News Hacker runs Ubuntu on Amazon Kindle

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/bits/2009/09/04/hacker-runs-ubuntu-on-amazon-kindle/1

An enterprising hacker has successfully forced his Kindle 2 e-book reader to run the ARM port of popular Linux distribution Ubuntu.

 

Impressive! Kinda pointless but impressive nonetheless 8-0

 

This is kinda cool, it could open the door to some people writing a custom operating system to open up new uses for the device.

 

I think its more of a "prof of concept" as the limited processing power and text only display isnt good for anything else then what the kindle 2 is build for anyway.

Awesome non the less

 

Putting a different OS on it opens up support for more file formats like epub and pdf's which amazon decided not to include.

 

Cool hack. There's always a sort of giddiness about getting stuff working on proprietary systems and the like. I'm not a free software nut but I do think that the fragmentation of the market is rather pointless and stifling. Good to see people trying to fix that, even if it's half for shits and giggles.

 

Someone put this video on the news post:

edit:

the one on this page:

http://hackaday.com/2009/09/03/ubuntu-9-04-on-kindle-2/

 

Soon we'll have those star trek pads

 

the kindle seems pointless to me, give me something of that size but with a color lcd screen and throw in touch features and then we could have a cool and useful pad for doing all sorts of things, could be useful for say doctors pulling up medical charts and so on or like for the rest of us pulling up magazines, newspapers, and so on.

 

Reminds me of the guy that had MAME running on a digital camera.

 

Would be quite awesome if he could get the 3g to work, and then tether through a usb cord. Free unlimeted 3g access for your laptop! After the initial layout for the kindle of course.

 

See comment previous to yours, below:

In the same way that someone managed to load their own feature-less Linux firmware on a Linksys WRT router, Mr. Vincent's 'pointless' hacks will pave the way for third-party firmware loading on the Kindle, most-likely allowing you to read what the hell you want, when you want. Expect a FOSS project page in five, four, three...

 

Nice, can I have my Kindle now, please? And the books for reasonable prices? Travelling to work 1.5 hours there + 1.5 hours back every day, lots of reading to do.

 

Why would he pick Ubuntu, of all distros? I feel it would have been easier to start with a very minimal (CLI only) default install and work his way up from there.

 

Then?

 

That's the only mistake you spotted?

 

No, but it's the one that made me cringe the most.

 

slightly off topic, the lastest alpha is out forUbuntu