Using e-ink tablet as monitor for Linux

Posted by yolkedgeek 5 days ago

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Comments

Comment by ChuckMcM 1 day ago

I backed this project: https://www.crowdsupply.com/modos-tech/modos-paper-monitor on Crowd Supply to see how close they can come to a "monitor" experience with an e-paper display.

Comment by skeptrune 1 day ago

Ooh, crowdsupply looks interesting. This is my first time seeing it.

Comment by iamflimflam1 1 day ago

CrowdSupply is great - I ran a successful project through them. And I would definitely recommend anyone doing some hardware taking a look.

There are a couple of things to be aware of - everything is shipped to the US and then distributed from there (using Mouser US).

From the project point of view this means, depending on where things are manufactured) tariffs can come into play. The terms of shipping to mouser are delivery duty paid - so it’s the shipper who pays.

For backers it does mean people outside of US can pay quite high shipping costs.

The other thing from a project point of view is that mouser is a distributor. They want a reasonable (around 40%) margin on the things they ship.

With CrowdSupply there are two sets of orders:

Orders placed during the campaign - the project gets the full money (minus fees etc…)

Orders placed after the campaign and any additional bulk orders - the project gets the wholesale price.

I wrote a fairly detailed write up of it here: https://www.atomic14.com/2025/07/21/crowd-funding-retro

Comment by ChuckMcM 15 hours ago

Excellent write up! This answered some of my questions that I wasn't really comfortable asking creators. A very (and I mean very) long time ago when people were complaining about the price of software I wrote up a Usenet post on why software costs what it does and enlightened a number of people to the fact that yeah, there are many things you don't think about when you're just looking at the list price.

Presumably the contract doesn't allow you to sell product directly if you wanted too. The other thing I'm curious about is that CrowdSupply does continue to list "buying options" long after the creator has gone away. Which makes me wonder if they have some sort of rights to tooling etc post campaign?

Comment by eggfriedrice 23 hours ago

This was a really interesting read! Back in the day a friend and I started a company and Kickstartered a RPi add-on. The kickstarter campaign failed, but we ended up building anyway after one of the silicon manufacturers spotted the project and provided some FoC devices which changed the economics.

We spent oodles of time on it, learned lots, build a fairly simple product but ended up selling it through some of the bigger RPi retailers. It was all an excellent learning experience, and ignoring our time we made about 50p out of the entire batch of a thousand. Factor in our time and it was a complete financial disaster, but we were young and carefree and had fun doing it!

Comment by disdi 1 day ago

Same here. I saw a demo in Fosdem which was pretty smooth.

Comment by niceguy1827 1 day ago

Dasung 253 is a 25.3 inch eink display.

https://shop.dasung.com/products/dasung-25-3-e-ink-monitor-p...

I bought it two years ago for over $1800, and I have to say, it was worth every single dollar.

I can read on it, work on it, (kind of) watch youtube videos on it, play (some) RTS game on it. And mine only had 33hz refresh rate, not the latest 60hz.

Comment by niceguy1827 18 hours ago

Forgot to mention one benefit, for the ultra-lazy like myself.

You can just leave the display on forever and you never have to wait for the screen to wake up again. I use amphetamine on macOS and just set a session forever. I'm more comfortable this way since eink displays don't emit light and thus should consume less power.

Comment by danielsokil 1 day ago

Does it support linux based systems?

Comment by b112 1 day ago

When I tried (and returned) one of their monitors, it was absolutely horrific with ghosting. This was perhaps 5 years ago.

There was no manual, and it had a closed source application to time or force refresh. Of course, being closed source it wouldn't work on a Pi (arm64), nor did I feel comfortable about unknown code, or it working in a few years on a newer version of Linux.

It was all exceptionally poorly done. Amazon says it was a Dasung E-Ink Paperlike 3 HD Front-Light and Touch 13.3" Monitor.

If the app had been OSS, or it had an open API via the cable, I could have scripted an auto-refresh upon scrolling in vi or some such. Or just hacked into something seeing change scope under X. Point is, I could have made it work for me.

The default modes were terrible.

I hope things are better, but no way will I install some weird closed source client.

I have a fairly new tablet, and it handles refresh incredibly well, but I'm sure that's with strong integration into the display stack. Which is fine, of course, but that doesn't help me with coding.

