Replacing Kindle for PC in Linux

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by rcentros

Right now Windows 11 users are finding a lot of bugs and applications that won't run correctly. Unfortunately I think Microsoft is angling towards a controlled "app store" like Apple's Mac and iOS stores and Google's Play Store. So more control over how you use your computer.

I've used Windows 11 since the Insider Previews. So far I've found 2 or 3 programs that would not run under Windows 11 that did run under Windows 10's last release. None of that group were a "mainstream" program. In contrast, almost every Linux distribution upgrade has broken multiple programs including calibre when prerequisites for calibre have been dropped from the included programs. And yes, my VM collections lives on the bleeding edge. That's what snapshots are made for since I run a couple of physical machines with multiple virtual machines.

I do tend to find the whole Windows vs. MacOSX vs. Linux vs. BSD vs. whatever discussions to be more humourous than anything else.

[Quoth]

It's crazy.
If what you have works, ignore people wanting you to change.

Even if they have a light sabre.

[JSWolf]

MaxOSX is another good one for breaking things.

[DNSB]

Sorry... couldn't resist...

[NullNix]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Sorry... couldn't resist...

Any claims that I might perhaps work for an evil empire whose boss owns a private island and a fighter jet (allegedly disarmed) are mere rumours that may be without foundation. I cannot comment on the possibly nonzero truth value of any such rumours.

[NullNix]

Originally Posted by DNSB

In contrast, almost every Linux distribution upgrade has broken multiple programs including calibre when prerequisites for calibre have been dropped from the included programs.

To be fair, Calibre does have a *lot* of deps, some of which (hello, PyQt) are both relatively rarely used and, ah... known for breaking ABI and often source-compatibility too at every possible opportunity and then some (far more often than Qt does). (Suffice to say that KDE's Python bindings have gone away because of far too frequent breakage. They might come back, but honestly if their new maintainer wants to base them on PyQt any more that person has more stamina than I.)

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by NullNix

Any claims that I might perhaps work for an evil empire whose boss owns a private island and a fighter jet (allegedly disarmed) are mere rumours that may be without foundation.

In Ely?

Isn't that Fen country? I suppose you might need an artificial island for the Jet.

I think I had a friend in my student days from there. Does Ely Cathedral occupy the only dry ground?


Ah, you work from home and the boss's island is in the Caribbean!

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by NullNix

... or, well, they try to. Both Firefox and Chrome now blacklist almost all antivirus scanners from running in the (sandboxed, security-sensitive) contexts in which the actual content of the webpage is accessible, because they are generally written by absolute monkeys on the assumption that they are *not* sandboxed, and as a result have a distressing tendency to call out to things prohibited within the sandbox (a list which is always growing, for good reasons) and get killed. And when this happens it leads to *every single webpage* turning into a sad-face crash, often after a browser update improves the sandbox.

The difference between virus scanners and rootkits and malware is basically just intent, these days. Virus scanners use a very large proportion of the techniques used by rootkits, and unsurprisingly things that actually want to be secure tend to react to virus scanners as if they were malware.

That's interesting. Fortunately, using Linux, makes me pretty ignorant about the state virus scanners. So it looks like this might be going a better direction than I thought. That's good news.

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by Quoth

It constantly amazed me when I was in IT support that people would simply click on dialog boxes "That got in the way". Or Click links on emails or open attachments without checking what they were.

They'd also rather believe a random website or friend or half remembered stuff at school than the IT support.

And then also not know the difference between clicking on something that loads in an application and something that executes (binary or script). Proper training makes a big difference. Not the sort invented by marketing that tours all the features of an application.

Fortunately uBlock Origin takes care of most of these malware scripts and I never see them (although they would mostly likely be made for Windows anyhow). I remember a couple years ago (maybe more) that I got a message on my Linux computer that I had been taken over by ransomware. I'm guessing that might have been true if I had been using Windows -- on Linux it was just "nice try bozo breath" kind of thing. That's another thing about Linux that helps in its malware fight — there's so much variety of distributions (and installation methods) that it really doesn't pay to write malware for Linux. So, what some people see as a weakness ("fragmentation"), I see as a good thing (variety and choice). No one person can control Linux. You have the choice to use what you want, instead of what Microsoft or Apple wants you to want.

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by DNSB

I've used Windows 11 since the Insider Previews. So far I've found 2 or 3 programs that would not run under Windows 11 that did run under Windows 10's last release. None of that group were a "mainstream" program. In contrast, almost every Linux distribution upgrade has broken multiple programs including calibre when prerequisites for calibre have been dropped from the included programs. And yes, my VM collections lives on the bleeding edge. That's what snapshots are made for since I run a couple of physical machines with multiple virtual machines.

I do tend to find the whole Windows vs. MacOSX vs. Linux vs. BSD vs. whatever discussions to be more humourous than anything else.

I've seen some horror stories about Windows 11, but I have no personal experience with it (and never will) so I'll let it drop.

As for Linux, yes, if you're using the cutting edge distributions you're probably going to have issues. This has more to do with backward engineering of drivers than anything else. When I set up a laptop that comes with a Broadcom WiFi card (for example), I get on eBay and buy an Intel one (usually less than $5 for the age of computers I use). Intel shares their specs with the open community, Broadcom doesn't -- so Linux drivers just work with Intel WiFi cards. Broadcom, you never know. But I also use stable Linux distributions rather than "cutting edge" ones. I don't see the advantage of being on the "edge."

