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Notes on my Remarkable tablet

tomcritchlow.com

81–90 of 101 posts

Re: Notes on my Remarkable tablet

#81

The RM homebrew community has answers for some of the problems the author poses. I haven't tried it personally, but there is a VNC package that will let you use your tablet as an auxiliary screen. The hacking community is small but pretty dedicated. There's a few exciting projects in the works, like a complete desktop interface called Oxide. The RM tablets are kinda neat in that you get root access out of the box. Yo…

Thanks for mentioning oxide :) kinda cool to see people find my stuff exciting.

As for the statement that they don't respond to requests for source that they are obligated to release. They have everything that they are obligated to release on GitHub, and they have always released updated toolchains (that include a bunch of source) when. requested of them. They have been kinda late with the latest request, so yes they aren't timely right now. I've been poking what contacts I have, but I think a bunch of people had some extended vacations around the holidays or something.

Re: Notes on my Remarkable tablet

#82
post #78

It is positively bizarre that HN will scream blue bloody murder about "the apple tax", "apple spying", "poor repairability" and so on, and yet cannot shut up about a device that: * REQUIRES a cloud subscription and active data connection to do its most core functionality: OCRing text you write on it * costs more after a year or two than an iPad with Apple Pencil * is completely unrepairable; no parts availability, no…

I believe OCR as "the" core is just an opinion. This device allows you to do all your work offline. You do not need an account to use it. You can ssh into it. You don't have to ask permission to transfer files to/from the device. This device is the WORST e-reader... except for all the rest.

What about Supernote or Kindle Scribe, are they worse? I am considering RM2 but some recommend Supernote. The company looks shady as heck but hackability would be a big pro

Re: Notes on my Remarkable tablet

#83

The RM homebrew community has answers for some of the problems the author poses. I haven't tried it personally, but there is a VNC package that will let you use your tablet as an auxiliary screen. The hacking community is small but pretty dedicated. There's a few exciting projects in the works, like a complete desktop interface called Oxide. The RM tablets are kinda neat in that you get root access out of the box. Yo…

> That said, Remarkable the company has been fairly shitty. They removed the links to the dev tools, and don't really respond to requests for source that they are obligated to release under the GPL in any reasonable time. Which project did they not release GPL'd code for? They do have the kernel source available: https://github.com/reMarkable/linux/tree/zero-sugar The top level github page also lists their trees for…

Last updated 3 years ago

Re: Notes on my Remarkable tablet

#84
post #59

The RM homebrew community has answers for some of the problems the author poses. I haven't tried it personally, but there is a VNC package that will let you use your tablet as an auxiliary screen. The hacking community is small but pretty dedicated. There's a few exciting projects in the works, like a complete desktop interface called Oxide. The RM tablets are kinda neat in that you get root access out of the box. Yo…

I think it's important to note the wider limitations of the homebrew community. I bought an rM2 relatively early on, enough to have lifetime free subscription access that I've never used, as I've always used homebrew arrangements instead. There is a definite sense that the community is tired and diminishing. I think most packages are only compatible with the at this point quite old v2 software version, including the…

3.x support will come to toltec, I've been blocked by stuff outside of my control a couple of times. Including things happening in my life that I won't get into.

You can see the current progress here: https://github.com/toltec-dev/toltec/issues/820

As for the comment on the kernel change, that was actually an ask by someone in the community: https://github.com/reMarkable/linux/issues/8

Re: Notes on my Remarkable tablet

#85
post #32

Soon after Remarkable 2 was released, a hacked version of Remarkable 1 was released that added pretty much all the feature upgrades. You needed to buy a new stylus (to use the new eraser end), but you could choose from dozens of brands since it's a widely used standard. The hardware looks slightly different and might have clock speed differences, but is essentially identical. And you don't have to deal with the silly…

They release software updates for both devices at the same time. There was no hacked version with all the same feature upgrades, it was, and always has been the official software update. They to this day still release all the same features to both devices.

Re: Notes on my Remarkable tablet

#86
I found about these new tablets shortly after buying an iPad mini.

As much as I’d love to have an e-ink device, I don’t regret my purchase because you cannot yet plug those devices directly to a screen using a usb-c connector

Re: Notes on my Remarkable tablet

#87
post #77

The things that stop me from buying a Remarkable or any similar products are: * Too expensive. I want to have one everywhere in my house, all wirelessly connected so I can just pick one up and scribble a note anywhere. I may carry one also, but mostly I'd rather have something I treat as paper and keep them handy to places I frequent. * Stores data in the cloud. I want to create personal notes, I do not want to share…

> * Good organizational software for the notes. Many ways to sort notes/drawings, ways to search them, writing-to-text converters, drawing recognizers, all local and protected by good default encryption.

A love-child of Obsidian and OneNote would be my dream.

Obsidian does the text bits just like I want it, it's mostly just standard markdown with frontmatter and a few plugins that do fancy stuff (like dataview)

Canvas lets me make fancy displays of stuff like RPG character sheets.

But what's missing is the ability to just freeform write/draw with a stylus. ReMarkable could be the tool for that, but I don't see it happening.

