Keeping in the time honored tradition of always having an update every time I open it.
So true. But I can't complain that the software is getting better.
calibre might be my favorite piece of software ever made. I wish every media format had a calibre equivalent. I have sorted thousands of books and merged so many series into single files because who needs seperate books on an eReader.
As much as i love Reading Books, I also enjoy finishing them. So more single ebooks = more finished books 😄
One of the worlds greatest wonders
Nice but 1) doesn't Kobo use DRM? 2) I had thought selfhosted was about server apps. Calibre is great but it's a client app. Should this post be in a different group?
Kobo doesn't use DRM; publishers use DRM. If the publisher publishes the eBook without DRM, Kobo sells it to you that way.
EBook stores don't determine whether DRM of employed; only publishers do.
Calibre has a GUI desktop interface, but it can also be run headless and provide a web interface. You can even run Calibre as a desktop app, and connect it to another Calibre running in server mode, and access those books as well.
As a rule, I do not like Python applications. I find them generally pootly maintained over the long term, and prone to breakage because of dependency hell. Calibre is the exception to the rule; it's an absolutely fantastic piece of software. So much so, that I donate to the project.
If the kobo hardware device can read drm'd epubs, it is "using drm" to do so. I'm asking if Calibre can read those same drm epubs. Do you know if it can, maybe by adding a plugin? I know there was something like that for Kindle files. Thanks.
Calibre doesn’t natively support reading DRMed files, but there are anti-DRM plugins which are trivial to install. You need to provide a legitimate Kindle serial number for Amazon DRM, as it uses that to de-encrypt the files. When you add the file(s) to your library, the plugin automatically runs as a file conversion. It basically converts it from a DRM-locked .epub/.azw3 to a DRM-free .epub/.azw3 instead. Since Calibre already has file conversions built in, the plugin simply uses that existing system to spit out a DRM-free version of the same file, then it adds that to your library instead.
I've heard Kobo is better than the other big players when it comes to interoperability with open formats / self hosted setups.
As for the servers
The main one
https://github.com/janeczku/calibre-web
A popular newer one
https://github.com/crocodilestick/Calibre-Web-Automated
Also (to everyone else reading your comment) let's not downvote good faith comments, especially when they're phrased as a question and wanting to learn more
calibre is an app? i just have a docker container with calibre web for all my epub, mobi etc.since bookstack or nextcloud cant handle those. is the client app any good?
Yes I've been using the calibre client app under Debian MATE and it's decent. I'm a Luddite though, so sometimes I convert epubs to plain text with pandoc and read them in emacs or a terminal.
ah. i use calibre web for conversion aswell. just never used it as an app. what is a benefit 9f having the app then?
Avoids the need for a network connection or server, though I guess you could run it on a local socket. The UI might be preferable too.
ok. i want to read on different devices for some reason. like a good book on the couch with a tablet, in the kitch looking up a manual on my phone and maybe working on computer read some magazine. that would mean i need to install 3 clients and maybe without nfs even have a copy of each book on each device? and if you jave nfs you could aswell run a calibre container somewhere. but for UI I agree web could be better.
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