The're right, another thing you notice in a dry house (like Swiss homes in winter pounding crazy heating) is that you can get even painful (to the hand) mini electric shocks just walking around with slippers/crocs and then touching the metal kitchen vent, chargers..unless you ground yourself once in a while. Never happens in a humid climate/house.
No but you can jailbreak them, and their OS is linux-based; unfortunately if it's a new Kindle or newish with an up to date firmware, you might have to wait for someone to release a new jb method. With a jb you can install Koreader (which alone can do everything useful), but also people (mobileread forums) have compiled a working Python library and a terminal with bash..mostly useful to show off :) you can run neofetch
If you're like me and need Koreader (has impeccable pdf reflow and stardict support), a Kobo is way easier, and you don't have to wait