7 ms·

I 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 sl

• GlacierFox 2mo ago
  Yeah and like the majority of open source software, the UI is garbage and unintuitive.
• kelvinjps10 2mo ago
  What extra features has over regular kindle software? I find kindle features enough but I want to know if I’m missing something
  • kelvinjps10 2mo ago
    Well tbh the reason I like it has to do more with calibre (free software)
  • 4thguy 2mo ago
    Being able to put epubs bought elsewhere and reading them without needing to convert the files is a huge plus
    • maccard 2mo ago
      Where do you buy your epubs from?
      • Cider9986 2mo ago
        I wouldn't assume that purchases are taking place.
        • TaLiTr 2mo ago
          Considering that the GP said > Being able to put epubs bought elsewhere I'd say it is in this case.
      • esrauch 2mo ago
        Theres a long trail of smaller stores, including Kobo store and ebooks.com Standard Ebooks for high quality public domain books, though they also offer azw.
      • ghostDancer 2mo ago
        In my case from different places like itch.io , smashwords.com, gumroad.com, some fundraisings that provide epubs. You also have some nice free places like standardebooks.org. Or you can sail the digital seven seas if there's no availability.
      • bluGill 2mo ago
        https://www.gutenberg.org/ https://www.gutenberg.org/ has more books than you will be able to read in your lifetime for no cost. Some are classics for a reason, some are garbage - same as any other publisher. There are a number of other free ebook sites out there as well.
      • AlexeyBelov 2mo ago
        Anna's Archive
    • matteuan 2mo ago
      Kindle already supports that, or at least my 5 years old vanilla Kindle can.
      • m4lvin 2mo ago
        really, epub without conversion? Which kindle can do thay?
      • kelnos 2mo ago
        Not quite. If you use the "send to kindle" feature, since 2022 Amazon will convert it for you before it puts it on the device. If you copy an epub to the device over USB it won't work. The kindle itself does not support epub.
  • rahimnathwani 2mo ago
    IMO the most important one is more options for PDF rendering, often allowing you to read PDFs without squinting.
  • vouaobrasil 2mo ago
    Never updating if you don't want an update. I see no reason for my e-reader to have updates. I have a Kobo and after I updated it once about 5 years ago I haven't since because it already does everything I need it to.
  • nonninz 2mo ago
    As someone who thought the same (stock was enough for me) until I had some free time and switched, here are some things I'm really enjoying, in no particular order: - Format support: EPUB, CBR/CBZ (comics, graphic novels), PDF - Dark mode - Fully programmable gestures and shortcuts - Automatically syncs with my readeck instance (think readitlater/instapaper) to dowload the articles I save for example here on HN - Calibre integration over wifi - RSS/Atom - Custom dictionaries If you are into manga, there is an extension for directly downloading them on the device I'm really happy I made the switch.
    • dml2135 2mo ago
      What's the point of Dark mode on an eink screen?
      • DarkStar851 2mo ago
        For some people it's less eye straining if they're reading at night, doesn't help for me personally, but it's a popular feature
      • CWuestefeld 2mo ago
        Because most of the page is dark, with light only coming from the text, the total light emitted is much less. That makes it less annoying to my wife, when I'm reading before going to sleep.
        • BenjiWiebe 2mo ago
          Eink doesn't emit light.
          • yummybrainz 2mo ago
            Many Kindles have backlights for night-time reading!
            • Tepix 2mo ago
  • joshstrange 2mo ago
    - Better and faster UI. I always thought the Kindle was just slow, nope, it's just really bad software - Customise any/everything. Font size, line spacing, paragraph spacing, margins, header/footer content, the list goes on - Ability to use things like BookOrbit (or alternatives) to manage your books and sync your progress/stats. - LLM-integration through plugins like KOAssistant, highlight a word/phrase/passage to get it explained to you. This was invaluable for me when reading through a series from the 1950's about the late 1700's, lots of phrases I'd never heard. Many I could grasp the meaning from context but it was way more fun to hear the "why" behind the phrase. Same with historical events that I am less knowledgeable about than I wish. Let's me stay "in the book" instead of picking up my phone. - Full control, some people don't care/need this but I love being able to SSH into my Kindle and do whatever I want. I love having my entire book reading experience end-to-end be fully open source and self-hosted.
    • nonninz 2mo ago
      Thanks for the BookOrbit hint. Seems very interesting. I see it supports audiobooks and ebooks. Do you know if there is any way for keeping sync between an audiobook and ebook?
      • joshstrange 2mo ago
        It does not have any sort of "whispersync" but, ironically?, I feel like whispersync could be recreated with things like Whisper and parsing the epub/whatever to line up progress. BookOrbit is in active development from what I can see (I'm not connected to the project, just a happy user) and it wouldn't surprise me if that was a feature in the future. It's something I've mulled over building for a while (even before Whisper). For my Audiobooks I don't use BookOrbit because my setup is: - Buy on Audible - Rip DRM off - Add to Plex - Use Prologue (iOS only) to listen And I freaking love that setup so I'm not looking to replace it currently.
