Picture alt text: Left eReader is an Hanvon N516 eReader running OpenInkpot 0.2.2 displaying some of the installed packages. The right eReader is a newer Kobo Libra H2O eReader running KOReader 2021.03 displaying the current Linux kernel version via KOReader's terminal emulator

Going to continue over from my last couple of posts of Linux or other free software on various electronics I own. This time, it's eReaders! There's a lot more going on for free software on eReaders than you might realize, so I'm going to give a quick show and tell of my two eReaders and the software I run on them. There's been previous attempts at making alternative firmware, proprietary or free software, but since I haven't used them I'm just going to focus on the two I own!

The majority of eReaders already run Linux

Serious! Most eReaders over the last 15ish years sold have been running some version of Linux (including Android!) and free software, usually with a proprietary UI and some other components on top of it. This includes the Amazon Kindle, the Kobo line of eReaders, and the Tech Company Sales Employee's favorite $600 gadget to replace a $3 note pad, the ReMarkable tablet. Unfortunately this doesn't mean they are free software devices, Amazon and other vendors have tracking built into its firmware and adjacent web services you use to use the tablet, along with their own book stores distributing down books with DRM. Fortunately, there's been a few attempts at liberating the devices to give back control to owners of these computers.

What was OpenInkpot?

OpenInkpot was one of the first attempts at replacement firmware for eReaders, running a Debian-based distro called IPlinux. It's pretty usable despite not having a release in eleven years, and pretty interesting in a free software historian perspective since it's very much a time capsule for a certain era of Linux development and where Android was very much still in its infancy. The eReader is running fairly heavy desktop applications on the back-end, like X11, in order to display image and has a lot of the usual Debian tools like apt and dpkg installed for package management, which would have been useful if repositories were made for this device to connect to over a networked USB connection. I sought out one of the three eReaders on eBay several years ago, and got one of the supported ones for about $35 or so. It's... rough, to say the least. The hardware is very cheap feeling. For this specific device as well, it reeked of cigarettes when I got it, and I haven't ever been able to get it back to being plain white again no matter how many time I've tried to clean it from the previous owner. The eInk display between being lower DPI as well as not being backlit, definitely hasn't aged well. But as an actual eReader, assuming you have a good amount of light, it works well. This was my eReader in college for textbooks and reading of novels, and some of the first leftist theory books I read were on this device so it has some sentimental value to me.

There's some additional gimmicky extra features like a music player which are clunky to use but hey, it works!

What's KOReader?

KOReader claims that it's just a free software "document viewer" application for eReaders, desktop computers, and Android phones. But it's better to think of it as closer to a full eReader software suite replacement, without needing to flash a new firmware or OS onto the eReader's storage and potentially brick a device. It adds a ton of new features that most eReader firmware doesn't currently have that are huge quality of life changes including an app-wide dark mode, SSH support to allow network shell access which I use for quick scp of files to the eReader, network Calibre library support, and Wallabag support (a free software alternative to Mozilla's proprietary Pocket service). Despite it running as an application on the eReader and therefor needing non-free software to exist, it does a good job acting as an approximation of an OS replacement, even exposing lower level elements in the OS via the SSH access or the in-app terminal emulator.

There's a tremendous amount of documentation on the project's wiki, showing off features, device support, and release changelogs. If you have an eReader that's supported, or have an Android phone and are looking for another eReader app, try it out!