Ceci est une ancienne révision du document !
At around this time – it seems like ages ago – the first of the countries had issued emergency lockdown orders, and our lives were turned around beyond our wildest dreams as we all collectively fought to make sense of the unseen horror unfolding before us. What happened was beyond imagination (and this is a world that has survived a tsunami, way too many forest fires to count, loads of earthquakes, hurricanes, and so much more).
The more positive of us spun this exile, imposed from society, as a means of enjoying some much needed R & R from the business of corporate life, and we all (re-)invested in a hobby or three while we dealt with it all.
So now, almost 2 years after the fact - when it seems the world is going pear-shaped again - I’d like to tell you all about my hobby: reading, and more specifically the many, many apps that allow me to do that on my Linux box.
Now, I say Linux box because I remember, back during my Windows days, that ebook readers were limited to open source cross platform apps - including calibre, FBReader, CoolReader3 - the official offerings from Kindle, Kobo, and the like - which came with the walled gardens of each company (unless you knew how to work around them - more details another time), and the very Windows 8-ey Ice Cream Reader.
On Linux however, much like the distributions and maybe even the kernel itself, the user is presented with a number of high quality, well maintained, options that can be easily obtained with a single terminal command or a GUI search. Without any more faffle, let’s look at the first of those offerings:
Calibre
…is the granddaddy of ebook readers, but it does not stop there by any means. It can also organize your ebook collection, convert and share it across e-readers, and fetch news from major sites. The new versions also come with an ebook editor – about as featured as Sigil, the best one out there.
The latest version of the software also comes with a revamped ebook reader, which has all the features from earlier versions, but lacks a little of the polish. I understand this was because of an issue with the Qt5 backend that calibre was using, which subsequently forced the devs to use a chromium instance. I’d not worry about the polish, as the devs are remarkably friendly, and the app is rigorously being worked on.
How can you get it?
Installation: calibre is available in the repos of most Linux distros out there, with the exception of Ubuntu, and by extension, Mint and KDE Neon. LMDE’s repos don’t have it, which is inexplicable, as Debian propers do. The affected users can still get the app from their website (the binary is recommended by the authors, especially if the distro repos have an old version), or FlatHub. The snap store, snapcraft.io, does not list calibre.
Should you get it?
Yes, if you need a feature-packed virtual library of sorts, that can also facilitate reading a good book and some news now and then. Another resounding yes if you have eReader hardware and would like to sync it to your Linux machine.
This user rates it 5 of a possible 5 stars for functionality, and 4 of 5 for polish and UI design.
But it’s understandable that a user might not need all the tools that calibre might offer them, which leads me directly to:
Foliate
…the epub reader I would suggest without a second thought to someone who needs a pretty, but functional application that reads ebooks but can’t do too much else. Foliate isn’t as “old” as calibre by any means, but in the short time that the developers have been active, they’ve managed to get quite a bit done.
The CSD based UX is modern, and intuitive, with a library view that greets the user once the app is started.
When the user opens a book, the UX gives way to a minimalistic interface that lets the book take centre stage, as it should.
The app reader has a bunch of useful features that should aid the reader, including a dictionary and translation tool, bookmark functionality, text to speech (needs a T-2-S engine), and reading time estimates. It also has the ability to fetch books online via OPDS feeds, under the catalog menu featured in the previous image.
How can you get it?
Installation: Foliate is available from the repos of Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian, Arch, openSUSE, Void, and all derivatives. The Flathub and Snapcraft stores also have it.
Should you get it?
Yes, if you need a pretty ebook reader, with access to a library view and a progress bar.
This user recommends that power users use the calibre ebook organiser to catalogue their collections, with Foliate set to open individual ebooks.
Rated 4 of a possible 5 stars for functionality, and 5 of 5 for polish and UI design.
From the world of book readers with CSD based UX-es also comes…
Bookworm
Bookworm (not to be confused with the similarly named software for Windows) is another no-frills, work out-of-the-box epub reader, that is about as feature-full and user friendly as Foliate. It has a library homepage, support for the dark theme, and a dictionary tool. Like most of the other readers on this list, it also supports annotation marks. Unlike the others though, the increasingly popular azw3 format is not supported out-of-the-box (many, many tools exist however, to convert to a more universal format like epub or mobi, which this app handles with aplomb)
It did suffer from a weird pagination issue, however, during my testing, when two-page reading is enabled in the settings (not turned on by default), the visible part is cropped, and the reader has to scroll down, in addition to navigating horizontally, like a user normally would. The down button (like the right button) moves the page horizontally, so I had to use my touchpad to scroll down, which, for a long-term bibliophile, was very, very disconcerting.
