When it comes to an eBook reader, the choices are limited. The market is dominated by Amazon’s proprietary Kindle along with a few other options like Kobo, Nook and Onyx. An interesting news for open source enthusiasts is that a developer, Joey Castillo, is working on creating an open
  • entropicshart@sh.itjust.works
    71·
    11 months ago

    What kindle? I’d guess the one that doesn’t require a soldering iron to build…

    I would love to have an alternative for kindle, but this is not it; not yet at least

    • stoy@lemmy.zip
      2·
      11 months ago

      There are plenty of alternatives to the Kindle, several years ago I used the Kobo Glo, worked fine with PDFs, though I remeber having to hack it’s local database to make it work without an account.

      • JDubbleu@programming.dev
        2·
        11 months ago

        Surprisingly, Remarkable tablets, despite not being open source, you can do just about anything with. They allow root SSH access and the backend is a heavily stripped down version of Linux.

        I’ve been writing an application to allow customizing splash screens over SSH/SFTP and it’s actually been super easy to work with. The “jailbreak” scene is also super active, and the company has gone the opposite direction of most. They retroactively removed the need for a subscription to cloud sync on all devices, and seem to very much embrace the ridiculous things people have done with their tablets.

        The device is also no nonsense and does exactly what it’s designed to do extremely well and no more. No ads, no bloat, no constant internet connection. You could never connect the thing to the internet if you really wanted. Honestly one of the few devices I’ve bought in recent memory that I feel like I wholely own.

        Two big downsides are no Bluetooth, and you need a modified hardware device to unbrick the device if you fuck up (jumping type C pins to put the device into recovery). Overall really solid and would recommend.

    • Hylactor@sopuli.xyz
      1·
      11 months ago

      I use a Kobo. It has a few warts, but its great overall. Software is definitely the weakest link.

  • rufus@discuss.tchncs.de
    4·
    11 months ago

    Isn’t 4.2 inch like about a quarter of the screen size of a small tablet or e-reader? My phone has a bit less than 6 and is considered small.

  • penquin@lemmy.kde.social
    3·
    11 months ago

    I’m waiting for the PineNote to be out of the development edition so I can get one. I do have an older kindle that I jailbroke a while ago and disabled OTA on. It still sucks, but it is better with KOreader.

    • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.works
      3·
      11 months ago

      Bringing things out of “early access for developers and enthusiasts only” isn’t something Pine64 does. They’ve got a laptop, phone, watch, tablet, ereader, and probably shit I’ve missed, none are ready for prime time and never will be.

  • Rosco@sh.itjust.works
    2·
    11 months ago

    Upgraded my Kobo Clara HD internal storage from 8GB to 128GB, so that I can put mangas on it, and installed koreader. Dirt cheap and very enjoyable.

  • linuxPIPEpower@discuss.tchncs.de
    1·
    11 months ago

    I had one of the early generation kindles for a while. There was a straighrtforward jailbreak to make it more sociable. The set it up with Calibre which was smooth once properly set up. There was (likely still is) a cool plugin that would get RSS feeds, generate an ebook and sync automatically over wifi per schedule. So then when I went out I would have everything to read fresh with zero effort. Which at the time was pretty impressive. Phone batteries sucked so they were not really viable for reading unless you could have them plugged in all the time. The kindle was magic in comparison.

    Anyone who wants to dive into e readers should go to the E-Book Readers section of MobileRead Forums. There people are very serious about ebooks.

    I was thinking of buying another ereader a couple years ago. I sort of assumed there would be some open-ish type options. But I didn’t find anything that suited me. I really liked eink and wish it was more widely used. I would love one of the phones with dual ekin/LCD displays.

    All this to say I hope there is community uptake and participation in the project. I myself do not have a soldering iron and don’t really need an ereader. But I think it’s a cool contribution.

    • loathsome dongeater@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
      01·
      11 months ago

      Kobo ereaders are very freedom respecting. You can run koreader or plato on it very easily if you are a little bit tech savvy. Just involves plugging in the reader to a computer and running a shell or powershell script.

    • conciselyverbose@kbin.social
      1·
      11 months ago

      It’s brutal.

      I like the idea, but you need a touch screen and support and you need a far, far better screen before it’s in the neighborhood of actually realistic to use. It’s not their fault that you can’t just go buy a 300 PPI screen, but the end result is just not enough to actually be usable.