Ubuntu hacked onto the Amazon Kindle

Posted on Saturday, September 05 2009 @ 9:05 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck

Boing Boing reports a hacker named Jesse Vincent managed to get Ubuntu 9.04 running on the Amazon Kindle 2:

To open up the Kindle, I used the USB networking debug mode Amazon left hanging around when they first shipped the Kindle 2, a statically linked telnetd and a cross-compiler to bootstrap myself. From there, I built a daemon that can convert DRM-free PDFs and ePubs into something Amazon's reader on the Kindle can deal with.

About the Author

Thomas De Maesschalck

Thomas has been messing with computer since early childhood and firmly believes the Internet is the best thing since sliced bread. Enjoys playing with new tech, is fascinated by science, and passionate about financial markets. When not behind a computer, he can be found with running shoes on or lifting heavy weights in the weight room.

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