[tt0]

I recently bought a Kobo Clara - my first eInk device and I have to say the technology is brilliant - however I don't want to have a device that is effectively a terminal to a cloud service (whether Amazon or Rakuten or whatever) I want to ..... read books. I just load an ebook on the device and then read the book, I don't need nor want anything else from the eink reader.

I knew this would be a problem even before being the ebook reader so I did some research and chose Kobo because they make it very easy to load an alternative firmware and there is a big community with various mods and several mature alternative reader apps.

However, I was not happy with the "hacks" like the start menu, or using inotify to start an alternative reader app. Afterall, I don't want to use Nickel at all.

So I simply took the latest official firmware, added Plato and modified the start script not to start Nickel but start Plato.

Use this firmware on your own risk and of course you should be familiar with emergency hardware factory reset procedure before trying alternative firmwares (I had to use it quite a few times when doing my mods).

To load the firmware just do the usual - copy the KoboRoot.tgz to .kobo, unplug and restart (this can be done even before activating your Kobo - just click on "Setup without Wifi" and your Kobo can be accessed as usb drive - this way you don't need neither a Windows/OS X computer nor connect your Kobo to wifi to start using it).

Also, so you don't have to trust me, I will attach the complete scripts and instructions how I created this firmware later today (this could be even more useful for some as a starting point of their desired mod).

The firmware is tested only on my device - Kobo Clara HD.