EDIT: one of the things which makes some of these e-ink tablets incredible for refresh, is partial, very well done sectional refresh. So if a small part of the screen changes, BAM!, it's refreshed instantly for ghosting.

Again, I suspect this is tied into the display stack. The monitors I've seen don't seem anywhere as good. I'd love to to be wrong on newer models.

Comment by pumphaus 1 day ago

Input is just HDMI, so works on Linux without issue. There might be an app or something that lets you control the settings, but I've never used that once. All relevant stuff can be configured from the front panel buttons. I think the Mac issue is that macos slightly dithers/moves the image with a high rate which would kill the EInk pixels quickly. There appears to be an app to deactivate this behavior though.

Comment by overfeed 20 hours ago

> Input is just HDMI, so works on Linux without issue

HDMI is not always plug and play. I unfortunately encountered a situation where a Phillips HDMI display only worked with Windows, but not Linux due to EDID/Nvidia driver issues

Comment by captn3m0 1 day ago

Page does mention Linux but there’s a separate Mac variant (which also needs an app) and a warning never to plug a Mac on the standard variant. What about people who use both?

Comment by niceguy1827 19 hours ago

I cannot make guarantees but I do remember temporarily using it for my Debian installation for my home server -- can't think of any reason why it wouldn't work though. For both Windows and Mac it's just plug and play.

Comment by tuananh 1 day ago

the 60hz version says it doesn't

> Only Support Mac, Windows > Linux is not supported

Comment by thfuran 19 hours ago

So it’s ewaste.

Comment by 1 day ago

Comment by thefounder 22 hours ago

I couldn’t make it work on macOS (I.e Mac Studio 2).

Comment by niceguy1827 18 hours ago

Weird. I have a work MacBook Pro m3 and a personal m1 MacBook Pro. Both are just plug and play for me. I actually have my displayed connected to a CalDigit TS3 dock and just connect different computer to the same dock.

Comment by summarity 22 hours ago

What problems did you run into?

Comment by thefounder 20 hours ago

Over HDMI I’ve got a no-signal error. I think I’ve tried display port or something else and got very bad ghosting and a kind of very bad contrast issue. You couldn’t really read text(unlike what I’ve seen on YouTube videos). Tried different kinds of settings still couldn’t get it into a working state. Like it needs a special driver or something like that.

Comment by cmrdporcupine 1 day ago

I want one of those but I keep waiting for the price to drop significantly. Seems like it'll take forever.

Comment by logicallee 1 day ago

the version you linked is a monochrome one, right? Don't you find it difficult to read and work on it without color?

Comment by niceguy1827 18 hours ago

Yes, it's basically a large Kindle.

For reading and work, I actually prefer this experience. The contrast for text is way better and more crisp than regular LED/LCD/OLED displays, unless you turn the regular display's brightness way up, until which point my eyes hurt from all that light emitted. This was my primary reason for buying such a display -- I love my Kindle and want to use it more, but I couldn't.

Now for entertainment you are obviously limited. For informational Youtube videos you could be getting by alright -- you don't really need to see colors for those. Games is tricky since you could only do non-demanding ones. Shopping gets tricky since you can't see colors. Sometimes I find myself hopping on my iPhone to check before placing orders.

Comment by pumphaus 1 day ago

I have both, a Boox Mira pro (monochrome only) as well as a Dasung Color EInk Monitor.

You actually get used to the monochrome thing. I've adjusted my syntax highlighting to use more italic, underline, bold etc so you get by without the semantic coloring.

The color eink is way better though. Only downside is that it has less contrast than the purely monochrome one. Color makes up for it nicely, though. Plus the refresh rate on the Dasung is way higher, so you can actually use a mouse without going insane trying to predict cursor movement.

Where the monochrome monitor was more of a secondary display primarily used for coding, I'm now using the Color EInk one as my main display.

Comment by bmsleight_ 1 day ago

I hacked together a HDMI e-ink monitor https://barwap.com/projects/okmonitor/

I wanted an e-ink screen I could just plug-in. Versatile, big and cheap. Connection is via a VGA or HDMI. Works like an appliance. All automated. Wireless.

