Amazon drops Linux support for generating Kindle ebooks • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon drops Linux support for generating Kindle ebooks

#11

Post by ThePowerOfFuet » Tue, Aug 25, 2020, 7:59 PM UTC

monadic2 wrote: post #2

They still read epub, right? Their proprietary format didn't have many convincingly useful features anyway.

>They still read epub, right?

No, and they never did.

Re: Amazon drops Linux support for generating Kindle ebooks

#12

Post by inetsee » Tue, Aug 25, 2020, 7:59 PM UTC

The linked page doesn't actually say that Linux is no longer supported. You need to go to the Previewer Product page https://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000765... then scroll down to the System Requirements, where it says "Windows 8.1 or later, Intel Mac OSX 10.13 or later".

Re: Amazon drops Linux support for generating Kindle ebooks

#13

Post by acidburnNSA » Tue, Aug 25, 2020, 7:59 PM UTC

Oh dang. I used this to publish my first (and only) eBook as the final chain in my Sphinx based workflow. It was fun to publish a book on Amazon. I'm not sure I would have tried it if the Linux tooling hadn't been there.

Re: Amazon drops Linux support for generating Kindle ebooks

#14

Post by din-9 » Tue, Aug 25, 2020, 8:00 PM UTC

jklinger410 wrote: post #8

bluedays wrote: post #3

Haven't been able to use my Kindle with Linux for a while anyway. I regret buying the device.

What is the best alternative to a Kindle?

I've been happy with my Kobo.

Re: Amazon drops Linux support for generating Kindle ebooks

#15

Post by swiley » Tue, Aug 25, 2020, 8:00 PM UTC

Ew. So you need a windows machine/VM just to publish on the platform?

That’s almost iPhone levels of crappy.

Re: Amazon drops Linux support for generating Kindle ebooks

#16

Post by steelbrain » Tue, Aug 25, 2020, 8:00 PM UTC

jklinger410 wrote: post #8

bluedays wrote: post #3

Haven't been able to use my Kindle with Linux for a while anyway. I regret buying the device.

What is the best alternative to a Kindle?

Lookup the Kobo eReader

Edit: I see a neighbour and I had the same idea

Re: Amazon drops Linux support for generating Kindle ebooks

#17

Post by teraflop » Tue, Aug 25, 2020, 8:00 PM UTC

mikece wrote: post #9

Sigil still seems like a perfectly valid option for creating and editing ebooks on Linux (and macOS and Windows): https://sigil-ebook.com/about/

Sigil only supports creating ePub files, which Kindles can't natively read.

The Amazon tool that was removed, "kindlegen", was the officially supported way of converting ePub into the Kindle's native AZW format.

Re: Amazon drops Linux support for generating Kindle ebooks

#18

Post by Spivak » Tue, Aug 25, 2020, 8:00 PM UTC

turtlebits wrote: post #10

bluedays wrote: post #3

Haven't been able to use my Kindle with Linux for a while anyway. I regret buying the device.

Can't you just mount it as a USB drive/mass storage and copy content over? That's how I get my converted ebooks over.

This is my workflow as well. I don't think my Kindle has ever been connected to a network.

Re: Amazon drops Linux support for generating Kindle ebooks

#19

Post by rriepe » Tue, Aug 25, 2020, 8:08 PM UTC

Wow, huge bummer. This is how I generated and edited my Kindle book... not sure what to do now.

Re: Amazon drops Linux support for generating Kindle ebooks

#20

Post by liability » Tue, Aug 25, 2020, 8:08 PM UTC

teraflop wrote: post #17

mikece wrote: post #9

Sigil still seems like a perfectly valid option for creating and editing ebooks on Linux (and macOS and Windows): https://sigil-ebook.com/about/

Sigil only supports creating ePub files, which Kindles can't natively read. The Amazon tool that was removed, "kindlegen", was the officially supported way of converting ePub into the Kindle's native AZW format.

> kindlegen

Was this tool ever any good? I've always used the `ebook-convert` commandline tool that ships with Calibre. (Calibre's GUI is something I don't really like, it seems featureful but also a mess.)