Posted by oskrim 17 hours ago
They even list it in the user guide https://remarkable.guide/guide/access/ssh.html along with an "developing software" guide https://remarkable.guide/devel/index.html.
Maybe other tablets are like that too, to be honest I'm too poor to swing the 700-1000$ for what I can cover with an paper note pad (with the bonus of being able to comfortably sit my coffee cup on it, use any pen or pencil, rip pages out, drop it, forget it somewhere, etc etc) to buy one but at least it seems like a product I would support.
I have good news: they (RM2s) are often available on ebay for much less. People buy them thinking they're getting something like an android tablet, but they do nothing out of the box apart from showing docs and taking notes. Sometimes they're returned immediately for a full refund, but often they sit in a drawer, untouched, till they get offloaded on ebay for - comparatively - peanuts, letting us scoop them up and breathe new life into them (koreader rocks, to start with).
They are quite hackable, but a lot of the mods rely on some funky QT hacking… it’s all a bit kind of undocumented. I was able to get Codex to get full Chromium running in a chroot and render the screen via Xvfb though which was pretty cool and is somewhat usable, so I guess most things are possible with determination
I have been using it to read HN, as an RSS reader over my news and blog sources, generate audiobooks on topics I want to understand with ElevenLabs, Exa and OpenAI and listen via connecting its bluetooth to my speakers and even as a remote Claude Code & Codex approval sidekick.
It is amazing that a $100 device with a single core and 512mb RAM can do so much and run for so long.
Here is the open-sourced platform https://github.com/BandarLabs/Cobalt
This SDK provides more of an android/iOS type framework to use underlying hardware like bluetooth, wifi, battery and a bunch of UI components for creating complex apps with eink rendering, notifications, managed windows, OTA updates, a simulator, a sidekick mode for your apps and more.
Not to sound like certain influencers but computers are pretty fast and the state of modern software is incredibly wasteful.
After all, my notebooks are perfectly readable four years later
reMarkable software has its faults, but I keep coming back to them for the best-in-class hardware, developer-friendly platform, which itself spawned an active developer community. Could it be an easier platform to develop on? Sure. But that hasn't stopped a huge number of supported mods being made available
1. Remarkable's own software is a steaming pile of poo. Their inbuilt web server for uploading files is extremely buggy and unusable. It's dog slow. You can't try to drag many files in one go, or it crashes. You can't try to upload a large file, or it crashes. There is also a hard limit on the file size you can upload (something like 100MB) which makes it unusable for some heavy PDF files I have. They push you towards paying for their cloud service subscription, which I will never do, just to be able to sync files. There is also no way to just ssh files over because their pdf reader will refuse to read them. All I want is to connect the remarkable every day for a few minutes to my computer and have it sync my files, and there is no way to do that.
2. Most of the "hacks" online are written assuming that you can install toolchains like Toltec on the device, and they are NOT updated for the newer firmware. My remarkable came with 3.15 and while there are some instructions on how to downgrade the firmware before installing the toolchain, they never worked for me. So I stuck with the subpar software and reading experience...
... until I discovered [ReManager](https://github.com/rmitchellscott/reManager). It just worked out of the box, did not require a firmware update, and I was able to install KoReader and other goodies (such as some launcher improvements). It can also transfer large files easily. What's ironic is that KoReader can read djvu files, which removes my need to use large PDFs in the first place. Equivalent djvu files are much much smaller.
Thanks to everyone in the remarkable community who contributed to ReManager and other assorted remarkable hacking!
EDIT: Also must point out a cool thing that I discovered recently - ReManager comes with a one click installer for the Zig toolchain on the Remarkable 2! It is slow, but I was able to compile and run zig programs on the tablet.
I actually like that the RM 1 is plastic, it feels durable and light.
I've had all, too. I do like the light weight of the first... I'm less scared to toss it around too.
Citation needed
On the contrary, reMarkable's cloud and associated sync functionality is praised regularly in the unofficial subreddit, as is the access Support has when people accidentally overwrite or otherwise delete notes.
I fully understand why some people would prefer to self-host their documents, but to link your own work whilst labelling reMarkable's as "crap" is somewhat disingenuous
Are we sure it's not just from bots?
I tried to use reMarkable as a tablet with screen casting when teaching, and it failed miserably. The screen casting just breaks randomly.
For storage/sync it's fine, but even that is problematic if you want to organize a large library.
I don't think it's disingenuous to link to my own work, when that work was directly inspired by reMarkable's own awful software. I would call that "relevance".
I don't think it's fair to praise reMarkable's support for restoring access to files they mistakenly deleted in the first place. And secondly, their support is doing this FAR less than they used to. Some people in the subreddit report they don't do it any longer, since about 2 years ago.
https://www.reddit.com/r/RemarkableTablet/comments/1caeble/b...
https://www.reddit.com/r/RemarkableTablet/comments/1nzwt9c/d...
Another defect of theirs is erroneously RESTORING files that were previously deleted.
They do not have sync or cloud figured out.
https://www.google.com/search?q=remarkable+support+restore+d...
Long shell life is a taboo in the tech world where 5 years is a long time.
I have all sorts of offline digital&analog mechanical/optical devices which just work decades and decades later. The weak point in any of my old tech is when theres a software component that needs to be reverse engineered and ported across multiple generations of CPU architecture / OS / API deprecations.
I have 60 year old records, 35 year old CDs, 25 year old minidiscs that all still work fine. Properly developed film negatives are still fine decades later.
Despite all the warnings about media impermanence and lifespans, it's always the software that screws it up first. I've lost more content from digital / streaming services because it simply vanishes than because a piece of physical media failed.
As software is increasingly "solved" by AI I think this is what will become most important