ebook reader recommendations?

ebook reader recommendations?

[Pierre Neidhardt]

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Hi Guixers!

I'm looking for an open ebook reader, at least something that runs free
software.

I found this fascinating project, although for now you have to assemble
it yourself:

    https://github.com/joeycastillo/The-Open-Book

More conventionally, I found this one, although it seems to be hard to
find on the market:

    https://github.com/bq/cervantes

Any recommendations, anyone?

Cheers!

-- 
Pierre Neidhardt
https://ambrevar.xyz/

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Re: ebook reader recommendations?

[Timotej Lazar]

Hi!

Pierre Neidhardt <mail@ambrevar.xyz> [2020-12-03 09:58:22+0100]:
> I'm looking for an open ebook reader, at least something that runs free
> software.

I’m happy with my Kobo Glo. By default it has a pretty hackable Linux
install with a proprietary UI, but it’s possible to run koreader¹ on it,
and even compile the kernel & uboot yourself². It does need some
firmware blobs for initializing the display, but other than that it can
run with just free software (except for wi-fi).

Unforunately the chipset is not supported in the mainstream kernel, so
it’s limited to the ancient 2.6.something kernel released by Kobo, which
does not work with the newer glibcs. I did manage to get Alpine running
on it with musl. Newer Kobo models are available and apparently just as
hackable, so that might be worth checking out.

¹ https://github.com/koreader/koreader
² https://github.com/lgeek/okreader

Re: ebook reader recommendations?

[Pierre Neidhardt]

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Hi Timotej, thanks for the suggestion, I'll look into it.

I'm realizing that my question was ambiguous: I'm looking for hardware
indeed, not software :)

-- 
Pierre Neidhardt
https://ambrevar.xyz/

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Re: ebook reader recommendations?

[Adonay Felipe Nogueira via]

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Em 03/12/2020 05:58, Pierre Neidhardt escreveu:
> I'm looking for an open ebook reader, at least something that runs free
> software.

Perhaps this question should be directed to the team inside FSF responsible for doing hardware evaluation, namely, Respects Your Freedom.


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Re: ebook reader recommendations?

[John Soo]

      
  

 Hi Pierre!
  

  
It’s not really an e-reader but the remarkable series is powered by a lot of free software and is very hackable.   
  

  
Maybe one day our images will be small enough to put onto these small systems :)
  

  
- John

Re: ebook reader recommendations?

[Pierre Neidhardt]

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Hi John,

Thanks for the hint.
I suppose this is the product you were talking about:

  https://remarkable.com/

Can you expand on how "hackable" it is?  Can we replace the software?
If not, what kind of access to the OS do we have?  Any link?

Cheers!

-- 
Pierre Neidhardt
https://ambrevar.xyz/

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Re: ebook reader recommendations?

[Edouard Klein]

Pierre Neidhardt writes:

> Hi John,
>
> Thanks for the hint.
> I suppose this is the product you were talking about:
>
>   https://remarkable.com/
>
> Can you expand on how "hackable" it is?  Can we replace the software?
> If not, what kind of access to the OS do we have?  Any link?

You basically can SSH into it. It's running Linux on ARM. As far as I know the UI and support
software is closed source, but there is a great community building open
source tools for the device.

https://github.com/reHackable/awesome-reMarkable

>
> Cheers!

Re: ebook reader recommendations?

[Sébastien Lerique]

On 04 Dec 2020 at 11:56, Edouard Klein <edou@rdklein.fr> wrote:
> Pierre Neidhardt writes:
>
>> Hi John,
>>
>> Thanks for the hint.
>> I suppose this is the product you were talking about:
>>
>>   https://remarkable.com/
>>
>> Can you expand on how "hackable" it is?  Can we replace the 
>> software?
>> If not, what kind of access to the OS do we have?  Any link?
>
> You basically can SSH into it. It's running Linux on ARM. As far 
> as I know the UI and support
> software is closed source, but there is a great community 
> building open
> source tools for the device.
>
> https://github.com/reHackable/awesome-reMarkable

There's also the Parabola-rM project which replaces the entire 
reMarkable OS with a foss one.

http://www.davisr.me/projects/parabola-rm/

On a side-note, the same Davis also develops RCU 
<http://www.davisr.me/projects/rcu/>, which I would love to manage 
to package for Guix, but my first attempts have led into deeper 
waters than I could solve, fixing problems with python-pyside-2. 
If anyone else is interested in this, let me know and we can get 
it done!

Cheers,
S.

Re: ebook reader recommendations?

[Adonay Felipe Nogueira via]

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Em 04/12/2020 09:34, Sébastien Lerique escreveu:
> On a side-note, the same Davis also develops RCU <http://www.davisr.me/projects/rcu/>, which I would love to manage to package for Guix, but my first attempts have led into deeper waters than I could solve, fixing problems with python-pyside-2. If anyone else is interested in this, let me know and we can get it done!

Don't forget to also make this into a thread on the Guix development mailing list and open an issue/task/bug in the tracker so Guix community can better organize the efforts. :)


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Re: ebook reader recommendations?

[Pierre Neidhardt]

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Adonay Felipe Nogueira via <help-guix@gnu.org> writes:

> Perhaps this question should be directed to the team inside FSF responsible for doing hardware evaluation, namely, Respects Your Freedom.

Good point!

They have a website (https://ryf.fsf.org/), but do they have a mailing
list or some kind of public communication channel?

-- 
Pierre Neidhardt
https://ambrevar.xyz/

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Re: ebook reader recommendations?

[Benjamin Slade]

For hardware, I too have found Kobo hardware pretty decent - 
they're fairly hackable and are well supported by third-party 
open/free software. The Remarkable tablets are also supposed to be 
pretty hackable, but they're a bit pricey and I have no direct 
experience here.

For software, I really like Koreader - 
https://github.com/koreader/koreader - it works really well on 
eink devices (as well as Android tablets and even, to a certain 
extent, desktop linux).

 —Ben



On 2020-12-03T01:58:22-0700, Pierre Neidhardt <mail@ambrevar.xyz> 
wrote:

 > Hi Guixers!

 > I'm looking for an open ebook reader, at least something that 
 > runs free
 > software.

 > I found this fascinating project, although for now you have to 
 > assemble
 > it yourself:

 >     https://github.com/joeycastillo/The-Open-Book

 > More conventionally, I found this one, although it seems to be 
 > hard to
 > find on the market:

 >     https://github.com/bq/cervantes

 > Any recommendations, anyone?

 > Cheers!

 > -- 
 > Pierre Neidhardt
 > https://ambrevar.xyz/


-- 
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  "sent by mu4e 1.4.13 in GNU Emacs 28.0.50 running on Arch Linux 
  ")

Re: ebook reader recommendations?

[Pierre Neidhardt]

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Thanks for the feedback, I'll take a look!

-- 
Pierre Neidhardt
https://ambrevar.xyz/

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Re: ebook reader recommendations?

[John Soo]

     Ah I see. 

 
My mistake.    It appears there are proprietary components inside the remarkable. My apologies.
 

 
- John