For those who are unfamiliar,
Abiword is a high quality, light weight, open source word processor that saw its first release way back in 2002.
This port was made with the Kindle Scribe in mind, but feel free to try it on the Oasis or anything with an armhf software version and Bluetooth. Let me know if it works on other devices. This port is of Abiword 2.8.6, which is a 15 year old release. I used it because it uses the same old GTK version as the Kindle.
I think this first release is quite stable, but be sure to save your work often just in case. I left the default font size at 12, but I think 18+ size is much nicer to work with.
Kindle Abiword Alpha 1.0 - July 14th, 2026
Features:
- Get some real writing done on the Kindle
- Native armhf port
- USB Keyboard Support! Kindle provides the 5v power!
* It's under Help, USB Keyboard.
- Import/Export .rtf, .doc.
- Custom Fonts
**
- Spell check
- Word count
- Copy/Paste
- Make tables
- Refresh the display on demand with the F12 key
- Rotate the display on demand with the F9 key
- Take screenshots on demand with the F2 key (outputs to the Kindle's screenshots folder).
- Probably more things that I'm forgetting
- Get documents off of your Kindle via USB from the abidocs folder, or add documents to edit.
*Tested on 2022 Scribe. Proceed with extreme caution with other models, or use
Kindle HID Passthrough (Bluetooth) when in doubt. Do not unplug the keyboard and plug in a charger without stopping the keyboard service first (by going to Help, USB Keyboard, or simply File, Quit). May work on other USB C models, but there are safety checks for the MAX20342 and BQ25611D chips. It won't run if you don't have both. I know the Colorsoft does NOT have these chips. I do not know yet about other Scribe models. This feature is experimental, so please read the dialogs carefully. I would like to add support for more recent models in the future, if I can get my hands on some with jailbreak possible.
**I shipped a font cache with the release, because font cache generation takes about 45 seconds. If you already have custom fonts on your Kindle, or want to add some to /kindle_abiword/share/fonts, you will need to delete the font cache files in /kindle_abiword/.cache/fontconfig. Once you delete those files and relaunch Abiword, it will look like the program isn't launching, but really it's building the new font cache silently. Please be patient. Every launch after that is quick and normal. Please don't try to launch Abiword a second time while this process is working. It will open when the process is complete. It's normal to see your home screen until it launches.
Known bugs:
- Export to PDF works now, but exported PDF documents are image only and you cannot select/search text. That is a compromise for now. I intend to fix it.
- Insert Symbols dialog is too small. I will fix it in the next version.
- Please report bugs. A run.log file is created every time you run Abiword. It resets fresh with every launch, so if you find a bug, reproduce it, then perform a clean exit, grab the log, and post it in this thread.
Install:
Extract. Place the
kindle_abiword directory into your /mnt/us/, and the
extensions directory (merge or manually grab the abiword folder and place it into extensions for KUAL).
For Alpha 1.0 I am only including support for launching with KUAL. I plan to add Scriptlet support soon.
Notes:
Everything is contained in the extracted /mnt/us/kindle_abiword folder, except for documents. Documents will save into the created /mnt/us/abidocs folder. There is also a dummy folder called abidocs_folder which is used as a work around for a GTK save crash I had to fix. It needs to be there, it is created by the launch.sh on first run, and it needs to stay empty. You don't have to do anything with it, so just leave it alone. For the user, all documents are handled in the abidocs directory.
Be sure to try out the F12 display refresh on demand. Try F9 for screen rotate. Try F2 for screenshot.
You will notice that the words flicker while you type. I think this is for the best, as it produces the best readability once you stop typing. I think you will get used to it, as I have.
I will look into selecting different refresh modes in the future.
I’m a big fan of Abiword. I’ve been using it for more than twenty years. It’s one of the first things I install on Linux. I like its purist word processor functionality without the modern bloat.
Thanks to the Abiword team, zampierilucas, kbarni, mergen3107, bfabiszewski, coplate, the Koreader team, and Kindle Modding Wiki.
If you find this project useful, please consider supporting its continued development.