> * It's an open-source Linux-based device but not entirely. The actual UI application isn't open source. But as others have said here, it has pretty good hacking potential, and it's definitely more open than most commercial devices. The company's support of open-source was another reason for me to buy it.

Can you tell us a bit more about this? Took a look at their website and searched around a bit, but don't find anything about it. What makes ReMarkable more open than most other commercial devices? Seems any device running Android and alike would be more open to hacking.

Also can't find anything about the company's support of open source.

For one, unlike most Android devices, you don't have to root the RM. It comes with SSH running and you have the root password. The company's Github [1] has most of the source code, from their Linux kernel to the software update daemon.

Their CTO, Martin Sandsmark, is a long-time KDE developer.

Unfortunately, xochitl (the device's main UI) isn't open. It's a major miss in their open approach, and frankly I don't get why they would keep it closed - the RM's competitive advantage is in the hardware design, the xochitl software is merely okay and could only benefit from user patches.

[1] https://github.com/reMarkable

In case anyone is curious about the name of the main UI, "xochitl", it is a fairly common female name (for people, not UIs) in Mexico. It means flower in Náhuatl, the language of spoken by the Aztecs and still spoken by between 1 and 2 million people in Mexico. The Spanish word for flower, "Flor", is also a fairly common female name in Mexico.

The name "Xóchitl" is pronounced with the "x" sounding like "s" and the "t" silent by Spanish-speaking Mexicans. I'm pretty sure that's not how it is pronounced in Náhuatl; there I think the "x" sounds more like English's "sh", and the "t" is not silent.

Picture of one of the first prototypes (from 2015 or thereabouts) from remarkable.com/careers, guess the naming scheme: https://images.ctfassets.net/og7ujiyra5gx/15KAaMUsNXP8cQu3lP...

:-)

Thanks Martin - good origin story.

> It comes with SSH running and you have the root password

Is the password different for every device? Is the ssh daemon updated regularly? Seems like a massive security vulnerability otherwise.

The password is randomly generated for each device, yes. And of course the network only becomes available once you connect the device to your WiFi, or via cable to a PC. Once you're connected, you can also change to key-only authentication if you want.

The SSH daemon is Dropbear, and it doesn't seem to be updated though:

> reMarkable: ~/ dropbear -V

> Dropbear v2016.72

Hmm, I thought we were at 2017.75, are you sure your device is up to date?

We shipped the first software with an old dropbear, though it had backported patches for the known CVEs: http://cgit.openembedded.org/openembedded-core/tree/meta/rec...

I'm on 1.7.2.3, so only missing the latest update.

And most importantly: their full toolchain is available.

https://remarkable.engineering/

Did you try downloading it by chance? I get 404 on that toolchain link...

Strange, getting alternative responses of 404 and 200 when doing a request, with the 200 page showing

> It's sunday, we'll try to get it up during next week.

> In the meantime a normal cross-compiling ARM toolchain should work (e. g. the one packaged in Ubuntu).

Edit: now a added "Sorry, forgot to update this..." so seems someone updated the link right now

Unless the date stamp of that .sh file isn't recent. ;)

Was thinking more because if I made three requests, I got three different responses, so it seemed I was making requests while things were still being propagated

Can you use the device locally (no cloud or "activation" or account, etc)

You can - if you don't do the cloud setup, the RM won't try to sync anything. Then your file management options are the device's built-in software (which is viable prototype quality, not shipping quality) or some custom scripting. Given that this is HN, you're probably better off writing some small scripts to manage the device via SSH or curl.

I think you can using the new USB network interface based web-UI. Which is not great and quite an interesting choice of ways to go about things IMO.

Thanks a lot, makes the device a lot more interesting (and hopefully long-lived), somehow those things never came up when I searched.

An Android device would be able to use Ebookdroid, the best ebook reader (at least for pdf/djvu; its epub support is just okay) I've seen on any platform -- it just has so many features other programs are lacking -- like autocrop (gets rid of margins making the text part of book take up the full page), autosplit (automatically splits pages when people have scanned facing pages rather than each page separately), and autostraighten (when people have scanned some pages at an angle).

If you could configure how to render PDF links (mainly so tables of contents didn't look so aggresively yellow), Ebookdroid would be perfect for reading! (I added the "for reading", because I wish you could create and edit standard PDF annotations ---I believe instead of using native PDF annotations it uses a homegrown system that stores the annotations in a separate file.)

What android tablet with a pen would you recommend?

The software, on and off tablet, feels like it was an MVP and now they are improving it gradually. The quality of the existing software is actually pretty good, everything is smooth and polished. It is just not very packed with features.

It is incredibly easy to come up with must-have and would-be-nice features for this device. The hardware is a dream and there is clearly a huge potential. I saw they are hiring software developers, hopefully that will speed up development.

> The quality of the existing software is actually pretty good, everything is smooth and polished. It is just not very packed with features.

I would say it's very far from polished, but it's finally okay now. It took a long time to get there though. I don't even want any particular features for the device, it should be just like a paper notebook, with minimalistic software. It was only in this spring's update, a few months ago, that they finally shipped features to manage notebook pages, such as moving a page or inserting a blank page. It's one of the very basic features the device should have, but I had owned the RM for over a year before finally getting that.

I understand they're a small company with a small software team, but I think it's still important to point out the software weaknesses while saying that the hardware is indeed amazing.

Is the writing feel due hardware or software?

I remember reading that remarkable spent quite a bit of work on getting the latency of the pen input very low (which I guess is important for the feel).

However, for the tactile feel I would guess that the screen coating and the pen nib material are even more important (e.g. felt nibs or matte screen protectors)?

Hardware primarily. They've done a great job with the latency as well, but if you close your eyes and write on the RM, it's almost like writing in a paper notebook. It's the combination of the screen and the marker tips. As the marker tip gets worn out, the paper feeling gradually gets worse.

Would it be feasible to put alternative PDF reader software on it instead?

Since it seems like their proprietary software stack is crap, but the hardware is good, then getting decent software on it may be the better route. :)