cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/20773013

Only for reading, easily available in EU, low budget: which e-ink device/distro?

I’m looking for something to read books on, copied over from a local collection (mostly .epub). Networking is not desired, a fast USB connection is. A good battery or exchangeable battery would be nice.

Not too large - maximum DIN A5 for the whole device.

I remember from years ago that some devices were deemed unhackable, some much more suitable to install Linux on.

I’d prefer to buy used, so something that was sold a lot in Europe is preferable.

I will not spend much more than €100.

In other words, some old commercial e-reader that was known for being hackable, I guess.

Please do not recommend the new PineNote, it’s (slightly) too large and way too expensive and I don’t think I need that much computing power.

Thanks in advance.

    • NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zipEnglish
      4·
      1 day ago

      I used a boox for maybe 7 or 8 months? I do not recommend them.

      There is a native ebook reader. It is… real bad. And the book management is similarly really weak. Great for throwing a quick PDF on there, not so much for having a “library” as it were where you don’t necessarily want to have to remember which was book 3 of the series while you are on a plane. Not sure if the Calibre support got better to help with this (I know the Calibre devs recently made a huge effort to support non-Amazon devices) but when I used it it was all about you building your own folder structure.

      But mostly it is designed around taking advantage of being an android tablet with an e-ink display. So just use the actual kindle app and so forth. Which, on paper (hee hee), is really cool. In practice, you rapidly realize that the kindle et al apps are designed with a fast refreshing display and most of the UX is built around holding a phone in your hands and not gripping a good sized tablet on its edges. LOTS of accidental page skips and font shenanigans.

      Also, the android it runs is fairly out of date which is a pretty hefty security concern.

      And there is a LOT of “mysterious” traffic going off to servers in China. How much that bothers you is… up to you.

      Switched to a kobo and incredibly happy with that.