gear-heads have re-compiled several applications so far that will run natively, and the list is growing daily. Among the high-profile programs ported so far:
- Putty (SSH client)
- VNC Server/Client
- Python
- 7Zip (archive tool)
- Miranda IM (multi-protocol messaging client)
- MonoTorrent
- Doom 2 – yes DOOM 2!
Also, notably, the Bochs x86 emulator has been ported over, which opens the door to a whole new horizon of apps on the ARM-based RT platform. Some crafty masochists are already running Win98SE in emulated mode to enjoy the games of yesteryore.
Other notable but unfinished ports rumored to be in the works include Firefox, Thunderbird, Apache and of course the Linux kernel. Provided Microsoft doesn’t call in the Gestapo FBI to somehow take all this down, there is a very bright future for the RT homebrew community.
UPDATE: Audicity has been ported over. This could be a game changer for a few important reasons (upcoming article).
UPDATE2: VirtuaWin ported as well. Great productivity tool, especially for smaller screens.
Visit the XDA forum here to find out more and download the jailbreak script.