Similarly unpalatable was another setting: the dark theme, which is also not enabled ootb, with good reason. The stock theme offered by the developers is full of a weird, almost navy blue, which I cannot imagine would be easy on the eyes over long periods. It can be very easily modified in the settings, which is one of the first things I did when I used the app.
With some settings changed, this app became really, really intuitive to read on, and I found myself reading a couple short stories from the book I had opened to snap pictures of xD.
The pagination however was a bit of a deal breaker, and I found myself often missing parts of the story and going back to scroll down to catch up.
How can you get it?
Bookworm is available from the repos of most of the major distributions, notable exclusions being Ubuntu (there is a PPA), MX, antiX and openMandriva, after Fedora added it with version 31. As usual, this app is listed in the Flathub repo as well.
Should you?
I will be honest, I admit a lot of hard work has gone into designing the app, and it’s a contemplative yes from me, if I had to suggest it to people.
I would rate the app 4.5 on 5 for the interface - a visit to their home page reveals that the app was originally built for elementary OS, but like a lot of apps in the appcentre, the very generous devs have made the app work on 90% of the major distros out there without hassle! - and 3.5 for features and usability.
And how could we speak about the HIG (CSD UX) without mentioning the ebook reader offering from the GNOME devs…
Gnome Books
Gnome-Books, one of the lesser known offerings from the GNOME Foundation, is an e-book manager which also pulls double-duty as an e-reader par excellence. The app automagically peruses the “My Documents” folder (~/Documents) for supported files and displays them on first-run.
The interface is clean, simple and modern, typical of most GNOME software out there. And like some of their offerings, it's fairly light. Easy on the eyes too, during those marathon reading sessions, with dark mode available as an option.
The app also supports sorting books into customized collections based on interest or genre!
How can you get it?
Most major distros carry the gnome-books package in their repos. Flathub also has the app. Snapcraft, unfortunately, doesn't seem to carry this package.
Should you get it?
Yes, if you want a light ebook manager and reader in one, that is well configured and gets out of the way. This user prefers it as a solid backup for calibre and Foliate, and considers it among the first apps he instals on all his machines.
Disclaimer: this user had to go hunting for relevant epubs from his hard drives (he uses the smallest possible ‘root’ and /home partition setup he can get away with; a holdover from his distro-hopping days), but one Ctrl C; Ctrl V and reboot later, the app was still not picking up his ebooks, so please do contact him if he’s missing sth).
This user rates gnome-books a very solid 3.5/5 simply because he’s a sucker for the modern, phone-ish GNOME interface ;P (he has got it to work in the past).
Rounding out this review are the old stalwarts: including FBReader, coolreader3, Lector and the like, which have been around for almost forever, and are stable af. They serve as excellent options for quick ebook perusal, but this reader prefers other tools for long-term marathon sessions. YMMV.
This reader didn’t include Okular, despite rudimentary epub support, simply because he hasn’t used it often enough to review it :shrug:
Random reading recommendations
This bibliophile recommends using the dark mode (with a blue-light filter; he suggests GNOME’s built-in tool), with white text for best results. He also suggests using the font OpenDyslexic (a fun tip he picked up thanks to Libby (Overdrive) - which his library uses with their online catalogue). The font is clear, bold and crisp, and perfectly suited for those marathon reading sessions.
This reader also prefers using a bigger real estate of a laptop screen over a phone, despite the portability disadvantage, and a laptop over a tablet for the keyboard shortcuts.
Another small personal note; while this reader did get the LG G8X (with the dual-screen) primarily for reading, he has since regressed to reading on his Linux box after about 6 months or so with the new hardware. The G8X’ dual-screen accessory is amazing to use as an impromptu word-processing engine however, and served as the formatting tool for the majority of this review! (The quite excellent Collabora Office app for Android helped a great deal as well).
P.S: If you have trudged this far, thanks for reading! I do hope this helps in some way. Happy reading!
P.P.S: Please do ping me if there’s some other things you’d like me to review, re: Linux desktops or reading!