Great piece of software. Jailbroken my Kindle when the UI was becoming way too slow, then discovered Rakuyomi [1] and that alone is worth the jump, especially with plugins like SimpleUI to make the UX better
KOReader
131–140 of 253 posts
Re: KOReader
#132I installed this the moment I got my Kobo Libra H2O. Mostly read fiction from the 1800s and early 1900s and I did not want to fight whatever proprietary software the reader came with (Kobo is probably better than the Kindle for this, but I never tried it!) I have a problem with epubs though. This need to support every single thing under the sun makes the pipeline exceedingly complex. All you need for a vast majority…
Kobo's reader definitely renders Epubs better than KOReader. I really only used it on my Kobo Libre H20 to download epubs from my calibre server. Now, on my Boox Go 7, KOReader beats the built-in reader hands down
Re: KOReader
#133I really like that this exists, but I found the menus and UI to be rather non-intuitive. My main use case was to sync reading progress between my Kobo and my iPhone. I was able to do this using KOReader on the Kobo & the Readest app[1] on iPhone (also open source). Ultimately I decided to get rid of KOReader because it felt a bit laggy. The gestures (eg: swiping up on the left side to increase frontlight brightness)…
I really appreciate that KOReader is an option. On my older Kindle (first-gen Paperwhite), the default reading experience had declined until page turns take several seconds. Firmware update and factory reset wouldn't fix it. Using the default reader just wasn't a viable scenario.
I jailbroke it, launched KOReader, and it's like I have a new e-reader. The amount of customizability gets kind of in the way, but once it's set up I don't really think about it from one month to the next. I also didn't feel the need to upgrade my original install either.
Re: KOReader
#134I use KOReader on everything except e-ink devices. Linux desktop. MacOS laptop. Android tablets. Android phones. Where-ever I am, I can pick up a device and continue reading from where I left off. I have the same config everywhere (it would be nice to be able to distribute that) for gestures and taps. I use the same font everywhere (TeX Gyre Pagella, which is a Palatino clone.) Customization begets comfort.
Why not on e-ink devices too?
Re: KOReader
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I think it definitely trades user-friendliness for power and flexibility A tale as old as time with OSS software from what I've seen. So far the only exception that I've seen of a FOSS piece of software with great UX is Blender[1]. With UX not being a first-class citizen on Linux, exposure to a solid universal tooling to create great UX also exacerbates things. I think the issue of bad UX and OSS are comorbid becau…
> So far the only exception that I've seen of a FOSS piece of software with great UX is Blender. Most OSS software favors power users instead of total beginners. And even Blender is not a great exercise in discoverability. You need training to use it. The stock software in Kobo and kindle can be used within minutes because they don't have a lot of features/options. And it's totally fine if that's what you need. Just…
> Most OSS software favors power users instead of total beginners. And even Blender is not a great exercise in discoverability. You need training to use it.
I think it’s more subtle than that. I am a power user — I was compiling my Linux kernel in the 90s, I wrote my own SSH tunnel manager 20 years ago, I always fiddle with settings, etc. etc.
However, I am constantly frustrated with a lot of OSS software because it expects you to think like the developer of the tool, instead of having empathy for the user. What feels obvious to the developer of the tool (I am making up a hopefully-representative hypothetical here, but finding the change of font under “Theme” because it’s how “it looks” but finding the font size under “View” because, well, you view it) feels frustrating and nonsensical to a normal human who relates both the font and its size the same way in their mind. Again, generally — I’m making generalizations here and not calling out any specific software, but trying to illustrate the feeling that I get.
When I switched to the Mac in 2002, it is because these sorts of things made sense. Yes, there were and are frustrations because of this sort of opinionated design mentality, but I judged the benefits to outweigh the positives. Unfortunately, Apple squandered this culture and skill and nowadays I often find the platform as frustrating as OSS ones, to the point where I have switched back to 50/50 time split between platforms.
Re: KOReader
#136I installed it on my Amazon Kindle and I couldn't be happier. It shows once again that free software is superior to proprietary software. Free software grows slowly to make users happier and not to attract them with useless features to extract more value from them. Congratulations for this great piece of software.
