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Amazon drops Linux support for generating Kindle ebooks

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Re: Amazon drops Linux support for generating Kindle ebooks

#61

Post by jmholla »

jwiley wrote: post #48

Others specifically mentioned Kobo as an alternative. I did a high level pass over the ecosystem before choosing them as an alternative to the Amazon monopoly, they seem somewhat equivalent to Chrome vs Firefox: - supported formats, for the Linux issue: EPUB, EPUB3, PDF, MOBI, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, TIFF, TXT, HTML, RTF, CBZ, CBR - no native linux client: not a deal breaker for me - is the company behind Kobo credible,…

I recently bought a Kobo and it wanted to connect to my WiFi before it would do anything. I ended up returning it.

Re: Amazon drops Linux support for generating Kindle ebooks

#64

Post by shakna »

swiley wrote: post #15

Ew. So you need a windows machine/VM just to publish on the platform? That’s almost iPhone levels of crappy.

Calibre already generates better Kindle books than Amazon's tool ever did. And it runs cross-platform, including Linux. This is a case where the community support is better than the company.

Re: Amazon drops Linux support for generating Kindle ebooks

#65

Post by dddw »

TavsiE9s wrote: post #59
acabal wrote: post #52

Calibre was always much better at generating Kindle-compatible books than Kindlegen ever was. We use Calibre in our posix-based build chain at Standard Ebooks. The Kindle file format is just miserable, and Kindle is basically the IE6 of ereaders. Anyone who cares about ebooks should get a different device that supports epub natively. Kobo makes nice devices, supports epub, and uses Webkit as their renderer (when used…

Alright then, question time: I've looked into Kobo for my wife, who predominantly reads books in Spanish. Navigating the various offerings seems like a minefield of digital rights and lockouts. Where would I go to legally buy Spanish language books no matter where I am physically located in the world?

Https://www.kobo.com/es ?

Re: Amazon drops Linux support for generating Kindle ebooks

#66

Post by anthk »

TavsiE9s wrote: post #59
acabal wrote: post #52

Calibre was always much better at generating Kindle-compatible books than Kindlegen ever was. We use Calibre in our posix-based build chain at Standard Ebooks. The Kindle file format is just miserable, and Kindle is basically the IE6 of ereaders. Anyone who cares about ebooks should get a different device that supports epub natively. Kobo makes nice devices, supports epub, and uses Webkit as their renderer (when used…

Alright then, question time: I've looked into Kobo for my wife, who predominantly reads books in Spanish. Navigating the various offerings seems like a minefield of digital rights and lockouts. Where would I go to legally buy Spanish language books no matter where I am physically located in the world?

Casa del Libro maybe.

https://www.casadellibro.com/ebooks

Re: Amazon drops Linux support for generating Kindle ebooks

#67

Post by danilocesar »

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #42
peterdemin wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That strikes me how enthusiasts can manage Linux software for free, but multibillion corporation cuts it for “business sense”.

It's precisely because the enthusiasts are doing it for free that makes it viable. When a corporation manages Linux software, even if the software is freely available, they're paying for support time -- and if they're developing the software, as in this case, the development time.

exactly! Another way to see it: engineering is the easy/cheap part. Testing, supporting, maintaining and marketing are way more expensive, and those are long-term expenses. The enthusiast usually thinks about the engineering bits, and when he's done with it he's done with it. Enterprise software is not like that - or shouldn't be :)

Re: Amazon drops Linux support for generating Kindle ebooks

#68

Post by frio »

TavsiE9s wrote: post #59
acabal wrote: post #52

Calibre was always much better at generating Kindle-compatible books than Kindlegen ever was. We use Calibre in our posix-based build chain at Standard Ebooks. The Kindle file format is just miserable, and Kindle is basically the IE6 of ereaders. Anyone who cares about ebooks should get a different device that supports epub natively. Kobo makes nice devices, supports epub, and uses Webkit as their renderer (when used…

Alright then, question time: I've looked into Kobo for my wife, who predominantly reads books in Spanish. Navigating the various offerings seems like a minefield of digital rights and lockouts. Where would I go to legally buy Spanish language books no matter where I am physically located in the world?

https://www.nubico.es/ is what came with my bq Cervantes, but I can't vouch about whether the DRM is cross compatible -- though I'm sure with Calibre it can probably be stripped.

Re: Amazon drops Linux support for generating Kindle ebooks

#70

Post by TavsiE9s »

dddw wrote: post #65
TavsiE9s wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alright then, question time: I've looked into Kobo for my wife, who predominantly reads books in Spanish. Navigating the various offerings seems like a minefield of digital rights and lockouts. Where would I go to legally buy Spanish language books no matter where I am physically located in the world?

Https://www.kobo.com/es ?

That's unfortunately the one we've already tried. For whatever reasons we can't seem to actually download the books that were purchased.
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