Specifications: 1024x768, 6fps, lag: ~1.2s, Connection: VGA or HDMI Specifications Single Screen: 1024x768, 5fps, lag: ~1.2s, Connection: VGA or HDMI

Comment by jwrallie 1 day ago

I’d really like a Linux laptop with an e-ink screen. I’m well aware of the downsides.

It seems Android tablet with a keyboard or Windows laptop with double screen exist but to live with the limitations of such a screen, nothing would top having full control of the OS interface.

Comment by norman784 1 day ago

This sounds like a good opportunity for a 3rd party e-ink screen for the framework laptops.

Comment by larodi 1 day ago

incredible, isn't it, that no single usable e-paper device is being sold. like no Mac with e-ink, no Surface with e-ink, no ASUS with e-ink, even though this is the best thing an operator can do to his tired eyes.

Comment by baobun 1 day ago

I think PineNote qualifies by now?

https://pine64.org/devices/pinenote/

Also https://usetrmnl.com/

Comment by larodi 3 hours ago

indeed i should've said "save for some smart tablet offerings such as PineNote and Re:Markable". but these are not so useful for data operators, unless keyboard via bluetooth etc.

Comment by ablob 1 day ago

I'd wager that the whole modus operandi for desktop environments is not made with e-ink in mind. E-ink fits in a situation where only a few updates are ever required, and completely breaks down for anything requiring higher framerates.

The market might just not be big enough to warrant creating a product.

Comment by axiolite 1 day ago

> the whole modus operandi for desktop environments is not made with e-ink in mind

It used-to be in the DOS and terminal days, and it wouldn't take much to get us back there. Shut off all the eye-candy transition effects. Make your web browser, PDF viewer, etc., always scroll a full page at a time, instead of scrolling 1mm when you click on the button or use the mouse wheel. Just those few changes and you'll have something that'll work pretty well.

Comment by larodi 3 hours ago

Besides, even during DOS days, and generally console days, software such as DB2, Oracle, and all the OS/360 offering, was doing absolutely okay. With all the UTF glyphs available to us now (not to mention the chat interface), I can totally imagine super useful and distraction-less TUIs to front business systems. And e-ink/e-paper would suffice most use-cases for the software which brings actual value to industries.

Comment by nottorp 1 day ago

The problem is, you can't doom scroll 1 minute videos on e-ink.

It's a feature of course, but most people don't realize it.

Comment by folmar 1 day ago

It's not usual for PC, but if you select "remove animation" on Android you're good on 2 fps. Many applications do like crap as the first placeholders are given little attention, but there are only big refreshes, and only handful of apps written so bad that they ignore the setting and make animated placeholder.

The only thing is that you need to stick to Page Up/Page Down for scrolling.

Comment by shaky-carrousel 1 day ago

But it was. 90s laptops had a refresh rate comparable to e-ink. That's why the windows mouse cursor can be configured to leave a trace.

Comment by larodi 3 hours ago

well mine still does leave a trace, because you know - remote desktop glitters now and then, and particularly if you happen to self-host. also with multi-monitors and heavy window use it makes sense to have trails, than not to.

so the old is not so old, and the new is not dramatically new.

Comment by jwrallie 1 day ago

It could be sold without any dedicated software, and let the community come up with the interface. Just an LVDS display that fits a widely available Thinkpad would do it.

Comment by anthk 1 day ago

CWM or any light WM could perfectly fit. Once you either use terminal tools or ancient Motif applications (or QT with no animations at all), everything looks usable. Forget Gnome 4 or Plasma with all the bells and wistles on.

Comment by fragmede 1 day ago

https://shop.dasung.com/products/dasung-paperlike-103-the-wo...

This is that product. A 60 Hz eink monitor, for $340.

Comment by nihiven 1 day ago

I have one of these. It's only 'ok'. There is significant ghosting and it's not very good when the scene is dark, but it's much better than my BOOX tablet. I just got it so I'm still experimenting with different uses.

Here's a clip of it playing video: https://youtu.be/povlk3hKTVA

Comment by danparsonson 1 day ago

I had no idea such a thing existed, thanks - did you need to install anything to get it working or does it just plug and go like a normal monitor?

