[fvrther]

Kobo are giving you root access with telnet from the start. You can flash modded firmwares, change the backend servers to phone your own calibre-web instance, install ssh, koreader and even a tailscale vpn on it. They even have UART pins labelled on their board. These are amazing devices to play with. And they read pretty much everything you throw on their storage: epub, cbz, cbr, pdf..

[pathartl]

I moved to Kobo because I bought my partner the Kindle Oasis and just after a year the battery couldn't hold a charge. I contacted Amazon and they would only give me 10% off a new device. I only found one person on the internet who was courageous enough to open one up. The screen was epoxied to the body with no way of opening the device without destroying the screen.

So I got her a Kobo Libra H2O. Just as waterproof, significantly cheaper, and you can actually repair it. I ended up getting a Libra Colour for myself and love it.

[anon743448]

This shows the decline in Amazon's customer service. I had several Kindles starting with Kindle Keyboard. At that time, Amazon's service was beyond amazing.

At one point, I had some issue with one of the Kindle while it was past 1 year. Amazon sent overnighted new Kindle for free when I was just hoping they give me some troubleshooting steps.

I stopped using Kindle about 4-5 years ago mostly because of all the bad press especially around them removing purchased books. Now I mostly buy paper books. I also use BOOX e-ink tablet to borrow books from library or newspapers. (BOOX is not ideal but there is no other choice of e-ink tablets that can let you use 3rd party apps, sadly.)

[zuppy]

my biggest fear from moving out of kindle is losing access to the store. they did a good job securing most of the authors and books.

what’s your source for books and how often it happens for the books you’re looking for to be unavailable?

[JansjoFromIkea]

I got a Kindle (moving on from an absolutely ancient rooted Nook) purely because the Oasis looked so nice

I'll never get a Kindle again because I was blown away by how impossible it was to repair (plus the closed system really sucks). Mine broke for no reason at all a bit ago; my best guess is the battery started to swell inside it and that broke the screen. Got a Forma super cheap ($25!) and I've been super happy with it, feels a bit cheaper but it's actually got some level of grip. Have read more on it in a month than I did on my Kindle in the last 3 years.

Haven't even dabbled into the custom tools stuff much but it all sounds great. Might get a cheap secondary one to play with, can become an (outdated) offline Wikipedia reader if nothing else.

[barrkel]

Shocking that battery didn't work after a year. I still use my Kindle 3 from 2010; it still holds weeks of standby charge, days worth of reading.

[taspeotis]

Don’t they have a 12 month warranty? What do you want Amazon to do after more than 12 months? 10% discount is above and beyond their obligations.

[yoavm]

This! I've worked on https://github.com/bjesus/air as a completely alternative and open source UI for my Kobo Clara HD. PostmarketOS support on the device is great and very recently an important patch that will allow us to use Wayland was also merged: https://gitlab.postmarketos.org/postmarketOS/pmaports/-/merg...

[choobacker]

This looks great. Is there by out-of-the-box usable e-reader that supports SSH? Air still has some manual steps/maintenance.

For comparison, I've used PostmarketOS on Pinephone, and it required a lot of fiddly to get a poor experience.

But maybe the simpler usecase of "just reading" has good solutions?

[throitallaway]

I moved from Kindle to Kobo for the sole reason that the backlight had tunable color temperature. I've ended up liking it for lot of reasons, including how open they are.

[zimpenfish]

Kindle Paperwhite (and possibly others) have adjustable colour temperature too, with time-based automation. From a quick squizz, not quite the same as the Kobo (I don't think it has the "more blue in daytime" function) but just noting that it does exist on some in some fashion.

[zabi_rauf]

I love Kobo for that. I hooked UART with a Variometer (measure rate of climb in aircraft) and use it in glider soaring as a flight computer (good contrast on sunny day)

Posted the details here: https://zabirauf.dev/blog/aviation/glider_flight_computer

[freedomben]

Thank you! You just sold a kobo :-)

I have a remarkable 2 and really like it, but my wife needs a new "Kindle" and I'd rather cut my finger off than pay Amazon to abuse me. Looking forward to trying out the kobo

[rusticpenn]

Is remarkable 2 a good ebook reader?

[hresvelgr]

The Kobo Libra Colour has the best UX of a device I own, in that it's completely invisible. I can just read my damn books, highlight passages I think are noteworthy and save words I like the sound of. Everything just works, and the high seas experience is seamless.

[dewey]

I’ve recently looked into buying a replacement Kindle. In the end the Kindle hardware looks and feels much more premium with the display being even with the frame.

I hope there’s new models coming from Kobo that address that soon.

[zelphirkalt]

I recently had a very bad experience with Kobo.com. Bought an ebook thinking I could simply download and view it on computer. haha was I naive... I could not download it from the website, instead the download gave me some XML file for some Adobe shit app, which would then download it. But I did not sign up to download and install Adobe shit on my machine. So another option is using the Kobo app. But guess what... they don't have it for GNU/Linux. And I thought maybe I can use it with WINE, but their friggin download link for the app did not even work in Firefox, even when allowing all the third party crap they put on that page to load. So that way was also blocked. OK, I thought, let's get it refunded then. But good luck!!! finding any kind of support e-mail address! All their docs and links brought me back to their chat bot, which did not help me and instead always directed me to the docs again.

Worse, they have the audacity to state on their pages that only some ebooks are eligible for a refund and to find out whether yours is, they send you back into the docs and chat bot loop. I guess they don't want people to refund, so they made finding any contact info especially difficult.

