I updated my original comment to include some more personal blogs with first-hand accounts. They're not mine but worth linking to for others!

I haven't bought a PineNote yet, but it's probably going to be my choice for that size of Tablet. I opted for a Xteink instead and have been very happy with it.

> Personally I view stuff like this as a nice-to-have, not a must-have. If it means I can't have an interface where I can buy books and then download them to my ereader, or I can't have an iphone app where I can read books and have my progress synced between my ereader and my phone, or it's unstable, or the battery life isn't good, then I would rather go with the Kobo. I understand that different people have different priorities, but those are mine. Stuff like this is why I'm interested in hearing more detailed information about what exactly the tradeoffs are for going with something like the Pinenote.

I agree that there are certainly a lot of sharp edges to less supported platforms. I just think I'd rather get a Boox (and deal with Android/Graphene) or PineNote over the Kobo over the long term. Then again, my usage of very simple -- maybe I just don't read as much/depend as much on the ereader to the extent that others do!

> I think you can still sideload KOReader on them, but that's a shame that they're making it harder to replace the stock OS entirely. I hadn't heard about that prior to now so thanks for bringing that up. I only have a Sage I bought a few years ago.

Ah yes, AFAICT what you're saying is correct -- sideloading apps is not an issue as far as I could find, it was just the inability to have custom firmware/OS.

I was very disappointed in this, and I generally see it as a step towards locking down that will only continue. Would love to be wrong though as I was very very convinced I wanted a Kobo Libra Color earlier).

People that are happy with the Kobos as they are (and the bundled software/services) I'm sure will be happy to keep buying though, I think the market is certainly big enough for that!

This note was in the original comment, did you read it? The fact that it is $400 (more expensive) and has less out of the box software is literally mentioned to alert people to that.

> The Kobos don't limit what you can do with them either, you can sideload alternative e-reader software like KOReader that improves on the built-in reader functionality.

This is patently false, the latest Kobo Libra Color is using secure boot which completely locks out custom development:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=363175

So much so that QuillOS which used to be Kobo focused rewrote to support the PineNote

https://github.com/Quill-OS/quill

https://quill-os.org/

The point is to buy hardware that is built for you to freely modify and fully own, from the start.

My post was to make sure everyone knew the PineNote was an option, because I certainly did not know it until someone on HN made me aware.

Could you maybe make your point more concrete? Are you attempting to completely dissuade people from using the PineNote because it may not be easy to side load apps to it on hacker news?. Obviously different people have different propensities to do hacking, and some may not be able to afford the PineNote due to how expensive it is, but it's not clear what the goal of your comment was.

If your goal was "invest in Kobo instead of PineNote", I disagree with that. I'm not interested in investing (whether money or time) in an ecosystem that is just going to rug pull me eventually, over nickels and dimes.

BTW for those who agree, another great option is XTeink -- very hackable, and I've bought one myself:

https://www.xteink.com/

And there's a Linux phone out there which looks pretty encouraging too:

https://furilabs.com/shop/flx1splus/

Graphene is likely still the easier more polished option, but it's great to have options these days.

https://pine64.org/devices/pinenote/

More expensive and less out-of-the-box software, but straight to the point on device ownership/what kind of software you can run, fewer strings attached.

[EDIT]

Great experience blogs on the PineNote

https://shom.dev/posts/20250308_pinenote-day-one/

https://shom.dev/posts/20250406_a-pinenote-only-5-day-weeken...

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48381828

Points: 4

# Comments: 0

[0]: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/its-one-banana-michael-what-c...

Upon further inspection there is also the Pine Note!

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46283016

https://pine64.org/devices/pinenote/

It’s quite pricey but certainly more straightforward in its offering.

Kobo is the cheaper and has a color option and is likely slightly less hackable.

[EDIT] Ah, I think this is what I found:

https://github.com/Quill-OS/quill

Kobo’s switch to secure boot made things harder for Quill which seemed to be the only custom OS.

What I can say now is that the first version will probably be single threaded stack switching coroutines, and the model that seems to fit most naturally in my head is virtual threads mapping to some worker thread n in a premade pool.

Have opted for other devices like the xteink (or a boox in the future) due to what seemed like a relatively small ecosystem around “aftermarket” kindle modifications.

The kindle would be a great option if it could be reliably jailbroken and loaded with custom software

Stackless Coroutines are currently supported for p3, stackful coroutines AKA “virtual threads” are coming (which I assume is what you mean by green threads), and “actual threads” as in OS threads are not currently a goal for the ABI AFAIK —- would you mind explaining some uses you were thinking of?

https://github.com/WebAssembly/component-model/blob/main/des...

Threading is actively being worked on right now (to be released in 0.3.x, soon), and some changes just made their way into LLVM as well:

https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/pull/175800

- Permissionless email (i.e. for agents, empowered users who can program now)

- Pervasive email allow listing

Wonder if these can both exist at the same time, i.e. having a "public" email that is read first by AI (let's imagine we're in a world where prompt injections weren't so possible) and heavily filtered, along with one that is private and allow-list gated (via some easier-than-gpg-to-use identity marker).

If we compare the current state of the world to one in which they were acquired and then continued to put out more F/OSS, things look bad (which I assume is your implication). I choose to instead make the comparison to the world where we never see this tech and it stays proprietary. Sure, eventually someone in F/OSS might have gotten around to building this solution, but they pulled forward the future and we get to see and build on the result for free.

Amazing that the Postgres ecosystem got this software for “free” (as in at least a basic version of it is F/OSS, IIRC there wasn’t any core bits held back), and the extremely engineer-heavy company got to make money, AND they got bought out in true acquisition style by a larger player that truly benefits from the tech.

The Postgres ecosystem is pretty unique in its ability to produce a “boring” stable product, innovate, stay F/OSS, and create financial outcomes for participants.

Also thanks for all the podcasts and content, always a joy to watch.

Anyway, awesome to see this from the team inside Mozilla — hope this can become a new revenue stream over the long term.

Really excited to see some tight integration with Firefox and Thunderbird in the future.

People are going to hate this, but if someday Mozilla expands to being a productivity suite I’d be pretty happy to give them my money. ProtonMail is doing it and I trust them as well.

That said, people have worked on IDE integration (it’s not zero, ex. WIT syntax highlighting), there is existing integration with upstream language tool chains, but trying to debate that seems silly. Whether tech is good or worth exploring is not dictated by IDE support, I think!

There has been substantial work on improving debugging, DX and documentation! Hopefully in the LLM age the existing can move even faster