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Rust (and Slint) on a Jailbroken Kindle

114 points10 hourssverre.me
sandreas8 hours ago

This is cool, thanks for sharing. I recently compiled Rust / Slint on a LicheeRV Nano, which is RISC-V 64bit musl[1]. It's a little portable audio player I'm working on, the compile process is done via custom Cross docker image.

Currently I'm evaluating Battery Pal[2], because the TP4057 Module was not stable enough to power USB-C to 3.5mm Adapters reliably. So far it seems to work as expected.

1: https://github.com/nanowave-player/nanowave-ui

2: https://pnlabs.ca/batterypal/

FlyingSnake7 hours ago

Great article. Hacking old kindles is fun! I encourage everyone to give it a try. The retro feel of eink makes it special for me.

I wrote about my experience in cross compiling zig on an old kindle some time ago.

https://samkhawase.com/blog/zig-kindle-gdb/

DoctorOW8 hours ago

This looks cool, and one of the first posts I've seen on HN in a few months where I genuinely wanted to try it.

hardwaresofton8 hours ago

This is awesome! How reliable are kindle jailbreaks/avoiding updates, etc?

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

a10c8 hours ago

Depending on your firmware version, most jailbreak guides will have you either create an empty directory with the same name as the OTA firmware file (causing any OTA downloads to fail) or install an extension called `renameotabin` which renames the binaries responsible for performing the update, rendering them inaccessible.

source: https://kindlemodding.org/jailbreaking/post-jailbreak/disabl...

Rebelgecko5 hours ago

One of my biggest regrets is not jailbreaking my kindle before it auto updated last year

wilted-iris6 hours ago

Worth noting that kobo devices are not locked down at all and run linux. They’re very easy to build for.

KolmogorovComp7 hours ago

Tangential, how does slint fare compared to Druid/egui(?)

airstrike2 hours ago

Tangential reply, but Druid has been abandoned. The spirit lives on as Xilem, but that doesn't have much traction either. It's very... exploratory in nature.

I'm partial to iced, which to me is the best GUI library in Rust by far. The Discord is super active if you have questions.

https://iced.rs/

the__alchemist6 hours ago

I'm curious as well. My understanding is one notable differencse, exemplified here, is that Slint can work on embedded devices / no-std.

homarp10 hours ago
ElenaDaibunny3 hours ago

zig as a cross-compile backend for rust is so good.

IshKebab8 hours ago

Good work! I guess you need to leave it plugged in?

nelox7 hours ago

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