8 ms·

OcherBook: Open-source replacement Kobo firmware

167 points by artsandsci 10y ago

dottedmag 10y ago
Nice one! But it is not a full replacement firmware, only alternative book-reading application. From the website: "I am working on a replacement (called OcherBook) for the Nickel application (the core of Kobo’s e-reader software stack)"
jbmorgado 10y ago
Hum, but this project seems dead. Last update was one year ago and it's got only 1 contributor. Can anyone recommend some alternative project (even for other e-readers)?
- cschmittiey 10y ago
  At least in my experience, most of the e-reader hacking going on is over at the mobileread.com forums, in the "Developers Corner" subforums. Both the Kindle and the Kobo Dev Corners are pretty active, with lots of information.
- andrepd 10y ago
  Try Koreader: https://github.com/koreader/koreader https://github.com/koreader/koreader
kybernetikos 10y ago
Other alternative readers for kobo include koreader: https://github.com/koreader/koreader https://github.com/koreader/koreader Alternative shells for kobo include the Kobo Start Menu: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=266821 https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=266821 The kobo developers corner forum is very useful https://www.mobileread.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=247 https://www.mobileread.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=247
vdnkh 10y ago
Is there anything wrong with stock Kobo firmware? My paperwhite is pretty dated and I was thinking of jumping ship.
- pekk 10y ago
  Not at all, it's very good and would be the right thing if you wanted to be able to buy books from their store.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- lgeek 10y ago
  They use Google Analytics to monitor your usage for one thing.
- DanBC 10y ago
  My Kobo mini had weird online activation requirement, and there's a bunch of gamification that makes no sense. It's a nicely hackable device though. http://uscoffings.net/clc/tech/embedded/kobo-touch/ http://uscoffings.net/clc/tech/embedded/kobo-touch/
  - efesak 10y ago
    Yes especialy kobo mini is fun device. Large community of paragliding pilots are using it as flight computer by adding GPS and pressure sensor. See http://unity.paragliding.xyz/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Unity.jpg http://unity.paragliding.xyz/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Unit...
- chme 10y ago
  Missing directory browser and forcing to use their library. Good luck having a few thousand books on it. Oh and of course old kernel, security bugs, spying, etc.
  - abawany 10y ago
dorfsmay 10y ago
Does it still allow you to buy books from kobo.com ? By the way, I was surprised how Amazon is making special offers to authors when they restrict the publication of their ebooks on Amazon's platform only, leading to some authors to stop publishing on Kobo. Found this out when my daughter could no longer buy the new books in a series she was reading. The author confirm the reason (and actually sent the new book epub for free).
- gommm 10y ago
  Yes, it's an issue I've often seen. I really dislike this practice from Amazon. I can understand author's doing it since it's tough for self published authors to earn money but it's a monopolistic practice on the part of Amazon that doesn't sit well with me.
  - logfromblammo 10y ago
    I didn't publish on Kobo's platform because their software arbitrarily decided that I wasn't allowed to, and none of my attempts to communicate with a customer service human to find out why generated any response. I figured that I could still sell on Kobo via Smashwords, so didn't give it much thought. In the end, my book is now exclusive to Amazon KDP for one, and only one, reason: - royalties from Amazon = $24.60 - royalties from everyone else = $0 (It's not the amount. It's the principle.) I was already de facto exclusive to Amazon, anyway.
    - dublinben 10y ago
      I'm sure your readers appreciate being forced to purchase DRM-crippled copies of your book from a monopolist. Have you considered offering DRM-free EPUB downloads directly on your own site?
      - logfromblammo 10y ago
        As should be apparent from the amount of the royalty, I don't have a significant quantity of readers. They all chose to buy the book via Amazon when it was also available on other [non-DRM] platforms. I didn't force my readers to do anything. I followed their money to the only platform that paid off. I have also elected to keep my day job. Offering free downloads wouldn't even be a waste of bandwidth, really--just a waste of server disk space. I don't have interests in both writing and marketing, so it doesn't make much difference to me if I am not making any money because no one knows who I am, rather than not making any money because nobody who knows who I am can figure out how to pay me anything. Also, the only person who bought the book for whom I can be certain that they actually read it is my Mom, who left the most passive-aggressive 5-star review I have ever seen--simultaneously shilling for it and telling me how I should write the next book.
