With each update the UI moved piece by piece from library mgmt focus, to shop focus. Personally I wasn't that much annoyed, because I mostly go by filesystem folders, but there are probably some that got shafted.

About the openness of Kobo: my device can dualboot to debian or android in contrast to the Kobo Linux. I was able to change the main storage easily, it was only a microsd card in a slot internally, which after a dd copy to a bigger card was accepted and even recognised as bigger in the UI free space screen. (I'm not talking about the external microsd reader that this device also has.) The battery is a typical lipo flat pack, which should be replacable from some arduino parts online shop.

Ill try the arduino shops for batteries. My battery died two months ago. I have a new motherboard/battery coming, but I'd love to figure out how to source variously sized lipos.

I havent yet done much futzing in Linux, but definitely interested. Also a shout out to the integrated Pocket reader, which has been a major major win for me, makes the device much more useful to me.

News site, fine, my blog, fine but a doc-site type thing, nope.

I use my Kobo Forma mostly for technical books and technical manuals, for example the Kubernetes reference docs, but I couldn't save the doc-sites to Pocket and have the Kobo sync it, and had to use a computer to save and convert it.