Comment by nihiven 23 hours ago

It functions like a normal monitor. It connected to my Macbook air (M2) and Windows machine without installing anything. It has a USB-C video port, but an HDMI->USB-C converter works too. It has an 1872x1404 (4:3) resolution, which is why I used Miami Vice for the video. It would not connect to my PS5, which I think comes down to the PS5 only supporting 16:9/21:9.

Comment by j_bum 1 day ago

Wow that’s far more impressive than I expected. I want a laptop with this for programming…

Comment by OtomotO 1 day ago

On the product page "Linux is not supported"... What a bummer!

Comment by dotancohen 1 day ago

It's specifically says no Linux support. It seems to me that excludes a large portion of tinkerers and those willing to accept the downsides of bleeding edge technologies, which is probably also their target market. Such as me.

Comment by shakna 1 day ago

Whilst they're certainly not Apple, you can walk into most retailers, and out with one of Boox's offerings.

(Just be aware they're open GPL violators.)

Comment by Zambyte 23 hours ago

I'm replying to this comment on a Daylight Computer.

Comment by ryanckulp 16 hours ago

we (TRMNL) have a working demo, debating what to do with it.

unlisted: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/qs7JeK11Cxc

Comment by prmoustache 15 hours ago

Is it me or there is a lot of ghosting?

Comment by gunalx 14 hours ago

There was this one thinkpad that had a eink screen as its keyboard.

Pretty cool, and you could use it as aregular display as well.

dunno how linux would react though.

Comment by vmbm 14 hours ago

I have trouble sleeping, and it gets particularly bad in the winter. I have figured out that at least one of the triggers for poor sleep has been evening screen time. Redshift style apps help a little but barely. I can get away with some light usage of my phone on the dimmer settings, but if I sit down at my multi-monitor desk setup I will be wide awake all night and feel terrible in the morning. And this is with redshift and screens set to their lowest brightness levels.

So I spent a fair amount of time looking into e-ink options as a potential solution. I eventually settled on a refurbished Lenovo Thinkbook Plus G4, which has a flip-able screen with e-ink on one side. I paid around $800 which was less than a dedicated e-ink monitor, and only slightly more than some of the higher end large tablets/e-readers. So it was a hard deal to pass up.

I am happy to report that using the e-ink in the evenings has helped quite a bit on the sleep front. And while the laptop is pretty nice, e-ink in general requires a fair bit of compromise and the laptop in particular has some rough edges. You definitely need to spend some time on your display settings to make things work (high contrast, cursor and pointer visibility, font color in IDE and terminal apps, etc...), but for the most part I can make it work. And while I don't work in sunlight often, e-ink can really shine if you are outdoors (I have the sun shining on my screen right now as I type this and it is super readable.)

Anyways, I guess what I am trying to say is that I really hope more investment gets put into e-ink. I think it is a pretty awesome technology and would love to expand my usage of it. But at least for now it is mostly something that I am tolerating for the sake of sleep.

Comment by somat 1 day ago

I don't really want an e-ink "monitor" as that does not really play into the advantages of an e-ink display. By the time the e-ink display is uprated enough to act as a monitor It feels like a lot of the advantages of e-ink are lost and the display server does not really downrate enough to utilize e-ink's strength.

But an e-ink "terminal" would be nice, not an actual tty but something more like a tablet form factor that has a few buttons, little to no internal smarts and you can push images to it.

Comment by ibrahima 1 day ago

Funnily you're describing https://usetrmnl.com/ which also happens to be pretty hacker friendly.

Comment by wiether 1 day ago

Until now, I had resisted the urge to order one

But now that they have a bigger version, with controls and a clear case...

I'm not sure that I should be thanking you for making me spend money!

Comment by ibrahima 19 hours ago

Yeah... I bought the regular version a few months before the bigger one was announced. Now I kinda want it but can't really justify it at this point. It's a cool product though and a lot of the code is open source or has open source alternatives (e.g. the official backend is not but they have sponsored the development of open source alternatives so that if they go out of business or something you can host your own backend).

Comment by ryanckulp 16 hours ago

we (TRMNL) have a monitor demo, and we also bought a few of the new Modos project, rooting for that creator.

see our demo here: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/qs7JeK11Cxc

Comment by the_gipsy 1 day ago

> not an actual tty

Hold up, this could be good

Comment by bgnn 1 day ago

this would do? https://shop.dasung.com/products/dasung-paperlike-103-the-wo...

