The Kobo devices are truly worth every penny and we've got 4 of them in our household at this point. These are some of the best devices to put in the hands of kids.
Part of the motivation derived from newer Kobos deploying with SecureBoot, making it tough to reflash them.
Integration with libraries is the killer feature of ereaders IMO
Granted, my library is not part of a major city's system but it's also not what I'd call a small one. I'd be curious to know how NYC or Chicago compare, as those are where people I know have had very positive experiences with these options.
In the end I gave up and just download now.
Waiting in line in a library app is annoying, but the waiting signals demand, which drives the library to buy more copies to circulate.
This is not true for digital libraries. They do not "buy more copies" to circulate. They don't physically send you an USB Stick with a copy of the book and you send that back without making a copy. They can send everyone "in line" as many copies as they want. Whats the size of an ebook these days? 1MB? How many trillion copies could you make in a day?
You have to wait in line to hopefully someday maybe be allowed to read a copy of a book while meta torrents a petabyte of books for their AI usage. This is nothing but a humiliation ritual.
That is exactly how ebook licenses for libraries work.
I used to buy on kindle but since they made it much harder to break drm I just pirate now. I'm not paying for content I don't get to own.
But I don't think I will go back from what I'm doing now. It took a lot to get me to leave Amazon, but the DRM thing and also lately the larger amount of books "not available in your country or region" has just made me give up on the industry.
I will buy books now only if they are available to buy without DRM, and if they are not I will just pirate them.
Being able to strip drm is good. But, it's stepwise refinement warfare. In the meantime, being able to run a copy of the Google Android kindle reader, and obtain a valid licence-to-read key is useful. I'm not disparaging calibre or apprentice Alf, I'm just pointing out the more compliant path also exists.
That's what boox does. It's clear android can do this. I suppose what I'm asking is can these debian style OS run enough emulation/compatibility libraries to run an Android kindle app?
I have a paperwhite theater I bought years ago from Woot for like $30 and I simply never logged in or even connected it to wifi, so I get no ads and I don't buy DRM-laden books from Amazon. Calibre turns DRM-free epubs into Kindle accepted mobi format seemlessly on upload.
I can't help but think that those who complain about the lock-in but simply never bother to break free, just don't care that much. Shaking a fist at Amazon feels more like a self-soothing exercise to allay the cognitive dissonance that arises from telling oneself that you agree with those who curse Amazon (or what it represents) while you continue to choose Amazon.
It took me some getting used to but it's not bad IMO. It's more that its conventions are a bit different from the commercial readers but that's not a bad thing.
And recommendation caroussels are a bit too much like advertising to me. Something I wouldn't want on self-hosted stuff.
Apparently they're working on a new OS based on the Pine64 Pinenote* but it's almost $400!
There is a config file on the stock OS that you just need to change, and you can point the Kobo store to your own instance of Calibre Web.
This lets you sync and download your own books to the device over wifi.
I played around with KOReader a bit but found the stock software simpler to use. All I really need is to not be tied to an ebook store.
I was sad to hear newer Kobo devices are shipping with Secure Boot. I've never reflashed my Libra H2O (it's my daughter's and I'd never be able to get it away from her long enough to replace it) but I liked knowing that I owned the device. I'm sad to hear the new ones are owner-hostile.
I don't care about secure boot / a locked bootloader so much as the ability to unlock it.
what did you change?
It's apparently rootable, although I haven't done that personally. It's Google Play certified so anything from the Play store works, and side loading Android apps works too. I use it with the open source KOReader app and in tandem with Calibre Web Automated. I did a writeup[0] with some details if you're interested.
[0] https://blog.eldrid.ge/2025/03/12/self-hosted-ebook-manageme...
The Remarkable 2 has an e-ink display but is rather underpowered as an e-reader. It does have an SDK for building apps: https://developer.remarkable.com/documentation/sdk
However, for reading technical docs or workshop docs in daylight, it's great.
I also wrote a short write-up about my experience with PocketBook devices and KOReader, for anyone who's interested: https://tc3.eu/posts/pocketbook-era-with-koreader/
Does anyone know what the mainline support is like nowadays, and whether widely packaged software can make it usable as an ebook reader?
https://git.sr.ht/~hrdl/linux/log/v6.17-rc5_pinenote has many commits.
ihaveone•7h ago
listenfaster•5h ago