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Comment by dennismd | Hacker News Reader

I’ve been looking into getting an e-reader, but I’m scared to get one from Amazon due to things like this. Are there any decent hackable and/or trustworthy ones out there?

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PocketBook is by far the most hackable, especially their b/w readers, which still run Linux 3.10 because of hardware limitations - for these, getting root permissions is trivial with an old jailbreak script based on Dirty COW. (That said, the hardware is rather slow for the price tag.) Most applications use modern Qt 6 / QML. You won't find much information online, but it's a lot of fun exploring all this stuff with Ghidra MCP and creating binary patches. Shameless plug: I created an emulator so that you can download firmware from the official support web page and try it out on a Linux desktop (https://codeberg.org/datyoma/pbemu)

Kobo's devices let you bypass the account signup via a single option in a config file. Whether you do so or not it's easy to install koreader and start writing plugins for it. You can also hack on the linux OS they use

You can also sync to your own library - eg calibreweb.

It’s not too disgusting, and over-the-air is nice to have.

How do you sync over the air with calibre-web? My understanding is that you can only use sideloading, or a device that supports reading on the web?

Yep, there's a plethora of tweaks and stuff out there to mess with Kobos to make them your own, and it's not hard to do.

Been super happy with my Kobo Clara.

I have a Kobo Clara HD and one day it wouldn't connect to USB anymore. Changed cables, took it apart to examine the connector (it was fine), tried it on both my Desktop and my laptop, etc. I was about to give up on it when I found out that it just doesn't work with USB 3. Verified that by successfully connecting to an old PC downstairs on USB 2. Turns out I hadn't used the Kobo in a while and I had replaced my Desktop and ancient laptop since. Both those older machines were connecting on USB 2 ports.

Got a USB expander dongle on AliExpress for something like six bucks that breaks out a few USB 2 ports and the Kobo is happy as a clam. So am I now, because the Kobo is great.

There are Android e-Readers, like Boox, but that does not imply it is easy to do fun stuff. Seems pretty locked down. I have a PocketBook myself, no complaints there and you can install software (at least I can on the one I have but it is a few years old now) and thus never had the need to hack the thing.

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