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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

#91

Post by Consultant32452 »

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?

If you have a good local library system, they probably have a subscription service to an ebook provider that is not Amazon/kobo and will let you borrow ebooks for free, just like physical books from the library. Mine has a wide selection that includes Spanish language books.

Re: Amazon drops Linux support for generating Kindle ebooks

#94

Post by BHSPitMonkey »

alpineidyll3 wrote: post #92

Anyone looking for a Kindle replacement the Boox line of products are excellent alternatives.

That's the one from China that uses Linux without complying with the GPL, right?

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/hl09g7/onyx_boox_chi...

Re: Amazon drops Linux support for generating Kindle ebooks

#95

Post by totetsu »

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…

Kobo's also are very hackable, It's easy to get a cheap second hand one, pop off the back cover, swap out the sd card with a bigger one with custom user environments and reader software[1] loaded on it and without any nagging to use a particular store. You can sync books/rss feeds/wallabag saved web pages to it over wifi with calibre. Put a bit of tape over the logo and you have a great white label, no distractions device.

[1] https://github.com/koreader/koreader

Re: Amazon drops Linux support for generating Kindle ebooks

#96

Post by jcranmer »

bberenberg wrote: post #75
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…

I would be happy to buy a non Kindle device if someone can explain what the library loan story looks like there. I use a combo of Libby, OverDrive, cloudLibrary, and SimplyE (nuts that 1 need four apps for 1 library system). Afaik there is no good way for me to borrow books unless I stay on Kindle.

I use a Nook, and I can get ebooks on it from my local library, which is mostly via OverDrive. You do need to use Adobe Digital Editions to get the loaned books.

One nice thing about the Nook is that the private key for encryption is stored in an easily-accessible hidden file, which makes de-DRM'ing your books ridiculously easy if you need to do that.

Re: Amazon drops Linux support for generating Kindle ebooks

#97

Post by Larrikin »

jacurtis wrote: post #77
smegger001 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is the rest of the amazon ecosystems integration is great. If I buy a Kindle eBook I get a discount on the audio-book from Audible and they compliment each-other with good integration. for example the Audiobook picks up where I stopped reading, or the kindle will open where I last listened and I can ask Alexa to play my book when I have to stop reading and do housework. its not lock in exactly as I can li…

This is why I am on Kindle as well. I enjoy the "Whispersync" Audible/Kindle integration and multi-device support. For those that don't know, Whispersync is easily the Kindle's "killer feature". It syncs your location in the book across all devices (I use iPad, Kindle Paperwhite, and iPhone, Sonos, Alexa, etc). So if you read a chapter on your phone, and then go to your Kindle later that night, it will keep you in th…

There is no audio book syncing, but the Google play books does sync locations between my iPad and Android phone in ebooks.

Re: Amazon drops Linux support for generating Kindle ebooks

#98

Post by solstice »

TavsiE9s wrote: post #70
dddw wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Are you sure? They do obscure the direct download links on the German kobo site (kobobooks.de), apparently preferring people to use their e-readers sync functionality. But last i checked I was able to download the kepub files after some browsing around in the web interface. I can't verify this now as the site isn't loading for some reason

Re: Amazon drops Linux support for generating Kindle ebooks

#100

Post by liability »

leephillips wrote: post #88
liability wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having two font settings to choose from is a degraded user experience. You're also missing the margin and line spacing settings, as well as font style. Also TTS sucks with PDFs but works excellent with reflowable formats (this one is important to me personally.) > the usual format for [any ebooks] looks [...] like webpages. Because they basically are, and to most people who use these files, that's a feature. Attempts…

What’s TTS? Poor typography is a degraded user experience. If a Kindle is to be an electronic replacement for a paper book, it is nice if it also has decent typesetting, like a real book. There are tradeoffs. If some things are more important to you, I would hesitate to accuse you of being “misguided”. EDIT: It hit me: text to speech. You are right about this, of course. But if you have a system for generating a sele…

Sorry, that's my bad for using an initialism without clarification.

> EDIT: It hit me: text to speech. You are right about this, of course. But if you have a system for generating a selection of PDFs, including a text version would be trivial.

The problem with plain text is you lose the styling and images. A lot of people who use text to speech (TTS) still have some vision or even full vision, and would like to see the pictures or bolded/italic text. If there were a richer format that included those things but worked well with TTS, wouldn't that be worth offering for download? And isn't an epub exactly that sort of format?

Active users of ereader devices predominantly use them to read reflowable formats. If the aesthetics or functionality of the reflowable experience offended those users, they probably wouldn't remain users/owners of such a device for long. I'm sure there are some exceptions.

Offering a PDF, or even many PDFs, is fine. Some people prefer PDFs and their opinion is no less valid the preference for reflowable formats.

In my opinion, a reflowable format should always be offered to those who want it, but certainly not forced on everybody. I think authors like Douglas R. Hofstadter who insist on strict fixed formatting are within their rights to do so, but are misguided. I own a paperback copy of how book; I wish I could also own an epubs copy, but unfortunately that seems impossible due to the imposed preferences of the author.

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