1. Update to the latest firmware from Amazon. You're going to anyway, might as well do it now. Doing it later might break your jailbreak? I'm not sure. For me this meant installing 2.5.8 on my DX. Download the update .bin file from Amazon(0). Attach your kindle to your computer; drop the .bin file in the kindle's usb root directory.
(0): http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200324680
Unmount the kindle and disconnect the usb cable. Go to the home screen on your kindle (press HOME) then press MENU, select "Settings", press MENU again, and then select "Update Your Kindle." This procedure (Settings -> Update) is known as the "standard update procedure" and will be used a few more times before we're done.
2. Jailbreak your kindle(1). This will let you install unsigned updates (as far as I can tell, anyways). I used 0.6.N, but apparently 0.7.N is the latest (probably useful for you Kindle 3 folks).
(1): http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=88004
Download and extract the kindle-jailbreak-0.7.N.zip. Copy the "update_jailbreak_0.7.N_XXX_install.bin" file to the root directory of your kindle like before (here, XXX represents your Kindle model -- dx for DX, dxi for DX International, dxg for DX graphite, etc etc). Unmount it again. Follow the "standard update procedure" again. (Aside: At least with jailbreak 0.6.N on Kindle version 2.5.8, you will get an error "Update failed", but if you see "U006" in the lower left corner, you're good.)
3. Install launchpad(2). This will let you launch programs just by (rapidly) pressing a few keys in sequence (e.g., we will use this to launch fbKindle from the native Kindle interface later). First grab the latest "lpad-pkg-NNNN.zip" from the first post of this thread (I used NNNN = 0.0.1c):
(2): http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=97636
Then, extract it, and copy "update_launchpad_0.0.1c_XXX_install.bin" to your kindle root directory (you're getting the hang of this, aren't you? =)), where XXX is of course your kindle model like before. Follow the standard update procedure yet again. I'm not sure it's necessary, but somewhere around here I rebooted my kindle, just to be safe. You may as well. Go to HOME, then MENU -> "Settings" -> MENU -> "Restart."
4. Finally, install fbKindle. fbKindle is a package containing a version of the open source Qt library compiled for Kindle, as well as the open source FBReader program. We will be following this forum thread(3) for this part. Grab the latest version of fbKindle by h1uke.
(3): http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=107371&page=6
You can skip removing the fbKindle directory -- if you're not upgrading, it shouldn't exist. You do want to create the "customupdates" directory in your kindle, and copy "fbKindle-bin.tar.gz" into it, then unmount your kindle. Now, on the kindle press "SHIFT SHIFT I" (that's I as in 'eye', not 'ell'
in fairly rapid succession; this will invoke launchpad's script to automatically install things in "customupdates". You should see "^ SHIFT I" on the bottom of your screen.After waiting two or three minutes (I would estimate 90-120 seconds), "Success!" should flash briefly (I didn't notice if this is true or not). Now, you should probably reconnect your kindle to your computer, and create a directory named "FBReader". Inside that directory, create another directory named "books". "FBReader/books/" is where you can copy all of your downloaded EPUBs to read on the kindle.
Finally, unmount your kindle. On the home screen, rapidly press "SHIFT F R" and fbKindle should launch. When I did this the first time, I got a blank screen for quite a while. If you get this, you might try hitting HOME or BACK; I'm not sure quite what I did, but it returned me to the Amazon interface. The next time I pressed "SHIFT F R" it just worked. The interface takes some getting used to, but at least you can read unmodified EPUBs on that otherwise worthless eReader you have lying around ;-).
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