Kobo hack begginer's guide

[Kendoulou]

Hello all,

Feeling lost ? Don't know where to begin ? Me too... So I want to make a guide for begginers in kobo hacking. Here what I understood yet. Please correct me/add missing stuff. I'll try to make is as complete as possible.

I don't care about coding stuff. I just want a better reading software
There's currently 2 open source reader available : KOreader and Plato.
Both can be installed really easily following these instructions .


I want to go deeper into the rabbit hole

First of all
The factory firmware/reader is named Nickel. It's based on Linux.

An open source OS is under development and available only for a few device. It can be found here.


How to launch custom stuff
There's currently two way to do so :

Nickel menu : A custom launcher. It adds a new menu on your reader from which you can launch custom shell script.

KFmon : This launcher add a "book" for each script. This way you can launch the script as if you open a book.


What custom stuff can I launch
Search on this forum. There's a list here and a package there with a lot of stuff


How can I create custom stuff
If you're really badass, you can code an app using Qt.
Then you'll have to download the firmware version your reader is running on. Patch it following these instructions . This way you'll be able to install it on your reader.

An other way to do so, is creating an sh script.
Then use you're favorite launcher to execute it.
You can test it using ssh or telnet (see the package above). I don't know at all how to do so. Didn't find a guide/try it myself yet.
For output, you can use FBink. It's a library to print stuff on your screen.
For user input/interface... I have no idea yet. Does anyone can help me on that ?

In the above package is also included python. I didn't tried it yet but is there a way to output stuff ? Use tkinter for user interface ?


As you can see, I'm still missing a lot of stuff. First of all : where do I find this edit button ???
Please help me fill in the holes

[PeterT]

Little suggestion. Consider doing this on the MobileRead wiki. That way it easy for you and others to update and keep it current.

Sent from my Pixel 4a using Tapatalk

[RandomBoy]

Originally Posted by Kendoulou

Hello all,

Feeling lost ? Don't know where to begin ? Me too... So I want to make a guide for begginers in kobo hacking. Here what I understood yet. Please correct me/add missing stuff. I'll try to make is as complete as possible.
[snip]

Thank you so much for this. It really helped a lot!

[Deobulakenyo]

This is good idea. Anytime i read upon a mof iant to use, it seems like reading chonese for me. Noobs like me are really having a hard time understanding some instructions and config set ups