lgeek 10y ago
Funny coincidence, I'm developing okreader (https://github.com/lgeek/okreader https://github.com/lgeek/okreader), which is a package of u-boot, deblobbified downstream kernel images, Debian and KOReader (https://github.com/koreader/koreader https://github.com/koreader/koreader) for a range of Kobo devices. I've been working with upstream KOReader developers to get the features required to use KOReader without the Kobo firmware. okreader replaces the whole software stack on the device.
- yarrel 10y ago
  That's awesome! I'm going to try it on my Touch.
- chme 10y ago
  Cool. Will try it out. I can also recommend the Pocketbook Touch Lux 3 for hacking. Changeable buildin microsd card, Allwinner A13 Soc and pins for serial connection. Only problem with it is touch and display controller. AFAIK they don't work with the mainline kernel. Oh and what I didn't like about the Kobo reader software is their library and that they always want everything to index first. With the default Pocketbook firmware you can browse directory structures, so much superior if you have a very big library on it.
  - houqp 10y ago
    KOReader runs on many pocketbook models too ;) Although I am not 100% sure if it works for Lux 3 specifically since I don't have this model to test it myself.
    - chme 10y ago
      Yeah, I should try KOReader on it at some point. Should work. Problem is just Pocketbook has own proprietary modules to load the touchscreen and display drivers, but that is just kernel space. I am not sure if that is even GPL compliant.
jaddood 10y ago
Related: calibre https://github.com/kovidgoyal/calibre https://github.com/kovidgoyal/calibre
- FreakyT 10y ago
  An absolutely indispensable tool when it comes to eBook management and conversion! I just wish the UI wasn't such a mess. Anyone know if they're open to UX contributions?
  - lfowles 10y ago
    3+ years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8213947 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8213947 This seemed to be a common theme whenever I looked at contributing to calibre.
    - nathancahill 10y ago
      > he didn't seem to have any interest in simplifying the UI > he wants it to have as much features as possible Not mutually exclusive.
acabal 10y ago
Very interesting and timely considering I just bought a Kobo Aura One. The Aura One is a really nice device, and you don't realize how small and uncomfortable the Kindle Voyage is until you use a big device with a textured back. Plus the eink Kobo's epub rendering engine is easily best-in-class. It blow's Kindle's rendering capabilities out of the water. (Assuming you use their dumb ".kepub.epub" format extension--if you upload regular epubs it'll fall back to rendering with Digital Editions, Adobe's eldritch horror of a renderer.) If OcherBook is meant to entirely replace the Kobo firmware, why not base the document rendering portion on something like Readium? That's another best-in-class renderer designed to be used in other software but it seems like it's almost always overlooked. On a side note, It's always been a faraway dream of mine to do a Kickstarter-like project to fund a completely open and libre eink ebook reader. As far as hardware startups go it'd be on the simpler side (the stripped-down minimum device is just a touch eink screen, ram/cpu/storage, usb-c; wifi and backlight not required). But, I have zero hardware experience and honestly I don't know if it'd be a venture that could be made profitable or not. Kindle/Kobo devices are loss leaders for their ebook store, so an ereader without a store, and competing on just libre-ness can't compete on price. If anyone's interested in chasing the dream, get in touch...
- houqp 10y ago
  One of the KOReader maintainers here ;) I have been discussing with other maintainers (mostly @chrox) about starting a full stack open and libre eink reader for more than a year. Now that @lgeek has done the ground work at the firmware and OS level, coming up with the hardware design is the last piece. I am happy you are interested in this too. I will definitely reach out to you through emails. Meanwhile, if anyone else is also interested in this, please feel free to join our gitter channel at https://gitter.im/koreader/koreader https://gitter.im/koreader/koreader for further discussion. I will be hanging out there after work hour (PST). And yes, we are also evaluating readium. Right now, we are using coolreader's awesome engine for epubs.
  - chme 10y ago
    Great work with KOReader! I tried KOReader on my Kobo Glo some time ago. But I think there was a problem that it always froze after some time. Never had the time and opportunity to further analyze it to give a good bug report. I really should try the latest version of it on all my ebook readers. So much to do and so little time ;)
downrightmike 10y ago
Six years too late. Threw the Kobo out some time ago.