I’m a heavy KOReader user and absolutely adore it, but I think it definitely trades user-friendliness for power and flexibility. The Kindle proprietary store has a far more user friendly UI imo, though it’s getting progressively worse (and the fact that kindles now default to showing you the store pisses me off to no end). KOReader plugins really close the gap though.
I jailbroke my Kindle and moved to KOReader last year, primarily to get away from the Amazon jail. Just the bare KOReader UX was pretty utilitarian. It lacked polish for sure. I'll have to agree that, as noted elsewhere, the KOReader menus can be difficult to get a grip on.
If you're working at just the most basic level of functionality, I don't think KOReader is necessarily worse than native Kindle. The latter is hampered by being very opinionated about how you should experience it, and that includes pushing their store above the user's own library, and this is a real annoyance.
As you start to demand more capabilities they diverge more. Organizing when you've got many books on the device is clunky on both platforms, but in different ways. The native Kindle options for grouping are simple, but not necessarily easy. They're very generic, and very cumbersome to work with. Bare KOReader's support for folders makes more sense to me, and it's easier to deal with bulk books than is Kindle's.
Getting books onto Kindle is super-easy if you get them from Amazon, but complexity ramps up for other sources. Your best bet is plugging it into USB and transferring via the file system. Native KOReader add to this an OPDS capability (if your book repository supports it), which works but is less than pleasant. If you use BookOrbit as your repository, there's a plugin that gives you the remote BookOrbit UI from the Kindle, which makes things a LOT better.
I experimented with Simply UI for a bit but could never get it to work quite right. About a month ago I found Bookshelf, and this makes the UX pretty wonderful. It has a very attractive and intuitive UI. And it simplifies the interactions needed for group management a bit.
Bottom line is that KOReader + Bookshelf are, for at least a power user, a potentially far superior experience compared to baseline Kindle.
Re: KOReader
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I think it definitely trades user-friendliness for power and flexibility A tale as old as time with OSS software from what I've seen. So far the only exception that I've seen of a FOSS piece of software with great UX is Blender[1]. With UX not being a first-class citizen on Linux, exposure to a solid universal tooling to create great UX also exacerbates things. I think the issue of bad UX and OSS are comorbid becau…
> So far the only exception that I've seen of a FOSS piece of software with great UX is Blender. Most OSS software favors power users instead of total beginners. And even Blender is not a great exercise in discoverability. You need training to use it. The stock software in Kobo and kindle can be used within minutes because they don't have a lot of features/options. And it's totally fine if that's what you need. Just…
you will spend much MUCH more time as a power law user than as a new user, such that almost any % gain in productivity once familiar is worth almost any months of unproductivity when new.
Re: KOReader
#138I really like that this exists, but I found the menus and UI to be rather non-intuitive. My main use case was to sync reading progress between my Kobo and my iPhone. I was able to do this using KOReader on the Kobo & the Readest app[1] on iPhone (also open source). Ultimately I decided to get rid of KOReader because it felt a bit laggy. The gestures (eg: swiping up on the left side to increase frontlight brightness)…
I tried to set up KOReader multiple times and always got stuck figuring out where all the settings are and how exactly they work. It seems very complete, but I'm just too dumb to actually use it.
Re: KOReader
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
I really appreciate you mentioning Murasaki - thank you. I've been looking for something like this for a long time, because every single EPUB "reader" out there does so much more than just read EPUBs. This one does just that, I love it.
to be honest, I use the calibre ebook viewer without bothering with calibre itself (so far) and I find it to be good at what it does
I'm also using Calibre, but the ebook viewer is really clunky, I'm not a big fan.
Re: KOReader
#140There's a KOReader plugin that lets you sync your progress to a Storyteller server.
https://github.com/Sirozha1337/storytellersync.koplugin
https://storyteller-platform.dev/
This then allows you seamlessly switch back and forth between your e-reader and listening to the audiobook on your phone with automatic position syncing.