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Comment by GCUMstlyHarmls | Hacker News Reader

This is pretty refreshing to read. "Its just linux", seems to ship with SSH/root terminal enabled (over USB at least, with a simple way to enable networked access), built in webserver, just uses systemd for service control, etc.

They even list it in the user guide https://remarkable.guide/guide/access/ssh.html along with an "developing software" guide https://remarkable.guide/devel/index.html.

Maybe other tablets are like that too, to be honest I'm too poor to swing the 700-1000$ for what I can cover with an paper note pad (with the bonus of being able to comfortably sit my coffee cup on it, use any pen or pencil, rip pages out, drop it, forget it somewhere, etc etc) to buy one but at least it seems like a product I would support.

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> Maybe other tablets are like that too, to be honest I'm too poor to swing the 700-1000$ for what I can cover with an paper note pad (with the bonus of being able to comfortably sit my coffee cup on it, use any pen or pencil, rip pages out, drop it, forget it somewhere, etc etc) to buy one but at least it seems like a product I would support.

I have good news: they (RM2s) are often available on ebay for much less. People buy them thinking they're getting something like an android tablet, but they do nothing out of the box apart from showing docs and taking notes. Sometimes they're returned immediately for a full refund, but often they sit in a drawer, untouched, till they get offloaded on ebay for - comparatively - peanuts, letting us scoop them up and breathe new life into them (koreader rocks, to start with).

Yes, lots in the $200-$300 range: https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=remarkable+2

Sometimes even cheaper if you can score a locked one. They are fairly trivial to unlock if you know what you're doing.

Yeah, koreader is great. As long as you're fine with greyscale, the rm2 size is great for comics and textbooks. Most ereaders are way too small for both.

Yeah I got an RM2 cheap off there and I’m very impressed. It only really does one thing but it does it well. Personally can’t really see any reason I’d need a more powerful one, the latency is great already. Maybe for the front light.

They are quite hackable, but a lot of the mods rely on some funky QT hacking… it’s all a bit kind of undocumented. I was able to get Codex to get full Chromium running in a chroot and render the screen via Xvfb though which was pretty cool and is somewhat usable, so I guess most things are possible with determination

I have a Kobo that was kept unused in a similar state for a few years until I decide to build an SDK platform to develop and deploy apps on it. My Kobo does not support apps on its Linux platform.

I have been using it to read HN, as an RSS reader over my news and blog sources, generate audiobooks on topics I want to understand with ElevenLabs, Exa and OpenAI and listen via connecting its bluetooth to my speakers and even as a remote Claude Code & Codex approval sidekick.

It is amazing that a $100 device with a single core and 512mb RAM can do so much and run for so long.

Here is the open-sourced platform https://github.com/BandarLabs/Cobalt

> It is amazing that a $100 device with a single core and 512mb RAM can do so much and run for so long.

Not to sound like certain influencers but computers are pretty fast and the state of modern software is incredibly wasteful.

There is also NickelMenu: https://pgaskin.net/NickelMenu/

NickelMenu is fantastic for adding custom buttons and some extra. We use it to display the Cobalt entry button on the stock Kobo interface.

This SDK provides more of an android/iOS type framework to use underlying hardware like bluetooth, wifi, battery and a bunch of UI components for creating complex apps with eink rendering, notifications, managed windows, OTA updates, a simulator, a sidekick mode for your apps and more.

"They" is not reMarkable AS. remarkable.guide is a community project.

The original CTO, Martin Sandsmark, was a heavy Linux user and made some incredibly based choices for remarkable. If you look in the right places on the internet there are some really cool images of remarkable hacks he was showing off to people for fun.

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