At the MADE coworking today, the topic of e-ink devices came up. I recalled that a few years ago I had gotten interested in an e-ink display note-taking device that I had forgotten the name of. I had lost interest in it because of its subscription-based walled garden software.

These kinds of devices usually comprise of an e-ink display and a stylus, specialized for displaying documents and taking notes. I am interested in using it to read comics and take notes.

Another person at the event reminded me that it was the reMarkable tablet. Browsing their webiste, I can see that reMarkable uses their own operation system called reMarkable OS, which is "a custom, Linux-based operating system for digital paper displays".

They showed me a competitor called BOOX that just runs Android, which I found more appealing since there is no subscription or lock-in, and let me try out the Note Air2 that they had. I liked it!

BOOX isn't open source either, but it at least runs Android so it's easy to run more applications on it and you could theoretically root it if you wanted to.

A cursory search reveals that there is an open-source e-ink note-taking device called the PineNote, which is produced by PINE64. It runs Linux, but it's not ready for general use yet. Instead, it's aimed at Linux developers with an extensive knowledge of embedded systems and/or experience with mobile Linux.