I’ve been using raw text files for my books, sent locally over USB, and that’s the way it’s gonna stay until my reader craps out
can’t you just load epub with calibre or another sync to? I’m pretty sure that’s what I do because that’s what I’m doing
There’s not really any advantage of using txt files over open standard drm-free epubs. You can still generate them yourself using txt editors or publishing software, you can still load them over USB. But epubs give you quality of life features on eReaders like title pages, table of contents, chapter headers, formatting markers like bold and italics.
My reader formats epubs really terribly, the text is almost always way too small, and requires some grotesque horizontal scrolling for most books.
On the other hand .txt just works, and handles resizing just fine
you are almost certainly doing something wrong
Jailbreaking and never turning airplane mode off has been the best decision I made with my kindle. Download from zlibrary, transfer to folder on kindle, done
All hail the high seas
second that, much more control of it
Any suggestions for which Kindle to get off of ebay for jailbreaking purposes, when they start showing up en masse?
why not get a kobo clara bw instead
I’ve started to realize that early gen products are often less enshittified, even if they are frequently rough around the edges, and can often be hacked into a useful state unlike the newest hardware. By a few gens in, nearly everything is a giant plastic paperweight that only wants to phone home, download “updates” all the time, and probably needs multiple SSO sign ins and a subscription just to work. I’ll keep my old Kindle 4th gen with KOreader until it breaks.
I have a kindle keyboard (2012) and I gave up on amazon a long time ago, now I just convert-upload epubs to it using calibre and read.
More than a decade on, and it’s still one of the best kindles ever made, in my opinion.
You had physical buttons instead of a fiddly touch-screen, you could have music, have it read to you, and also go on the internet.
Plus it’s old enough it supports a bunch of formats, and registers as a mass storage device to a computer, so anything can use it.
Meanwhile my eco reader i bought in 2009 is still trucking
If I got an old kindle; how easy is it to jailbrake it and install a better system?
I just did it for the first time yesterday with an old Kindle I had lying around. It was super easy with this website: https://kindlemodding.org/
The hands of fate are kind today.
My older Kindle is jailbroken and does just fine. Jailbreak if you can, if you can’t don’t Kindle.
i bought one and almost didn’t use it for 2 years until i was able to jailbreak it while sill being on its factory firmware. luckily the battery is fine
And this is why I use an android based ereader. Something as simple as displaying words on a screen shouldn’t be held back by the will of any company.
Weird.
I didnt know my Calibre server stopped working.So the product lineup is now called “Kindle Paperweight” instead?
lol i already jailbroke my 2012 paperwhite and intstalled Koreader on it so I can sync it with my calibre epub library over wifi
Check out !calibre@lemmy.world
It’s a pity Calibre to date refuses to be refactored into a self-hosted service.
The core logic should be portable, with the app just being an interface to it, but no, the entire project is so much spaghetti it would feed the entire boot for over a year… such a shame.
Agree, though calibre-web exists and runs in a single Docker container. I’ve been using it for a few years, and it’s great.
Sure its a whole Linux server under the hood just to run Calibre and the services required to give it a web interface and API for reading apps - making it way bigger than it needs to be - but it does the job.
Calibre-web isn’t Calibre. It uses the same database, but that’s about it, unless you use the optional conversion mod on the linuxserver container.
A docker container is preferred, but again, CW isn’t Calibre. Same database but completely different management system + also lacking a lot of the sync opportunities.
The issue is that there’s no open protocol for library syncing. It doesn’t exist because all big players (Amazon, Kobo/Rakuten, B&N, etc.) have their own proprietary system, and need no open alternatives.
OPDS is a thing but it’s meant to replicate a physical library (one you can walk into) in behaviour and approach, not a personal library (list all books I have and give me easy access to them). It’s essentially just an RSS-style feed that has no defined structure, thus isn’t software navigable - e.g. there’s no guarantee you can list all book series, or all authors, and most implementations usually give you very roughly defined “recently added”, or “hot now” book lists…
I’ve actually been working on a solution for this, something that provides an almost Kindle library experience (see all your books from a remote server, sync down the remote ebook file, sync back read progress, filter/search based on book properties, etc.), while being flexible enough for non-readers applications as well. But I haven’t even gotten to the point where I can define the API contract properly, let alone the backing database and mapping to Calibre. Honestly at this stage I feel like the best approach is starting from scratch, establishing modern requirements, and going from there.
