5 ms·

Kobos are quite hackable [1], to the extent that their Linux operating system is on a removable internal SD card, and you can run Debian on them [2]. [1] https

by femto 10y ago

Kobos are quite hackable [1], to the extent that their Linux operating system is on a removable internal SD card, and you can run Debian on them [2]. [1] https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Kobo_Touch_Hacking https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Kobo_Touch_Hacking [2] https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Debian_Linux_on_a_Kobo https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Debian_Linux_on_a_Kobo

_wmd 10y ago
Kobos require nothing more than a 2 line shell script on an SD card to get telnet, after which, they publish their modified Qt sources, so you can even rebuild the UI framework without much effort, although I don't know much about keeping their proprietary display and touch driver blobs in place. Back in time they had some kind of third party development support, so you could plug addons into the existing UI. AFAIK the framework hasn't changed much to prevent that kind of dev, and there example addons built around it But in terms of a random stable embedded environment that is quite transparent, with an awesome out of box hardware/software experience, Kobo are not to be beaten
- anarcat 10y ago
  > they publish their modified Qt sources, so you can even rebuild the UI framework without much effort Really? AFAIK, only parts of the distro are liberated, here: https://github.com/kobolabs/Kobo-Reader https://github.com/kobolabs/Kobo-Reader Most notably, the user interface itself ("Nickel") is completely missing from there: this makes it really hard to develop extensions for it. Some people have gone through great lengths to try and improve the firmware image, see for example this guy who went as far as writing his own QT plugin for the UI, basically bruteforcing his way through undocumented APIs and missing source code: http://blog.ringerc.id.au/search/label/kobo http://blog.ringerc.id.au/search/label/kobo He gave up in 2011. I did my own share of fooling around with the Kobo. It's true that it's very easy to hack: just drop a `KoboRoot.tgz` tarball in the `.kobo` directory, and you basically overwrite any part of the filesystem, which gives you a lot of freedom. I wrote a tool to sync my Kobo with Wallabag here called Wallabako: https://gitlab.com/anarcat/wallabako/ https://gitlab.com/anarcat/wallabako/ But there's no APK, far from it: the Kobo suite is developped in typical proprietary fashion of keeping the secret sauce to themselves, not a collaborative way. And even though they are less hostile than Amazon in trying to keep people out, nothing says they will keep on being nice like this. What we really need is a liberated hardware e-reader. There are some examples elsewhere in this thread that are interesting...
aurelian15 10y ago
I second this. It is very easy to run custom software on Kobos (at least the Kobo Aura HD I have). Executables built with the cross-compile tool chain shipped with Debian work flawlessly on the device. The screen can be easily used with the provided /dev/fb0. The reader also acts as a virtual USB network device, so you don't have to rely on a clumsy WiFi connection. Another plus (at least for older models) is that the devices are quite easy to open and that the internal storage is just a normal removable micro SD card. So you can't really brick your device. All in all it took me a few hours to write a simple application which renders the current time and date with a TTF font to the display.

by femto 10y ago

_wmd 10y ago

Kobos require nothing more than a 2 line shell script on an SD card to get telnet, after which, they publish their modified Qt sources, so you can even rebuild the UI framework without much effort, although I don't know much about keeping their proprietary display and touch driver blobs in place. Back in time they had some kind of third party development support, so you could plug addons into the existing UI. AFAIK the framework hasn't changed much to prevent that kind of dev, and there example addons built around it But in terms of a random stable embedded environment that is quite transparent, with an awesome out of box hardware/software experience, Kobo are not to be beaten

anarcat 10y ago
> they publish their modified Qt sources, so you can even rebuild the UI framework without much effort Really? AFAIK, only parts of the distro are liberated, here: https://github.com/kobolabs/Kobo-Reader https://github.com/kobolabs/Kobo-Reader Most notably, the user interface itself ("Nickel") is completely missing from there: this makes it really hard to develop extensions for it. Some people have gone through great lengths to try and improve the firmware image, see for example this guy who went as far as writing his own QT plugin for the UI, basically bruteforcing his way through undocumented APIs and missing source code: http://blog.ringerc.id.au/search/label/kobo http://blog.ringerc.id.au/search/label/kobo He gave up in 2011. I did my own share of fooling around with the Kobo. It's true that it's very easy to hack: just drop a `KoboRoot.tgz` tarball in the `.kobo` directory, and you basically overwrite any part of the filesystem, which gives you a lot of freedom. I wrote a tool to sync my Kobo with Wallabag here called Wallabako: https://gitlab.com/anarcat/wallabako/ https://gitlab.com/anarcat/wallabako/ But there's no APK, far from it: the Kobo suite is developped in typical proprietary fashion of keeping the secret sauce to themselves, not a collaborative way. And even though they are less hostile than Amazon in trying to keep people out, nothing says they will keep on being nice like this. What we really need is a liberated hardware e-reader. There are some examples elsewhere in this thread that are interesting...

aurelian15 10y ago

I second this. It is very easy to run custom software on Kobos (at least the Kobo Aura HD I have). Executables built with the cross-compile tool chain shipped with Debian work flawlessly on the device. The screen can be easily used with the provided /dev/fb0. The reader also acts as a virtual USB network device, so you don't have to rely on a clumsy WiFi connection. Another plus (at least for older models) is that the devices are quite easy to open and that the internal storage is just a normal removable micro SD card. So you can't really brick your device. All in all it took me a few hours to write a simple application which renders the current time and date with a TTF font to the display.