167 points by artsandsci 10y ago

Nice one! But it is not a full replacement firmware, only alternative book-reading application. From the website: "I am working on a replacement (called OcherBook) for the Nickel application (the core of Kobo’s e-reader software stack)"

jbmorgado 10y ago

Hum, but this project seems dead. Last update was one year ago and it's got only 1 contributor. Can anyone recommend some alternative project (even for other e-readers)?

cschmittiey 10y ago
At least in my experience, most of the e-reader hacking going on is over at the mobileread.com forums, in the "Developers Corner" subforums. Both the Kindle and the Kobo Dev Corners are pretty active, with lots of information.
andrepd 10y ago
Try Koreader: https://github.com/koreader/koreader https://github.com/koreader/koreader

kybernetikos 10y ago

Other alternative readers for kobo include koreader: https://github.com/koreader/koreader https://github.com/koreader/koreader Alternative shells for kobo include the Kobo Start Menu: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=266821 https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=266821 The kobo developers corner forum is very useful https://www.mobileread.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=247 https://www.mobileread.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=247

vdnkh 10y ago

Is there anything wrong with stock Kobo firmware? My paperwhite is pretty dated and I was thinking of jumping ship.

pekk 10y ago
Not at all, it's very good and would be the right thing if you wanted to be able to buy books from their store.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
lgeek 10y ago
They use Google Analytics to monitor your usage for one thing.
DanBC 10y ago
My Kobo mini had weird online activation requirement, and there's a bunch of gamification that makes no sense. It's a nicely hackable device though. http://uscoffings.net/clc/tech/embedded/kobo-touch/ http://uscoffings.net/clc/tech/embedded/kobo-touch/
- efesak 10y ago
  Yes especialy kobo mini is fun device. Large community of paragliding pilots are using it as flight computer by adding GPS and pressure sensor. See http://unity.paragliding.xyz/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Unity.jpg http://unity.paragliding.xyz/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Unit...
chme 10y ago
Missing directory browser and forcing to use their library. Good luck having a few thousand books on it. Oh and of course old kernel, security bugs, spying, etc.
- abawany 10y ago

dorfsmay 10y ago

Does it still allow you to buy books from kobo.com ? By the way, I was surprised how Amazon is making special offers to authors when they restrict the publication of their ebooks on Amazon's platform only, leading to some authors to stop publishing on Kobo. Found this out when my daughter could no longer buy the new books in a series she was reading. The author confirm the reason (and actually sent the new book epub for free).

gommm 10y ago
Yes, it's an issue I've often seen. I really dislike this practice from Amazon. I can understand author's doing it since it's tough for self published authors to earn money but it's a monopolistic practice on the part of Amazon that doesn't sit well with me.
- logfromblammo 10y ago
  I didn't publish on Kobo's platform because their software arbitrarily decided that I wasn't allowed to, and none of my attempts to communicate with a customer service human to find out why generated any response. I figured that I could still sell on Kobo via Smashwords, so didn't give it much thought. In the end, my book is now exclusive to Amazon KDP for one, and only one, reason: - royalties from Amazon = $24.60 - royalties from everyone else = $0 (It's not the amount. It's the principle.) I was already de facto exclusive to Amazon, anyway.
  - dublinben 10y ago
    I'm sure your readers appreciate being forced to purchase DRM-crippled copies of your book from a monopolist. Have you considered offering DRM-free EPUB downloads directly on your own site?
    - logfromblammo 10y ago
      As should be apparent from the amount of the royalty, I don't have a significant quantity of readers. They all chose to buy the book via Amazon when it was also available on other [non-DRM] platforms. I didn't force my readers to do anything. I followed their money to the only platform that paid off. I have also elected to keep my day job. Offering free downloads wouldn't even be a waste of bandwidth, really--just a waste of server disk space. I don't have interests in both writing and marketing, so it doesn't make much difference to me if I am not making any money because no one knows who I am, rather than not making any money because nobody who knows who I am can figure out how to pay me anything. Also, the only person who bought the book for whom I can be certain that they actually read it is my Mom, who left the most passive-aggressive 5-star review I have ever seen--simultaneously shilling for it and telling me how I should write the next book.

