If all you want is an ereader with ssh, a Kobo with Koreader will do that for you. They just run Linux, so it's quite a fun device for hacking around in. Plus

If all you want is an ereader with ssh, a Kobo with Koreader will do that for you. They just run Linux, so it's quite a fun device for hacking around in. Plus Koreader itself is in Lua and is relatively easy to make changes to.