Comment by ahoef 1 day ago

No HDMI is really sad. This means there are probably closed source drivers. Linux is not mentioned as supported, so I suspect crapware.

Comment by baobun 1 day ago

PineNote?

Comment by butz 1 day ago

I love when a blog post starts with demonstration of end result.

Comment by nanomonkey 19 hours ago

As much as I like e-ink, it has terrible refresh rates. I'd love a larger version of the Sharp Memory display technology that could support at least 80 characters wide, and perhaps 8 bit greyscale. The current ones support 60hz refresh and sip power but are limited to black and white only.

Comment by bee_rider 1 day ago

So it is vim on the eink screen, mostly?

When writing a lot of LaTeX I wished I had an eink monitor. LaTeX already takes a moment to compile. I’d probably want vim on a conventional monitor.

Comment by yolkedgeek 1 day ago

It's text on the E-ink screen mostly, be it in the browser, a plain text file, Logseq, Obsidian etc. But sometimes simple writing can be done too. I wouldn't suggest writing code because of the high latency.

Most of my work is reading rather than writing so when I want to read something I use the E-ink screen.

Comment by shekharupadhaya 1 day ago

Benefits aside, but the latency / refresh rate makes it not usable for practical purpose, ergonomics nightmare.

Comment by sgt 1 day ago

What's the cheapest eInk display one can get, like phone sized or tablet sized? I mean just for experimentation.

Comment by IshKebab 1 day ago

I'd look for an Inkplate on ebay. I got the 10 inch one for about £60 which is very good.

Comment by ahamilton454 1 day ago

Reading this on my eink Bigme Hibreak pro :).

Comment by engr 23 hours ago

What I really want is an A3 e-ink display that is designed to have a pdf loaded onto it, then can be disconnected and taken around a machine shop. No WiFi or Bluetooth etc

Comment by malfist 23 hours ago

You'll pay out the nose on that. From what I understand, the larger the e-ink screen is the harder it is to manufacture. Which is why small tablet ones reign supreme, and larger monitor sized ones are shockingly expensive, somebody else here has already linked to a 25 inch display for $1800

Comment by knubie 1 day ago

I've tried this setup (and a different setup using a capture card) with a BOOX Note Max but the input latency is just too high to be usable, even for simple cli work.

Are the dedicated eink monitors (like Dasung) better in this regard?

Comment by yolkedgeek 1 day ago

I've been using this solution for about 4 days now. It's not meant to be used as your main monitor. I use it only when I want to read something I or someone else has written. I think it's also good for simple writing too. But if I try to use it as my main monitor, browsing the web, writing code, etc. it will become a real headache because of the latency.

One huge plus is that it isn't *just a monitor*. because of the VNC connection, I just pick up my tablet and roam around the office while reading something, even making tiny edits, It can be also used as a great drawpad. I use it to explain things to my coworkers, since drawing freehand diagrams, shapes and text isn't very easy with a mouse.

Comment by timeforcomputer 1 day ago

How is the latency for drawing? I am going to start doing this, but it makes me think, it would be nice to have a way to disable full refresh while drawing, and doing tablet-side drawing over the current VNC frame while the stream is paused, and asynchronously forwarding the input which will hopefully recreate the same drawing path on the server.

Comment by yolkedgeek 23 hours ago

I don't know how to do what you are describing, but right now, the drawing is OK. it's not instantaneous but good enough for me, not creating artworks. just doodles and scribbles. I just don't look at the tablet screen for drawing. I only use it as an input because the refresh rate is low for this. but the VNC latency itself is not annoying (I would guesstimate ~0.2s), although I think there are ways to make VNC latency less.

Comment by knubie 22 hours ago

The latency for drawing on the Boox Note Max is excellent. Best on the market or close to it.

Comment by carlosjobim 1 day ago

Yes they are significantly better. But no battery so no portability.

Comment by kalek 1 day ago

Since Boox runs android, you can also run a shell on it using termius and simply ssh to a host device instead of setting up vnc, if you have a terminal based workflow.

