After digging into things like this for awhile, it seems like the hardest part would be getting a big e-ink display. There are dozens of low cost/low power arm based Linux computers out there, but hobby e-ink displays over 3" are hard to find.

Are there even e-ink displays with characteristics suitable for hacker/developer use? Their application has been so greatly limited to e-readers that I'm unclear how well current displays would function in a general-purpose system.

Likewise, the impression I've gotten is that that e-ink has been kind of stuck behind the dominance of LCD (and OLED to a lesser extent), both in perceived desirability and in resources being put into R&D.

There are not but existing ones can probably do more than you could think of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R92qSBU_WzA

Bottom line: you can drastically increase refresh rate but you loose contrast.

And yes, way too less resources into R&D, people just don't get it. It's just like nowadays everybody likes glossy vs mate LCDs. It's frustrating because all of the problems can be solved: refresh rate, size, color. I have been waiting for years (at least it feels like it!) to code on an e-ink! (And then take notes on a paper-thin one but I'm gonna stop here... :)

The closest to hacking on an e-ink are people transforming their kindle DX into a screen with GNU Screen or even VNC (Don't try it). The loveliest project involves the Raspberry Pi: http://www.ponnuki.net/2012/09/kindleberry-pi/

HN Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4502577

EDIT: elaborating

Pixel Qi had some pretty interesting products being developed including reflective LCD displays. I am not sure how readable they are in low light conditions, but I always thought it would be cool to have one of these for programming.

Pixel Qis are not e-ink but still amazing. As you said they are reflective LCD, and can also be backlit, thus readable in low light just like a regular LCD. Their market is also small devices, so the size problem is still there (Last time I checked I think there max size was 10.1 inches)

The OLPC had a LCD that could either work as a backlit color display or as a reflective b/w screen. That always seemed like a clever feature to me (with clever design it might even be possible to have a higher resolution in this mode, using the sub-pixels for color mode as pixels)

Pixel Qi (discussed in another reply) was funded by Mary Lou Jepsen, a former CTO of OLPC.

The screen you are referring to probably uses the exact same technology (designed while she was CTO?). It's not e-ink but indeed amazing. Too bad we don't yet put a lot of resources into this kind of projects.

You can get a 5" 640x480 E-Ink panel for about $15-20 shipped from china.

Kindle DX has a 9.7" at 1200x824. Still too small for me...

There is the crazy expensive Sony Digital Paper DPT-S1 which has a 13.3" screen with 1200x1600 resolution. That resolution really would be good enough for me if I could get tmux on there and connect a physical keyboard.

Please somebody make a hacker friendly terminal laptop with such a screen and a great keyboard. It doesn't have to be ARM, any arch that can run free software is fine with me.

Thanks! I think I saw they were showing the screen at CES but I didn't know they were selling this thing!

Good luck trying to buy this Sony Digital Paper DPT-S1 if you're not in the US though.

I'm in Europe and contacted Sony. They knew nothing about it since it is a Sony Professional product. I contacted Sony Professional Europe but they knew nothing about it since it is a Sony Professional US product. And they refuse to ship to Europe... Sigh, here is a product I want to spend $1000 on and Sony wont take my money!