lgeek 10y ago

Funny coincidence, I'm developing okreader (https://github.com/lgeek/okreader https://github.com/lgeek/okreader), which is a package of u-boot, deblobbified downstream kernel images, Debian and KOReader (https://github.com/koreader/koreader https://github.com/koreader/koreader) for a range of Kobo devices. I've been working with upstream KOReader developers to get the features required to use KOReader without the Kobo firmware. okreader replaces the whole software stack on the device.

yarrel 10y ago
That's awesome! I'm going to try it on my Touch.
chme 10y ago
Cool. Will try it out. I can also recommend the Pocketbook Touch Lux 3 for hacking. Changeable buildin microsd card, Allwinner A13 Soc and pins for serial connection. Only problem with it is touch and display controller. AFAIK they don't work with the mainline kernel. Oh and what I didn't like about the Kobo reader software is their library and that they always want everything to index first. With the default Pocketbook firmware you can browse directory structures, so much superior if you have a very big library on it.
- houqp 10y ago
  KOReader runs on many pocketbook models too ;) Although I am not 100% sure if it works for Lux 3 specifically since I don't have this model to test it myself.
  - chme 10y ago
    Yeah, I should try KOReader on it at some point. Should work. Problem is just Pocketbook has own proprietary modules to load the touchscreen and display drivers, but that is just kernel space. I am not sure if that is even GPL compliant.

jaddood 10y ago

Related: calibre https://github.com/kovidgoyal/calibre https://github.com/kovidgoyal/calibre

FreakyT 10y ago
An absolutely indispensable tool when it comes to eBook management and conversion! I just wish the UI wasn't such a mess. Anyone know if they're open to UX contributions?
- lfowles 10y ago
  3+ years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8213947 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8213947 This seemed to be a common theme whenever I looked at contributing to calibre.
  - nathancahill 10y ago
    > he didn't seem to have any interest in simplifying the UI > he wants it to have as much features as possible Not mutually exclusive.

acabal 10y ago

Very interesting and timely considering I just bought a Kobo Aura One. The Aura One is a really nice device, and you don't realize how small and uncomfortable the Kindle Voyage is until you use a big device with a textured back. Plus the eink Kobo's epub rendering engine is easily best-in-class. It blow's Kindle's rendering capabilities out of the water. (Assuming you use their dumb ".kepub.epub" format extension--if you upload regular epubs it'll fall back to rendering with Digital Editions, Adobe's eldritch horror of a renderer.) If OcherBook is meant to entirely replace the Kobo firmware, why not base the document rendering portion on something like Readium? That's another best-in-class renderer designed to be used in other software but it seems like it's almost always overlooked. On a side note, It's always been a faraway dream of mine to do a Kickstarter-like project to fund a completely open and libre eink ebook reader. As far as hardware startups go it'd be on the simpler side (the stripped-down minimum device is just a touch eink screen, ram/cpu/storage, usb-c; wifi and backlight not required). But, I have zero hardware experience and honestly I don't know if it'd be a venture that could be made profitable or not. Kindle/Kobo devices are loss leaders for their ebook store, so an ereader without a store, and competing on just libre-ness can't compete on price. If anyone's interested in chasing the dream, get in touch...

houqp 10y ago
One of the KOReader maintainers here ;) I have been discussing with other maintainers (mostly @chrox) about starting a full stack open and libre eink reader for more than a year. Now that @lgeek has done the ground work at the firmware and OS level, coming up with the hardware design is the last piece. I am happy you are interested in this too. I will definitely reach out to you through emails. Meanwhile, if anyone else is also interested in this, please feel free to join our gitter channel at https://gitter.im/koreader/koreader https://gitter.im/koreader/koreader for further discussion. I will be hanging out there after work hour (PST). And yes, we are also evaluating readium. Right now, we are using coolreader's awesome engine for epubs.
- chme 10y ago
  Great work with KOReader! I tried KOReader on my Kobo Glo some time ago. But I think there was a problem that it always froze after some time. Never had the time and opportunity to further analyze it to give a good bug report. I really should try the latest version of it on all my ebook readers. So much to do and so little time ;)

downrightmike 10y ago

Six years too late. Threw the Kobo out some time ago.