How to make a real shitty user experience 101, presented to you by kobo.com. With this it is clear to me, that I will never again buy any ebooks from them. For anyone, who does not own their Kobo device already, I say hands off this one! Maybe buy the book and download a DRM free ebook from ... elsewhere. That way you pay, can have a clean conscience and enjoy your ebook.

[testfrequency]

DRM free ebooks are very few and far between, especially current titles.

What you describe is a pain and all true, this is just the state of ebooks unfortunately.

Kobo is not great at offering refunds like Amazon, as expected in many ways being a much more lean business not being propped up by AWS margins.

[realusername]

Kobos are just a simpler mental model for non IT experts as well, you plug them in, they behave like a USB key, you can't get easier than that.

[eloisant]

Behaving like a USB key is not a simpler mental model than "buy books on Amazon and they're on your device".

I agree on the freedom for geeks, but let's not fool ourselves into thinking non IT experts want to deal with files.

[coder543]

Kindles have literally always behaved like that, from the beginning.

The very newest generation of Kindle changed the storage protocol from traditional mass storage (which was compatible with everything) to MTP, which is mildly annoying for Mac users, but it is still intended to just show up as a flash drive.

[pjmlp]

That is exactly how Kindle first generation used to work, and thankfully mine still does its job.

[patja]

I love my Kobo reader and am happy with switching to it after a decade or more of daily Kindle use. But I think it is important to not over-sell it. It has had certain unexpected frailties, such as corrupting the database when I neglected to eject the USB device before pulling the cable, something that resulted in losing my notes and current progress. I also had to learn about the Kobo ePub format and install a Calibre plugin to get that working, otherwise some ePub files would rapidly drain the Kobo battery. I did not expect bad html/css to significantly affect battery life. I'm not sure I would recommend it to an older person or someone who doesn't have a little patience for tinkering.

[dwayne_dibley]

I'm still daily using my kobo touch from 2011, my oldest piece of 'still in use tech' (other than the Wii, which the kids still bowl on!).

Not being bound to an ecosystem, has really been a blessing - and in part kept it in use.

[sphars]

I had no idea the extent that Kobos allow you to do these sort of things. Heavily considering a Kobo as my next e-reader once my PW3 gives ups. Is there a good starting resource for Kobo modifications like you mentioned?

[fvrther]

Mobile read forum for most of it, but also heavily recommend kobopatch

1. https://github.com/pgaskin/kobopatch-patches/releases optional but nice to tweak some small ui details and get rid of ads

2. https://github.com/videah/kobo-tailscale to have a secure connection with your calibre-web instance, but you could also use self-signed certs

3. https://github.com/janeczku/calibre-web/wiki/Kobo-Integratio... adding books to calibre-web will cause them to appear on the device the next time it syncs with calibre-web

[magnetowasright]

They're also intentionally repairable! I've got a Kobo Libra Colour which is a newer model, and its product page links to ifixit. I love it so much.

[ptx]

Newer devices apparently use secure boot and prevent modding the firmware, causing the developers of the Inkbox/Quill alternative distro to abandon the entire project: https://github.com/Quill-OS/quill

[t-3]

What you can't do on Kobo is use the page up and down buttons to scroll in the web browser unless you go through the effort of installing the cross-compiling toolchain and building a display server and a browser.

[donatj]

I bought a pretty early Kobo like 10+ years ago and found myself very underwhelmed with the software situation. I sold it and went back to my kindle.

Maybe it's time to take a second look. The hacker in me's interest is piqued.

Frankly though, the biggest thing that keep me on Kindle these days I suspect are hard to replicate. For example, automatic audio book/kindle sync where I can switch back and forth, listening to the audio book in my car and reading at home in bed. For two, read.amazon.com where I can read from my locked down work machine without installing anything. The whole whispersync ecosystem.

[jamiek88]

I don’t use any Amazon hardware but Kindle Unlimited has got me like netflix did back in the day.

Trashy sci fi is my vice.

[a2800276]

Not to mention you're not blowing money up Bezo's botoxed arse.

[Shorel]

I moved away from Kobo because of the ancient USB port, and got my PocketBook with USB-C four years ago, and I am still using the PocketBook.

With USB-C, Kobo would be a very good product. I guess they use it now.

[Gareth321]

They do. It's great.

[Epa095]

There are also the onyx boox models, many run android, and it seems like you can install whatever you want. I have no experience with them myself, but I am curios.

[intothemild]

I have a Onyx Boox Go Color 7, and I love it.

[submeta]

Wow, this is so unbelievable, that I decided to sell my Kindle Oasis and get a Kobo. Thank you for this comment. I hate the restrictions on my Kindle.

[JansjoFromIkea]

Do you know how much of this applies to older Kobos? I love my Forma but I'd rather start experimenting like crazy on a 2011 one first if I can.

[ZeroTalent]

True. To play the Devil's Advocate, Kindle is exceptionally cheap (especially the older models) on Prime Days

[forinti]

I really like my old Kobo, but I was a tad disappointed when I had to swap the screen. It's a very shoddy build. The screen is glued to the board and the battery is soldered. I felt like it was made to break when you try to open it.

[sen]

I switched from Kindle to Kobo and out of the box it would hard-crash within a few minutes of using it, every single time. You have to pry the case off and remove the internal battery hard reboot it. I sent it in, waited 2 months for a replacement, and the new one (with new firmware) does the exact same thing.

I despise Amazon as a brand but nothing comes close to the kindle hardware wise. Waterproof, indestructible, and never had it crash.