Comment by minimalist
1 year ago
I don't like being negative, but I feel like I am obligated to pipe up every time I see Onyx products hit the front page here[0], because I was one of the people who politely requested that Onyx abide by the terms of the licenses for the Free Software that they use in their products. To this day, they refuse to do so.
- Onyx still doesn't release kernel sources for their products.
- Onyx still uses outdated and vulnerable builds of Android, with questionable settings such as disabling SELinux
- Their devices are very chatty back to servers in the PRC. And their privacy policies are pretty bad (and by bad, I mean non-existant! [1])
- Their digitizer API is not very documented and difficult to build off of, so claims of being friendly to 3rd party developers are overblown.
- They shut down their support forums when the chorus of disgruntled customers began to get too loud
And even worse, they are using claims of "anti-China movement" as an excuse to not comply with the GPL [2].
Please, we've got to stop shilling this company's products with these affiliate-link blogs. They seem completely opposed to the hacker 'ethos' of this site. Otherwise, why not also shill the hundreds of Oppo or Honor or Huawei phones being released every year?
Edit: To give a positive remark, I recommend the reMarkable tablet. It's what I purchased after I sold my onyx tablet. It runs linux and they give you root access out of the box! There is a vibrant community of people developing programs for the rM and even running other linux distros on the device.
[0]: https://old.reddit.com/r/Onyx_Boox/comments/hsn7kx/onyx_usin...
This company and its products keep gracing the HN front page [1, 2]. Most manufacturers don't get this kind of coverage.
Flagging the article will help.
[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?q=boox
[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?q=onyx
I'd say it's likely not due to any shenanigans, but simply because HN readers in general love eInk devices.
That said, I do which there were more players in the market. If you want an Android powered e-Ink device, you don't have a lot of options at the moment.
I don’t think flagging a post for that is a good use of that system, because the submission isn’t breaking the rules. But a comment in this thread as a reminder seems reasonable.
Since you seem well informed: what about Ratta, the maker of Supernote? Their software seems pretty good, and they are about to release another product.
They are also a Chinese company, I believe, which does make me so what nervous about writing down any IP...