Hi,
so for a long time I was intrigued by the Linux capabilities of the Kindles. I got a Paperwhite 3 some time ago when it was on sale on a prime day, but as you know Debian Wheezy was the only distro old enough to run on that ancient kernel (through chroot + Xephyr for graphics). No newer kernel due to proprietary difficulties with epaper display, thus that's it.
But even getting just a proper browser seemed impossible. Text based works okay, albeit without pictures obviosly, and also without javascript sadly. The preinstalled one can't do tabs, scrolling is a nightmare as is the zoom and sizing of elements. And the skipstone build is ancient and doesn't cut it.
So have a look at this:
https://imgur.com/gallery/uX1DENC
All packages are up-to-date (version "edge" including repository "testing" to get some of the new stuff like onboard keyboard). Chromium works just fine, including javascript and everything. I even simply installed uBlock origin and an extension for a simple new-tab-page, as well as the black & white theme.
I started with the Mini Root Filesystem for armhf from here:
https://alpinelinux.org/downloads/ But it seems you can also bootstrap it like this
Code:
./sbin/apk.static -X ${mirror}/latest-stable/main -U --allow-untrusted --root ${chroot_dir} --initdb add alpine-base
(
https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/In...ux_in_a_chroot)
I really lost hope anything like this would be possible with the Kindles, but now I'm happy again
So have fun with that, when I have more time I'll probably write a guide on how to get a sensible setup going. Basically its the same as with Debian, just that you have another package manager and way more possibilities and up-to-date software