Question: would Zotero be good as a kind of "digital library"? Like nextcloud but for books. I often buy PDFs and books but they just end up on a file share, way less useful than my actual bookshelf. I mean as an alternative to something like calibre (which I don't particularly like). Also, is zotero open source?
Zotero is open source (unlike most alternatives in this space like Mendeley, Papers, etc.). It is also less locked-down in that it offers a plug-in system with many useful third-party plugins. I have used Zotero as a digital library for years and it works great for that. Especially since the iPad companion app is pretty good for reading and annotating, while I prefer collecting and organizing on the computer. My main…
Zotero and, previously, the UI updates to MonoDevelop (Xamarin Studio) are both proof that in order to get the best UI for all platforms, you should work on making it look decent-to-good (if not perfectly suited) for Mac OS and then just use the same look for Windows and Linux. You won't be able to completely avoid it seeming at least somewhat out of place on the latter two, but it also won't look bad.