[haertig]

Originally Posted by DNSB

In contrast, almost every Linux distribution upgrade has broken multiple programs including calibre when prerequisites for calibre have been dropped from the included programs.

If the package manager is not given up to date information on dependencies then yes, you would probably run into dependency problems. That's the fault of the person writing the package, not the package manager or the OS. You'll have the same problems on Windows if the person writing the installers leaves out some of the dependencies. This is hardly an indictment of the OS.

For people who cannot understand dependencies, there have been several things done within Linux over the last few years to make it less of a problem for them. AppImage. Snaps. Flatpaks. Even Docker. I am a fan of Docker, but the others don't really light my fire. There are definitely good use cases for them, I just don't need them personally.

The problem is, if you have zero technical skills or aptitude for computers, you're going to have a problem with whichever OS you choose.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by haertig

The problem is, if you have zero technical skills or aptitude for computers, you're going to have a problem with whichever OS you choose.

ChromeOS FTW!

I'd not want a Chromebook myself. But for my mom it is perfect.

[NullNix]

Originally Posted by Quoth

In Ely?

Isn't that Fen country? I suppose you might need an artificial island for the Jet.

Oh no he's in Silicon Valley, or at least the company HQ was in Silicon Valley before it allegedly moved to Texas without taking any staff with it: he himself is presumably on his private island at least some of the time, probably with a fleet of sharks with lasers on their heads for defence. (As for the island, though, Ely *is* an island: the Isle of Ely was a county, not too long ago, and a long time before that the place they grew Lords Chancellor.)

Originally Posted by Quoth

I think I had a friend in my student days from there. Does Ely Cathedral occupy the only dry ground?

Hell no! The Isle is a good bit bigger than the city: you can really tell when you fall off it because you drop about 6m in not very much time at all (so, yeah, not a very *high* island) and all the houses suddenly get damp marks halfway up their walls, and deep drainage ditches pop up everywhere. I wouldn't really want to live down there half a metre below sea level, not in global warming times.

Originally Posted by Quoth

Ah, you work from home and the boss's island is in the Caribbean!

Exactly! I wouldn't want to live in the Caribbean: too hot.

[HJ99]

Ok, registered just to comment on this thread. For some years now I used Kindle for PC 1.17 in WINE. Finally Amazon unregistered it and refused to let it be reregistered. I looked around and somebody posted somewhere getting like version 1.30 working with slight modification to WINE 6.0 or newer. Yep and stupid simple modification, basically add an empty directory.

Dont even need the modification anymore, think that was only with WINE6 and Kindle 1.30. Think I am using like WINE 7.1 with Kindle for PC 1.34. Its fine. Installs and runs ok. One thing that makes it more stable do WINE configuration and set it to identify as windows7 for Kindle app. You will then get this goofy warning that windows7 no longer supported when app opens. But it will be super stable and let you register. I suspect indeed you can not buy books through the app if it detects its running on windows7 or WINE identifying itself as windows7, but I never did that anyway. Bought with browser and then used the app to download and read offline. Most of what I read via Kindle app is fiction, and frankly dont give a fig about rereading it.

Now occasionally do want a long term copy and frankly not impressed with ongoing battles between Amazon and Apprentice Alf. And dont want to buy an old Kindle gizmo to play games that way.

So I figured out way to use a freeware automatic screenshotter run in WINE combined with my own small linux script and couple linux programs to first auto advance pages on kindle app which forces the screen shotter to take lowest resolution png snapshot of that page only not whole screen. I set the app to take shot anytime pixels significantly change. Your screen clock advancing will not trigger a shot... whereas the Kindle app advancing to next page will. When done, yea you can just leave them in a directory and read with an image viewer (nomacs works great and has auto advance slideshow function), or you can combine the png snapshots into a pdf using Image Magick on linux. Actually thats best way to look at them using pdf reader, but one can then use Calibre to convert pdf to epub and use epub reader. Very readable however you want but in epub version you cant really change font or such cause its still a string of png photos not text. You would have to further convert using OCR software if you wanted to get back to text you could change font, etc. This page snapshots strung together also gives rather large file compared to normal epub book. But it is an end run around all this DRM nonsense. Without waiting for Apprentice Alf to catch up with latest protection scheme by Amazon. Its the "analog" endrun much like copying a paper book on a photocopy machine.

Oh I have got quite comfortable installing and using WINE (be aware you may have to add WINEHQ repository to get latest, most linux distributions have some ancient version in their repositories) Alternatively install PlayOnLinux (front end for WINE) and let it install version WINE you want. Can make it stupid simple to get WINE installed and working. I have went through periods where POL wasnt most cooperative due to way I connect to web, so if you can, I do suggest you do you own install either manually or through package manager with WINEHQ repository added. But PlayOnLinux is currently working and makes life really easy. Once an app is installed via POL, then even if POL gets bit wonky, app should still work.

Oh there are appimage and snap and such versions WINE out there. Appimage makes it closest to portable as you will probably find. I found great WINE5 appimage (included 32bit libraries), but the WINE7 version sucked and didnt work. Neither were official versions, but ones individuals had cobbled up. And like say you need WINE6 or newer for current versions Kindle for PC. Too bad cause that WINE5 appimage was a really good one.

[Quoth]

It's been done with a real eink kindle and a Lego Robot.
But pirates use ARCs etc.