A docker container is not a whole separate Linux server, it uses the kernel running on the host
Have you seen the apt sources list that CW generates on boot? It’s semantics. 😊
With default runtime, very true. There are other runtimes that can be used that provide better isolation like gVisor, kata, firecracker, etc.
That’s exactly what I did, but I use Grimmory/BookLore.
optimal solution (lol)
Just another day in the life of an enshittificator.
Corporations like Amazon are a scourge. Switch to free and open formats, software and hardware. Ditch what you can. Hack and pirate what you must. Starve big tech.
I’m poor. I pirate stuff. When I can, I buy physical copies of the stuff I like.
Here’s a reminder that Boox makes amazingly good e-readers in all form factors Amazon does (including a variety of tablets!), with stylus support (USI 2.0 for smaller devices, EMR for their Note series and above), fully open (recent Android versions, regular updates, unlockable bootloader, straightforward to root devices), support KOReader, with a solid built in reader (plus support for cloud sync, including syncing books to a free 10GB Boox server storage), support for OPDS (a better way to access your library than Calibre’s sync, plus it can be utilised with most digital libraries too), and altogether quite well priced devices.
At the moment I have on my hands a Go Color 7 gen2, a Note Air5 C, and a Palma2 Pro. The experience is surprisingly good for a “random Chinese brand”, the hardware, compared to similarly priced devices, is superior (seriously, 4/6/8GB RAM, 64/128GB internal storage, SD card support), not to mention their customised e-ink waveforms (which give you near LCD-like scrolling with minimal trailing effect and little to no ghosting, something I can’t say about my Kindles…)
The only downside I found of these devices is the relatively bad battery life in locked/standby (due to Android, but you still easily get over a week per charge with average use, or about 20-22 hours of active use!), and the speakers… definitely not meant for audiobooks.
Being Norwegian it is my patriotic duty to shill for ReMarkable, it’s pretty good at being what it is.
It’s expensive, though.
Sorry but no. Abysmal hardware, shitty software that’s locked down AND crap when opened up, and horrid QA. Talking from experience.
it is definitely too closed down, haven’t had those other experiences though, I’ve had my ReMarkable 2 for quite a few years now. Then again, I haven’t tried hacking at it
Got my wife a Kobo for her birthday to replace her aging Kindle. She’s bought 1 book so far and gonna look at the Library integration.
Anyone got any tips for ways to use the Kobo? For example I have Calibre on my Mac and have used that to copy books I’ve “acquired” for her, is there any benefit in self hosting Calibre? Is it possible to get her Kindle books on the Kobo or is the DRM a nightmare nowadays?
Is it possible to get her Kindle books on the Kobo or is the DRM a nightmare nowadays?
Calibre has a plugin for that: DeDRM
does it still work? even when I used it last you had to do some janky shit like download a specific version of kindle pc app and use that to download the book for the first time or the book would be downloaded with newer drm and stuck that way forever, and get the file from the old kindle pc app into dedrm
If it doesn’t just download copies from libgen you’ve already paid once.
I haven’t used it in a few years, I use a certain anonymous rodent to get my books now.
If she still has access to her Kindle account, you might be able to get the Account Key and enter that into Calibre to remove the DRM.
you can interface with calibre web via opds from eBook readers. basically you can browse and download books in your calibre server. I use koreader to do it. as for previous books she’s interested in I’d just look for them in the electronic library
You got any more specific info on how to do this? I spun up my caliber web container on my home server, but once I realized you can’t download books over the wifi, you still had to connect to a PC, I stopped hosting it.
What ebook readers are capable of this magic?
Any Kobo can install KOReader with a minor firmware update (that only needs to be done once). There’s instructions here: https://github.com/koreader/koreader/wiki/Installation-on-Kobo-devices It supports OPDS out of the box (though IMO is a little unintuitive to use)
koreader is an android app, for e-book readers based on android.
from what I’ve read it can be installed on the kobo (may need root)
here’s a picture of how to set up koreader
https://wotaku.wiki/guides/manga/opds
the only thing to mind is that the opds address is not the calibre web one but
<calibre address>/opdsif I’m not wrong.Also my calibre web does have a download button for the ebooks so if there is a browser on the kobo you should be able to download them. Are you using “calibre web” or “calibre” web?
Ive been converting some pdfs to epub for the kobo and that has worked great. Its not perfect but gives a better experience than pdf. Ive also put some solo card game rules on there so a deck of cards and the kobo gives another fun on the go activity.
My second-hand, old as hell, button-only kindle has never downloaded any book from Amazon since I got it. Only Calibre.