        • realtimeuzer 1mo ago
          if your on iphone or ipad witbound basically does what whispersync does but its your m4b and epub files
  • fodkodrasz 2mo ago
    Stuff which may be above the kindle stock features (as seen on Paperwhite 10): - Allowing to highlight text across pages. Used to work in the past but no longer works - Allowing exit to library from mobi files without a cold reboot of the device. Used to work, no longer works. - Not deleting contents of my library on an update overnight? (files still on disk, metadata gone, no longer visible on Kindle) - consistently working dictionary, offline, at least for English texts? (used to mostly work, with recent updates it is broken) - Not getting worse on every update - Better keyboard layout, maybe supporting smaller languages - Not deleting purchased books remotely - better bookmarks and navigation support. I find Kindle useless for the technical reading and learning materials, as navigation and cross-referencing is slow clunky and useless, I need paper books for that, or a computer. - Better image display? Also hinders proper use for digesting technical content. - Text Search? - EPUB support.
• teroshan 2mo ago
  Not only is it the superior piece of software, the freedom it offers by dissociating the choice of hardware from the choice of software is another example why free software and interoperability is something we should strive for.
• gchamonlive 2mo ago
  I think the only proprietary software companies with any shot at longevity are Japanese companies. First Japan leads by far the ranking of oldest companies in the world (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_companies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_companies). Then we have actual software like Zelda Breath of the Wild which is a technical marvel comparable to the original Rollercoaster Tycoon considering how well it runs on the severely limited architecture of the Switch. I think this boils down to profit not being the only driving force for these companies, but prestige and a sense of duty and responsibility towards something larger and less immediate.
  • nargek 2mo ago
    Software Software Japan
  • Cyph0n 2mo ago
    There is nothing inherently special about Japan or Japanese people. You can pull similar examples from many other countries.
    • Kirth 2mo ago
      I take it you've never been to Japan... Wouldn't wanna live there permanently. Wouldn't want to have been born Japanese. But my god the products and services are head and shoulders above my baseline expectations; it's simply nicer.
      • tdeck 2mo ago
        The apps I need to use for Rakuten Mobile are certainly... special.
      • Cyph0n 2mo ago
        I have lived in Japan. > Wouldn't wanna live there permanently. Wouldn't want to have been born Japanese. So I take it you understand that there is no free lunch.
      • nekooooo 2mo ago
• hs86 2mo ago
  I like the Readwise integration via plugin and the EPUB support, but for the first few days with it, I was busy understanding the menu hierarchy and trying to figure out how to match the styling and spacing of my native Kindle books. The out-of-the-box experience is unfortunately just "tasteless," and I needed some time to warm up to it.
• thewhitetulip 2mo ago
  It shows reading stats that I absolutely love!!
• lordleft 2mo ago
  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.
  • the_lucifer 2mo ago
    > 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 because good UX needs an extremely opinionated mind at the helm and a culture of prioritizing features and saying "No, this is not important" which OSS generally lacks. [1]: https://www.blender.org/ https://www.blender.org/
    • skydhash 2mo ago
      > 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 like Windows 7's Notepad. But if you need more capabilities, your wish is notepad++/vim level (which does require more learning), which is what koreader is.
      • horsawlarway 2mo ago
        I find this is mostly just a "mindset" difference. OSS software aligns mentally with "tool". It only exists because someone had a problem to solve, and they wanted a tool to solve it. Generally, people should expect to have to learn how to use tools. Then they solve their problem and move on. It takes effort, and the result is mastery which gives you new capabilities. Consumer software (and especially anything ad supported or social media adjacent, and sadly in many respects, lots of modern SaaS companies) want to be as glitzy and smooth as possible, but they don't actually want you to solve your problem. Instead they'd really prefer that you simply spend as much time looking at their software as possible. So the experience can be quite pleasant, it feels nice, things feel obvious, you get the dopamine hits quick and fast. But after a while you realize you aren't actually all that productive (or even productive at all) when engaging with them. Because the goal of this software isn't to help you solve your problem. The goal is to keep your attention and extract your money. If it happens to solve your problem... sometimes that's fine, sometimes that's actually counter to the primary mission of extracting your time and money.
• hashworks 2mo ago
  Funnily koreader comes with a lot of features that are useless to me, but I love that I can just disable the respective plugins.
• porkloin 2mo ago
  I've been a Kindle user since way back in 2010 with a Kindle 3G. I had a pretty huge amount of money invested into a library of books on Kindle. I installed koreader on my paperwhite earlier this year and haven't looked back. Even if it weren't for the limitations put on the walled garden for books in the kindle ecosystem, just the software upgrade alone feels great. When you hit buttons in koreader it actually responds in less than a second. I hadn't even realized how frustrating the UX of the kindle OS was until I realized the hardware was capable of feeling snappy. There's obviously a lot you need to provide yourself that Amazon gives "for free" with the Kindle ecosystem, but using koreader with OPDS and kosync for synchronizing progress across devices, I'm very happy to be just buying DRM-free books elsewhere and hosting a small OPDS+kosync server on my home server. Installing tailscale on my kindle makes it so I can even fetch books/sync progress when I'm away from home without needing to expose my book server to the internet.