[slabity]

I've been interested in the progress of the PineNote since the reMarkable company decided to put certain advertised features behind a subscription paywall.

Does anyone have any information on the OS being developed looks like? I have not been able to find any videos or screenshots that indicate what interacting with the device is expected to look like. I found this blog post here, but it shows it running a GNOME environment which is... Not at all what I would hope for in this type of device: https://pine64.org/2024/10/02/september_2024/#pinenote

[m4n4pe]

Here is a rather old vid of the interface I put together for use on my Pinenote. I’m still running Sway with lisgd for gestures, waybar + lavalauncher for widgets. Lots more possibilities if you are into ags/gjs, eww and others.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XKFwO4iMIgM&t=51s

It’s a great device and I wish people would be a little more open to taking the plunge with it. Forget boox—-you won’t be able to properly root it, they disrespect and even stole FOSS. Meanwhile, remarkable is cool, but anemic hardware compared to Pinenote.

[slabity]

I just got a chance to see this video now.

Thank you for sharing this with me. This is the first time I've seen the `rnote` app on an E-ink device. I'm quite surprised in how functional it looks, though I can already tell the latency is quite high.

I'm definitely going to keep my eye on this device though. I think it will just be a few more years before the software has caught up with the hardware.

[khm]

It's Debian running GNOME. You can install whatever UI you want from the repos, but the developers have written convenience tools in the form of GNOME extensions, which you can see in the top bar in the photos. It works fine, in my experience, modulo some finicky bits involving the onscreen keyboard. I have the original developer model, and I don't know what differences exist in the community edition.

[zozbot234]

GNOME is the one Linux desktop environment that can be said to work reasonably well on tablet devices, including the PineNote. It also has well-supported "high contrast" and "reduced animations" modes that can serve to enhance UX on an epaper display.

[slabity]

I think there may be a misunderstanding of my point.

The fact that GNOME works well on typical tablets isn't really relevant here. The PineNote is an E-ink device with very specific hardware constraints and use cases. It's primarily meant for reading and writing, and these tasks require software specifically optimized for E-ink displays and low-power operation.

I've personally experimented with desktop environments like XFCE and i3 on a reMarkable 2. While it was an interesting technical exercise, the experience wasn't practical for daily use. For comparison, look at the reMarkable's unofficial/hacked ecosystem (https://github.com/reHackable/awesome-reMarkable) - it's full of applications and utilities specifically designed for E-ink displays and writing/reading workflows.

This is why I'm hesitant about the "community device" designation. Simply saying "it runs GNOME" doesn't tell us anything about the actual user experience for reading and writing on E-ink. To be clear, my concern isn't that it runs GNOME - it's that this seems to be the only information available about the software experience.