After the touch screen of KPW1 malfunctioned, I switched back to Kobo. Although I recently upgraded to the latest official system, the page turning is still laggy. I originally planned to buy the A8 with Chinese language support on Double Eleven, with a sleep cover for only 590 yuan. It has an open system and a 300ppi display, which seems to be the most cost-effective 300ppi option. Later, I found out about Kobo Glo, which can be flashed with third-party software, so I decided to give it a try and maybe save some money.
After reading comparisons with other devices, I learned that besides the well-known KO, there is also a Plato, which is more niche because it is only used for Kobo. It is developed and open-sourced in Rust, making it faster and more power-efficient. I have a good impression of Rust's resource usage, so I followed a tutorial to flash it. The process is the same as the official upgrade, just unzip everything to the root directory and restart. Then I updated two fonts to see the effect: Cang Er Jin Kai and Yuan Shi Hei Ti. I copied them to the fonts directory. After starting, it runs smoothly, and Cang Er Jin Kai looks good for reading novels, like the pinball game in 1973 shown in the picture.
There are also some simple settings mentioned in the documentation. You can create or modify the Settings.toml file in the adds/plato directory. I made some modifications that suit my habits:
# Automatically enters shared mode when connected to a computer.
auto-share = true
# The number of minutes of inactivity after which a device
# will automatically go to sleep. *Zero* means *never*.
auto-suspend = 9.0
# The delay, in days, after which a suspended device
# will power off. *Zero* means *never*.
auto-power-off = 2.0
# Reader settings
[reader]
# The default serif font.
font-family = "Libertinus Serif"
# The default, minimum and maximum font sizes, in points.
font-size = 11.9
# The default, minimum and maximum margin widths, in millimeters.
margin-width = 3
# Battery settings
[battery]
# Warn about the battery level being low, when the level
# goes below `warn` percents.
warn = 10.0
# Shut the device down when the battery level goes below
# `power-off` percents.
power-off = 3.0
# Frontlight default settings
[frontlight-levels]
intensity = 0.0
warmth = 0.0
Cang Er Jin Kai#
Yuan Shi Hei Ti#
