Bought one from eBay to try it out. Silly me connected it to wifi and suddenly it’s up to date and no longer breakable
Kobo devices have root exposed but don't let users boot their own kernels (and the kernel they ship was not compiled with kexec either).
I really don't know the reason so many devices these days don't have an unlock method. It seems predatory. Who knows where in the chain this happens... maybe it's Kobo, or maybe MediaTek won't sell you their SoCs for mass-market devices unless you lock them.
If you can do either of those, it should be trivial to get kexec working by just loading it as a module.
If the real impediment is lack of demand or low-level development effort for any given device, that's in principle a solvable issue once projects like pmOS and Mobian choose to focus on some reasonably-available hackable hardware and bring it up to true daily driver state.
- Getting the device's BL1/BROM into download mode (where it waits for an upload of a Preloader/BL2 from outside), for these devices itself does not involve exploits. Kamakiri is an exploit in the upload process that gives an execution point at that stage.
- The BROM on Kobos (at least the old ones, P365's) don't have security enabled as far as I know. (Unless somehow they are lying to us when we ask, which there is no evidence of). They only do some integrity checks (header magic #s, checksums).
- Security on Kobos happens down the chain, starting at the Little Kernel apparently jumped to from the Preloader. I am still learning about the Clara BW's boot process.
The way you install additional software is literally just moving files into folders whilst its plugged into your computer. I'm sure it could handle Tailscale.
[0] as of today, 12/8/25, the "base model" Kindle 11th Generation is priced at $109.99 USD, and the respective Kobo Clara BW is $139.99 USD.
[1] I say "likely always" to cover my bases. To my knowledge Calibre supports Kindle, just not as well as Kobo. That said I have found that the KOreader app is more than powerful enough for my use case (reading my own epubs, using dictionaries, etc.)
Just beware to check what version of Android the Nook is using before you buy, and what your app needs.
I read mostly on my iPad; the Kindle is really just for reading outside, like at the beach/pool. But it was such a neat idea that I couldn't just pass it up.
It's taking a cloud-based product, de-clouding it, and then connecting it to your own private 'cloud'. Pretty cool all things told.
[0] https://kazlauskas.me/entries/tailscale-doesnt-quite-suck
Ma favourite e-reader setup still is the Kobo + Booklore combination. Editing a configuration file on the device I can have it connect to my Booklore library that adds my own ebooks seamlessly on top of the one I can get from the Kobo store.
I haven’t setup Tailscale on it yet but it’s possible.
I haven’t personally setup Tailscale yet, but looking at this it seems possible and not too difficult https://github.com/videah/kobo-tailscale
install Tailscale on your Kobo
install Koreader
Install Tailscale on the machine that host your eBook collection app of choice
Add the OPDS URL from the collection app, replacing the local machine URL with the Tailscale URL
You can now browse and download your private collection from anywhere.
I went with Kavita since I wanted my eBooks treated as equals with my manga.
Shameless plug: I wrote about my experience here
https://samkhawase.com/blog/hacking-kindle/
Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43822251
Also recently showed my dashboard here: https://franz.hamburg/writing/kindling-e-ink-dashboard.html
An old oled android phone is even easier to mod for that.
Eink is like the Rust of displays for hobby projects. Everyone defaults to it even when it's not necessary.
Everyone defaults to it because it's really nice actually.
* - at least for me, as the bugs in the stock reader drive me nuts, and have been waiting for this opportunity for a while
I have calibre set up to just email books to my Kindle, but that's an extra layer of indirection that I really don't need. I'll have to check that out.
Although, I realize Android != Kindle's OS, so I'm not sure how much concern there should be.
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46184730 "Syncthing-Android have had a change of owner/maintainer"
Is there a project other than the one I forked?
It's been a while, but I think I enabled SSH on my Kindle and set it up that way. I started Syncthing via KUAL, then used an SSH reverse proxy to configure Syncthing on my laptop.
It -was- kind of a pain, but once it was good, it was good!
I wanted to add an old paperwhite to a kubernetes cluster and the ancient kernel held me back.
> If everything means something else, than so does technology
