this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2023
15 points (100.0% liked)

Free and Open Source Software

17922 readers
47 users here now

If it's free and open source and it's also software, it can be discussed here. Subcommunity of Technology.


This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
top 32 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I personally use Zathura, it's minimalistic and uses VIM bindings.

But if you want something feature-dense, with a way of organising your library, eReader integration, file converting and more, Calibre is pretty amazing (and the actual reader part of Calibre is quite nice to use in my opinion).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Huh ok, I’ll have to give zathura a peek. Sounds interesting

Yeah I love calibre. I use it to manage my main library on my server, in addition to calibre-web for managing my front end. It’s really good at managing a ton of ebooks

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Hmmm . . . I can't get Calibre to open a PDF on Linux. Any suggestions?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Did you add the pdf to your Calibre library and open it or did you open it from somewhere else?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Hi, sorry for taking so long to get back--I right clicked on the PDF on my desktop, and told it to "open with (calibre) ebook viewer," at which point it just hangs and says "Preparing book for first read, please wait."

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Maybe try opening Calibre proper and adding the pdf to your library first? It should work the way you're doing it, not sure why it's hanging like that - unless there's a problem with your Library location?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Do calibre or zathura have the ability to remove and rearrange pdf pages?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If you need a tool to remove and rearrange PDF pages, maybe give PDF Arranger a try? https://github.com/pdfarranger/pdfarranger

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Thanks! Will definitely take a look. Was kind of hoping for a "one-stop shopping" all in one PDF reader, which is why I use MasterPDF, tho it's not open source 🙁

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Personally I use SumatraPDF.

Can read both PDFs, ePubs and even the djvu format. And its really lightweight, unlike the bloated monster that is Adobe Reader.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Same - for Windows it's by far and away the best PDF reader for me. It's shocking how far down the bloat rabbit hole Adobe Reader has gone!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

For Android, the ReadEra app, because it's the only darn ebook app I could find that allows a scrolling mode instead of page flip. And you can add the Twilight app also to change screen temp, and extra dim mode in the dark. It works really well.

For e-ink ereaders, I don't know what the best one is right now. Definitely not Kindle though. And Kobo has overdrive library integration. But e-ink in general is very nice for reading. Definitely go for 8 inches or more in screen size though if you want to read manga. Also physical page turn buttons are really nice.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

KOReader, though most people will probably find the UI off-putting at first.

Thing is, it's perfect for use on an e-ink device, which is what's it's primarily designed for. The desktop (Linux and Mac) and Android versions are just icing on the cake, and they all work the same and can sync reading activity between them. Tons of features, options for tweaking book layouts, plugins for integration with other services, some integration with Calibre, etc. It takes the "kitchen sink" approach and I love it. I've found spending the time to learn it to be really rewarding.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Looks cool. I’ll do some research but seems like it might be possible to install this on Kindle? How would one do that…

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I don't own a Kindle device so I don't have firsthand experience, but I do know that for that platform your device will have to be jailbroken. Aside from that, these are the instructions!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I use Okular from the KDE suite and it can literally view everything you can think of

There is also okular-mobile that is optimized for touchscreen use, it's a bit buggy but it works

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Foliate is an excellent ebook reader in my opinion

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That looks very clean, and I like the fact that you can have bookmarks and other QOL features with it. I may have to take a peek at that one as well

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I can second the recommendation. Except for the hamburger menu, I love foliate.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Can Foliate handle PDFs? Doesn't look like it from their website . . .

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I use BookFusion. It’s a paid service but syncs the library and progress across platforms. Integrated with Calibre too, which I saw you mentioned you use in a different comment. Works great for me, but good luck finding something that works for you.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Ok that’s super interesting. That is much cleaner than my current way of downloading my books to my iPad, so I’ll have to check that out and see how easy it is to integrate

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Is BookFusion a FOSS project with a paid service? I looked on their site and see no mention of it being FOSS.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Oh,I think you’re right. They have their Calibre plug-in which is open source I think but I think in my head I conflated that with the whole app. My bad.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

S'all good, I wanted to make sure 😀

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

On Windows is really enjoy sumatra ofr how simple it is.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I used to use Foxit on Windows. I'm on Linux now, and I cannot recommend Okular enough.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I hate to say it because I am a Cinnamon/Gnome/GTK guy, but I think Okular may be the best Linux reader. I think it can do form filling too.

For normal use I use Firefox, but if I needed something different Okular is one place I would look pretty quickly. I have used it in the past for more tricky things. Well I'd probably look evince and be disappointed first, then move on to Okular.

load more comments
view more: next ›