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Ubuntu 9.04 On Kindle 2
JO_DIE_THE_STAR_F*** writes "Jesse Vincent managed to get Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope running on the Kindle 2. The new functionality was presented in a talk at OSCON 2009."
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I can't help but wonder - is the kindle's data connection still available?
And if so, on what end is the code that limits the kindle to accessing wikipedia and amazon?
This is very highly cool. I wish I had the time and money to spend on such an endeavor. However, my question is - how does one get to the CLI and type in the inevitable commands that must be run to make things work??
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
Because under *nix you can use file permissions to prevent Amazon from deleting your files.
(This is partly a joke - but only partly)
Just the answer you gave is answer enough.
Keep it in context. This was a guy at an open source conference, showing off a new example of something that Linux people take pride in. If he were trying to make a business of selling Ubuntu Kindles then he might need to concern himself with the practicality of it.
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
The new functionality was presented in a talk at OSCON 2009. Be warned, [Jesse] has a very high geeky-hacker level. Make sure you have a tech dictionary and Google at the ready when you watch the video embedded after the break. His talk starts at about two minute in and runs for five minutes total.
is there a new rating system i don't know about? what are the other options besides "very high geek-hacker level"?
I wonder what the legal team will do? This is a derivative work and the guy did reverse engineer how things worked (a little) to get Linux on it.
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
I recently bought a Kindle book (was cheaper than used copies), and discovered that it appeared to have been scanned, and poorly at that. There were OCR artifacts, and the font was crappy. I read up on the situation, and found that Amazon offers refunds for 7 days after a Kindle book purchase. I called, complained, and was refunded the price for my purchase. (Not sure if the 7 days is accurate, read that online, but it worked for me).
I had backed up my Kindle files, and I was curious what would happen when I 'synced' the Kindle with its wireless connection. Sure enough, the book I was refunded for disappeared. Also out of curiosity, I restored the backed-up file of the book to the Kindle, and it was still readable.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
Still doesn't make it something I see a lot of people wanting to do.
This is why I stopped reading Linux Journal. There would be some nice technical articles, but there seemed to be a lot how-to articles that only 1 or 2 people would care about. (i.e. Linux powered sump pump)
The "because you can" argument is getting old. I like the "because you can AND you can benefit from it".
Flexible bare-metal recovery for Linux/UNIX
You have got to be kidding! I have a netbook and an ebook reader, and they are absolutely not replacements or each other! OK, I'll spell it out for you in detail.
Things the Kindle can do that the Netbook can't:
I have a high-end PC, a netbook, an ebook reader, and a smart phone. I am very glad I have all of them. Each of these devices has capabilities or conveniences not available on the other devices. These are great times to bee a technophile; anyone who dismisses this tech is pointless has no idea what he is talking about.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Finally, someone who gets it.
I'm a grad student, and I can't begin to tell you how many PDF files my professors have distributed to classes as reading material. Hundreds of pages, probably thousands. Sometimes I find torrents of books I'm supposed to read for class; other times, the Kindle version is cheaper than any available used copy (and I get it instantaneously, no waiting a week for shipping).
I'd like a netbook too, mainly for taking notes, but they're different devices with different purposes.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
What I did was to get a Jaunty _chroot_ running on the Kindle 2. The interesting bits were mostly around making X work and beating the 5-pad into submission.
I can't and don't claim to be an expert, by any means, but I think the other thing you have to keep in mind is that it's a good proof of concept. If Ubuntu can be put on it, that might mean that other, slimmer distros might be able to be put on it. What if you could take Android or WebOS, rework them to move a cursor around for item selection (rather than through touch), and run that? Either of those would obviously have no problem running on a 3G network, and you'd have the kind of light apps that the Kindle should be able to handle.
Like I said, I'm not an expert, but being able to install a new OS on the Kindle does open up some possibilities, I think.
Whatever happened to doing things because they're fun or cool? I don't understand...he does something that is, by all accounts, really neat, and people ask him "Why? What's the practical purpose?"
He did it for the "Can-I-really-do-this?" factor. Isn't that enough?
Ride the skies
Yes, it does, which is why it was easy enough to port ubuntu over. The real benefit here is that somebody could replace the (allegedly crappy) user interface with a new one, with proper pdf (with zoom) support, and some other features that should have been there in the first place. To code the UI for a new reader one could just use standard X11 programming techniques. That is to say, one could take xpdf, remove some of the crome of the application, and have a proper pdf reader, etc.
Annother benefit: It should be possible to ended the existing UI. For example, it should be possible to replace the crappy search with proper full text search. Doing some of that would require either breaking the DRM format, which would upset amazon, or replacing parts of the existing program. Doing the latter may be quite possible, since the code is java (IIRC), so one can just drop in replacement classes. If the java code is not obfuscated, then it may be downright easy (relatively speaking (It is always a pain to retrofit existing apps via reverse engineering)).
Stylish sheet to fix many problems in Slashdot's D3: https://gist.github.com/801524
Smart dude, significant accomplishment, and not to denigrate his success but I'd love to see him using all that brainpower on something else.
However, it's an excellent demonstration of a non-paper resume. And there are still people out there making new hardware on small platforms. Wouldn't you want someone available who knew a bit about software if you were building something you might want to sell?
Geez Louise! It's hard enough keeping good people interested in this business without trivialising their efforts to show off their stuff. Think before you crap on people, please.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
Several people have remarked "Because you can". Someone stated "Because you can and you can benefit from it" as a better reason.
More particularly, I would say that "showing you can" shows you that it's at all possible to replace whatever the device was running. Immediate utility isn't even required. So, if anyone thinks of a better interface or new function that -would- improve the device as a whole, they now know it's possible to do it. They don't have to stop at "I wonder ..."