💾 Archived View for flatty.flounder.online › gemlog › 2023-07-29-kobo.gmi captured on 2023-12-28 at 15:02:04. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2023-09-08)
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I recently got a Kobo Clara 2E e-book reader.
I like it a lot, it's really gotten me in to reading again. I don't mind paying for the e-books, and though there are a lot of aspects of the system that I'm strictly against, such as mandatory logins for internet access, sync and updates (though this can be bypassed), tracking/telemetry and DRM on purchased books, I'm frankly too lazy to deal with all the issues that come with trying to bypass all these.
I just *needed* one thing: An RSS feed reader.
So I tried to hack my Kobo.
Initially, finding info on Kobo hacking was really difficult. Eventually I managed to stumble upon a blog post[0], which gave me a few clues as to what was going on.
The issue was, it lacked a lot of important information and hadn't been updated since 2018, so a lot of stuff didn't even work.
Eventually I managed to find a wiki page[1] which listed a bunch of info and hacks, and was pretty regularly updated. That was when I realized that most hacks and software for Kobo devices required the use of custom firmware, namely koreader[2].
I took a look at koreader. It looked like fucking ass. I liked the design of the stock OS, plus I'd already bought a book.
So I decided to be a little bitch and stay on stock.
As I was reading the wiki, I realized downgrading to firmware version 3.19.5761 would be the best way of going about patching and hacking. Again, because I seem to enjoy making things harder for myself, I didn't wanna do this.
I found a page with patches by Metazoa[3], but there didn't seem to be one for my version, but with a little digging I managed to find what I needed[4].
I followed this guide[5] to patch my Kobo. It was really easy, just copying some files around and running a script.
That's when I realized I couldn't do shit with this patch, except making some covers bigger which was nice. I gave up, until I realized you could install plugins, though almost all are made for earlier versions. I haven't tried any yet, but might update here if I do.
I never did manage to find an RSS reader.