Re: Notes on my Remarkable tablet

#88
post #9

I was a big fan of my RM2, but found the move to the subscription service a couple years ago to be off putting. Sure, I can turn off WiFi, or just use the network to ssh into it, but it felt less than great. I recently got a Supernote to replace it and so far love it. The company seems a bit more open and less likely to try to push me to some kind of subscription/cloud thing. They promote the “works great offline, no…

If you have somewhere you can run a Docker container, just spin up an rmfakecloud server and ditch the company's network altogether. Works really well.

[deleted]

Re: Notes on my Remarkable tablet

#89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For this exact reason, I decided to instead buy Surface Pro 9 and installed Ubuntu Linux on it. It works amazingly well. Moreover, all my notes are automatically converted to PDF and syned to my gitlab.

How is the support nowadays? It used to be that you needed custom kernels and some fiddling (e.g. see reddit's r/surfacelinux). What software do you use for the note taking? On Windows there seemed to be OneNote (and nothing else) and on Linux xournal++. Sorry for all the questions, but I am currently looking for a new laptop/tablet and thought I'd ask for experiences of others.

Apart from camera, almost everything is working correctly. Camera doesn't work at all.

https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface

I use this kernel, you can use this with most operating systems. Once things are setup, everything is extremely smooth.

I use xournal++ for note writing, and using GNOME is necessary. KDE doesn't have support for screen rotation etc. When you use GNOME, make sure to disable gestures and screen edge detection, because that might occasionally cause interfere with writing.

So, the workflow is quite simple with xournal++, you run a `inotify` based watched which automatically compiles and pushes stuff on every save. I of course assume that only `xournal++` on tab can change those handwritten notes. You can get some fancier git logic if needed. By putting the baselink as `https://gitlab.com/user/repo/-/jobs/artifacts/main/raw`, you can get the list of PDFs directly on readme of your git repo. pretty nifty for referring to later.

    while inotifywait -e modify,create,delete,move $INPUT;
    do
       publish.script --input $INPUT --output $OUTPUT
    done


    # publish.script
    pushd $INPUT
      pushd $INPUT

      printf "# Handwritten Notes\n\n" > readme.md

      printf "|  Index  | Date | Title |\n" >> readme.md
      printf "|   ---   |  --- |  ---  |\n" >> readme.md


      INDEX=0
 
      for i in $(ls -r *.xopp); do
        BASENAME=$(basename $i .xopp)
        PDFNAME=$BASENAME.pdf
        xournalpp --create-pdf=$OUTPUT/$PDFNAME $i

        BASENAME=$(basename $i .xopp)
        PDFNAME=$BASENAME.pdf
        LINK=$BASELINK/$PDFNAME$SUFFIX

        INDEX=$(( INDEX + 1))
        DATE=$(echo ${BASENAME:0:10})

        printf "| %d | %s | [%s](%s) |\n" $INDEX $DATE $BASENAME $LINK >> readme.md

      done

      if [[ $(git diff --stat) != '' ]]; then
        git add .
        git commit -m "$(date)"
        git push
      fi


    popd

You can run the inotify as a `systemd` service

    [Unit]
    Description=Starts Sync Service

    [Service]
    Type=simple
    ExecStart=%%%SYNC_BIN%%% --input %%%INPUT_DIR%%% --output %%%OUTPUT_DIR%%%
    ExecReload=/usr/bin/kill -HUP $MAINPID
    KillMode=process
    TimeoutSec=180
    Restart=on-failure
    RestartSec=5s

    [Install]
    WantedBy=default.target

Re: Notes on my Remarkable tablet

#90
post #75

The RM homebrew community has answers for some of the problems the author poses. I haven't tried it personally, but there is a VNC package that will let you use your tablet as an auxiliary screen. The hacking community is small but pretty dedicated. There's a few exciting projects in the works, like a complete desktop interface called Oxide. The RM tablets are kinda neat in that you get root access out of the box. Yo…

> That said, Remarkable the company has been fairly shitty. Except for the fact that they've released a product that you can do with what you will and use offline. It seems most other products require you to create an account and log into someone's service to even use the device. They're so scared they can't monetize you!

I think the difference in opinions here is the feeling amongst those of us who don't particularly like Remarkable as a company that they do what they are legally required to do, based on the licences of the software they've used. To an extent, I think there's also the sense that the company may have, earlier on, been more open and supportive. Outside of the homebrew community, I think there's also the sense that, while they do technically have a product you can 'do with what you will and use offline', they have made doing so inconvenient.

It is difficult to interpret, for example, the repeated tendency of the USB interface to turn itself off in the settings as anything other than a dark pattern designed to make offline use for non-technical users inconvenient. The needlessly-browser-based interface that involves a fake ethernet adapter and additional private network is itself a dubious choice. For a device that markets itself as removing distractions, it creates distractions for someone trying to use it offline. This is even worse for non-technical users than those in the homebrew community.

There is, of course, always an excuse, always an explanation as to why these choices make sense, and anyone complaining is being unreasonable. But the combination of choices is frustrating and unlikely to generate much good will toward Remarkable.

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