MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Turn your Kobo into a Debian Linux tablet

fastrobot · 08-01-2014, 02:08 PM

I'm curious about this hack.
If it's really doing what I think it is-- it's worth it to buy a KOBO in order to be able to do it!

Can anyone tell me why the debian installation is made a chroot environent rather than just running a normal root environment? Is it because there are two different linux environments running and the hack tries to hide the default one?

The reason I ask:
I had a Sony (now bricked) that had some bugs in the kernel, and did not have kexec() so I couldn't replace the kernel without flashing it -- and sony didn't release the correct boot code to properly build a bootable image.

-- There was no way to repair or upgrade the kernel, and although I could fix most bugs by creating loadable kernel modules -- I could not fix the power management issues because they were built into the kernel and not modules. So it had a maximum of 6 hours runtime.

I don't want to buy another reader with the same problem.... I want to be able to really FIX bugs in the kernel when I find them and I'm not sure if the hack shown in this thread is just replacing kernel modules -- or is replacing the whole kernel itself. Does anyone know for sure that KOBO is the way to go?

I've been trying to look at the internals of the KOBO mini, glo, and touch to see how they are made to see if I can figure it out; and it seems like the mini and GLO -- both only have the micro SD and no sign of an external flash rom to the arm processor; so that I assume replacing the SD on those would replace the kernel and boot image. But the touch looks like it might have a ROM soldered to the board -- so I am not sure.

On the sony, I wrote a VT52 terminal emulator and a morse code keyboard which are quite fast and allow typing without even looking at the screen. (It's just a rhythm of taps and you can get fast at it with practice...)

If I understood this thread correctly, the touchscreen is capable of detecting two simultaneous finger presses on the screen?

If that's true, I should be trivial to adapt the code I have for international morse code with special computer prosigns to run on the KOBO -- but It's not fast, unless the button presses are reliable for dot and dash without the screen "missing" any.

How reliably does the screens for the various KOBO's detect touches? I heard some reviews that the KOBO AURA HD tends to miss them several times which would be horrid. But what about the Glo, mini, and touch? which is the best?

08-01-2014, 02:08 PM	#88
fastrobot Connoisseur Posts: 53 Karma: 11844 Join Date: Jun 2014 Location: All over the place... Device: KOBO AuraHD and GLO	I'm curious about this hack. If it's really doing what I think it is-- it's worth it to buy a KOBO in order to be able to do it! Can anyone tell me why the debian installation is made a chroot environent rather than just running a normal root environment? Is it because there are two different linux environments running and the hack tries to hide the default one? The reason I ask: I had a Sony (now bricked) that had some bugs in the kernel, and did not have kexec() so I couldn't replace the kernel without flashing it -- and sony didn't release the correct boot code to properly build a bootable image. -- There was no way to repair or upgrade the kernel, and although I could fix most bugs by creating loadable kernel modules -- I could not fix the power management issues because they were built into the kernel and not modules. So it had a maximum of 6 hours runtime. I don't want to buy another reader with the same problem.... I want to be able to really FIX bugs in the kernel when I find them and I'm not sure if the hack shown in this thread is just replacing kernel modules -- or is replacing the whole kernel itself. Does anyone know for sure that KOBO is the way to go? I've been trying to look at the internals of the KOBO mini, glo, and touch to see how they are made to see if I can figure it out; and it seems like the mini and GLO -- both only have the micro SD and no sign of an external flash rom to the arm processor; so that I assume replacing the SD on those would replace the kernel and boot image. But the touch looks like it might have a ROM soldered to the board -- so I am not sure. On the sony, I wrote a VT52 terminal emulator and a morse code keyboard which are quite fast and allow typing without even looking at the screen. (It's just a rhythm of taps and you can get fast at it with practice...) If I understood this thread correctly, the touchscreen is capable of detecting two simultaneous finger presses on the screen? If that's true, I should be trivial to adapt the code I have for international morse code with special computer prosigns to run on the KOBO -- but It's not fast, unless the button presses are reliable for dot and dash without the screen "missing" any. How reliably does the screens for the various KOBO's detect touches? I heard some reviews that the KOBO AURA HD tends to miss them several times which would be horrid. But what about the Glo, mini, and touch? which is the best? Last edited by fastrobot; 08-01-2014 at 02:17 PM.