Comment by b112 1 day ago

Boox devices are riddled with phone home to all sorts of domains, including to .cn domains, just run tcpdump on your firewall and watch. You should do absolutely nothing security conscious with them. For example, like putting keys on them, or sshing into a box with them.

At least with vnc, you could create a private network between the boox and your linux box, and it'd be sharing the screen. Still an issue, but passwords and hidden fields would be typed on the keyboard on the Linux box, not the boox.

I rooted mine, and installed afwall, and still won't ever used it for anything security conscious.

Comment by RossBencina 1 day ago

The main thing I'd miss with this, versus using an actual e-ink monitor, is the ability to refresh/clear ghosting from a keyboard hotkey.

Comment by pluc 23 hours ago

Using white text on a pink background? No wonder you need an e-ink tablet

Comment by quijoteuniv 1 day ago

I wonder if xpra can be used for this, seems to work really nice on thin clients

Comment by hartator 1 day ago

There are directly ekink monitors now.

Dasung 13k color is workable-ish even on MacOS with no tweaks.

Comment by yolkedgeek 23 hours ago

Well this is no replacement for them! The monitors you mention are from 700$ (Dasung 13k is 750USD currently) up to 2000USD. This is an old tablet you maybe have lying around or can get for 200USD maybe?

And this is more than a monitor. the VNC provides you with an interface. you can use your tablet as the input device. and it's also portable.

Comment by hexo 1 day ago

This is basically impossible due to **** animations everywhere.

Comment by simlevesque 1 day ago

I see btop in the video, I'd like to see a video of btop on that screen.

Comment by moneywoes 1 day ago

Any suggested eink tablet with higher refresh that this would work better for?

Comment by RossBencina 1 day ago

Many if not all of the current generation Boox devices. Choose comparison category "Refresh Time" here:

https://www.mydeepguide.com/daf-tool

Be aware that Boox runs Android apps. Many other brands do not.

Comment by cons0le 1 day ago

I use the Boox 10.3 for reading emails, text-based sites like this, and manga. Its bliss and has replaced 80% of my ipad. The experience of using it outside completely trounces normal screens.

As soon as they make larger, better 60hz panels I will 100% switch all my monitors over. I think making videos look worse is a positive. We don't need doomscrolling. We don't need 60fps react buttons with smooth gradients. We don't need to HDR the entire web. I primarily use text based sites anyways, so eink is perfect for me.

Comment by Zambyte 23 hours ago

I'm writing this on a Daylight Computer. It's been my primary mobile device (instead of a smartphone) for all of 2025. I cannot recommend it enough.

Comment by cramcgrab 22 hours ago

That’s pretty neat! I’ve been looking at ESL e-ink displays for a while as a more static status display, but the lack of standards and open source software is a problem.

Comment by exasperaited 1 day ago

How long will the display last like this?

Comment by edent 1 day ago

I've been using an eInk screen for over 12 years - it is refreshed multiple times per day.

It is as crisp and clear as the day I got it.

Admittedly, I'm not trying to run video on it constantly and it doesn't get hot. But eInk seems remarkably durable.

Comment by exasperaited 23 hours ago

That's probably, what, 200,000 refreshes?

From what I gather, at book-reading speeds, newer e-ink displays may never wear out in a human lifetime.

But at usable computer display speeds I rather suspect many of these panels have a lifetime one might measure in months.

Comment by ashirviskas 1 day ago

from 6.7 to 42 would be my guess.

But being serious, I personally have not seen a degraded e-ink display.

Comment by Groxx 1 day ago

I've seen a couple minor, older-hardware cases when they've been powered off with something on the screen for years, but that's about it. in theory they can also "burn in" by not clearing the display occasionally (afaict it has something to do with accumulating charge) but most or all of those should clear eventually after cycling a bunch (afaict, though it can definitely persist to a minor degree for dozens of full refresh cycles). extreme ghosting, basically.

they seem pretty durable to me.

Comment by sgt 1 day ago

Even in a lot of direct sunlight or leaving it out in the heat?

Comment by ashirviskas 12 hours ago

No clue, I've only seen either fully working or physically broken ones. Oldest one I have still has mini-usb and no degradation can be seen. Though I only rescued it this year, it seems like it was used pretty roughly.

Comment by grapehenderson2 12 hours ago

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