Replacing Kindle for PC in Linux

[Quoth]

Amazon did already scrap an ebook system twice!

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Amazon did already scrap an ebook system twice!

Twice? I only remember once. What was the other one?

[Quoth]

First they killed the ebooks they did before mobi/kindle.
Then they turned off the Mobipocket servers for DRM, for pre-Kindle DRM.

They bought Mobipocket in 2005 (Mobipocket had sold ebooks for Symbian, Windows CE, Palm OS original, windows etc) either because they thought Adobe was going to cease doing eBook stuff, or because the first Sony eink was released, or because they didn't like competition. Amazon was very successful before then with paper books, but not on ebooks. They started the eReader HW project in 2004. Maybe it wasn't going well?

Amazon told publishers in 2011 they would end the support for Mobipocket DRM. They shut down the DRM servers in 2016; they had launched the Kindle (partly based on Linux and partly on Mobipocket SW) in 2007. The original azw was mobi format with Amazon DRM instead of Mobipocket's original DRM and launched in 2007 for the Kindle. As far as I can make out, Amazon never used actual Mobipocket DRM on the first Kindle, it only read DRM free mobi or prc. DRM was only via azw (Amazon DRM version of mobi ).


Other issues that are not to do with ending formats:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Kindle#Criticism

In June 2022, Amazon announced that it will shutdown its Kindle bookstore in China and starting July 2023 Kindle users can no longer purchase online books in the country. However, existing customers could still download previously bought titles until June 2024.[202]

Also in June 2022, self-published authors protested against Amazon's e-book return policy; whenever an e-book return is made, royalties originally paid to the author at the time of purchase are deducted from their earnings balance, leaving authors with negative balances.[203]

Microsoft has killed off at least:
A smart watch system that used data via FM Radio.
DRM music system "Plays for Sure"
Some Wordprocessor formats they had can't be read by current MS Word (maybe Word for DOS, pre Win95 Word, and MS Works).
MS lit ebooks
Their own Web browser Engine. They now use Google's Browser engine in Edge.
Epub reader in their Browser.
Ability to run DOS in Windows (only ever worked on 16bit & 32 bit Windows).
Ability to run 16 bit Windows on NT.
Many older 32 bit windows programs on 64 bit Windows.

[haertig]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I can't see Amazon doing that given that they've not dropped Mobi for K1, K2, and DX/DXG.

But they could drop Mobi for PW3, PW4, PW5, and leave it in place for K1, K2 if they wanted to. And the PW users who requested Mobi but received KFX instead wouldn't have much of a leg to stand on.

Me, I would probably stop using Amazon if they did something like this. But that doesn't mean they won't do it at some time. I doubt they would care very much if I lit myself on fire during a Kindle protest. There are a lot of other customers out there to replace me.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by haertig

But they could drop Mobi for PW3, PW4, PW5, and leave it in place for K1, K2 if they wanted to. And the PW users who requested Mobi but received KFX instead wouldn't have much of a leg to stand on.

Me, I would probably stop using Amazon if they did something like this. But that doesn't mean they won't do it at some time. I doubt they would care very much if I lit myself on fire during a Kindle protest. There are a lot of other customers out there to replace me.

Amazon doesn't deliver Mobi for any Kindle that can handle KF8 and/or KFX.

But if Amazon did drop the ability to download KF8 in favor of KFX, that would be a huge mistake. That would mean that Amazon would have to stop allowing downloading KF8 from Amazon via your web browser.

For those that come here asking what Reader to buy, Kindle would not be something that would be recommended even if it's something the person was maybe interested in.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Amazon doesn't deliver Mobi for any Kindle that can handle KF8 and/or KFX.

Not true. In about 100 books I have in one download directory maybe 4 are mobi or azw (both Kf7). I don't know why. Maybe ancient mobi uploads 12 years ago?

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Ability to run DOS in Windows (only ever worked on 16bit & 32 bit Windows).
Ability to run 16 bit Windows on NT.
Many older 32 bit windows programs on 64 bit Windows.

Perhaps since DOS was 16 bit and Windows on Windows only supports 1 generation back (i.e. 32 bit supports 16 bit, 64 bit supports 32 bit), there might be a reason that DOS did not run on 64 bit Windows.

Running 16 bit Windows on NT? Which version of NT 3? 3.5x? 4? Windows 2000?

As for the 32 bit Windows programs that did not run on 64 bit Windows, WoW is fussier than Windows on programs following the rules especially when the programmer tries to get down and dirty with the hardware. Quite a few of Microsoft's own programs had to have rewrites to produce a 32 bit version that ran on 64 bit Windows.

[Quoth]

16 bit on most 32 bit Windows. Except anything 16bit that REALLY accessed hardware never worked on NT.

The problem was the Not Invented Here syndrome and unwillingness to re-write NTVDM and WOW for 64 bit. The reasons NTVDM and WOW16->32 (both 32 bit code) don't work on x86-64 Windows is complicated. DOSbox for 64bit Windows will even run Win 3.0 at least as well as DOS.

The WOW for 32bit on 64bit Windows is a mess and unrelated to the old WOW 32 bit code. Basically MS official line is:
"We've included Vbox, so just install your old XP / Win2003 / Vista / Win7 / Win 8.x on it." That's MS Compatibility solution. Curiously the SAME VM files of old Windows will run on Vbox on Linux.

The only reason they even did a 32 bit Win10 was because some 64 bit Atom tablets made for Win10 launch can't run 64 bit windows! They can run 64 bit Linux.
Also Linux 64 can run 32 bit Wine and VB6.0 SW that won't run on ANY 64 bit Windows, even Win7 64 bit.

MS only want to sell you cloud services. Eventually Win 11 will be free even without a valid Win7/8/10 key.

[NullNix]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Perhaps since DOS was 16 bit and Windows on Windows only supports 1 generation back (i.e. 32 bit supports 16 bit, 64 bit supports 32 bit), there might be a reason that DOS did not run on 64 bit Windows.

Some of this is hardware. When an x86-64 CPU is in long mode ("64 bit") it can no longer operate in virtual 8086 (V86) mode, which means it cannot emulate an 8086 and more or less all 16-bit stuff isn't going to work, including DOS boxes (which always worked via V86).

This is a fundamental limitation, not an arbitrary "we can't be bothered with backward compatibility" thing. V86 mode, just like real mode on 80386 and above, is a remarkable hack in which the CPU actually behaves almost identically to how it does in 32-bit protected mode except for the changed semantics of segment registers: and even there, the only difference is that they automatically refer to appropriate selectors created by the hardware: all the 32-bit protected mode access control and the like is actually still being carried out, even in real mode. The full 32-bit instruction set is available: you can even use 32-bit wide registers like EAX etc and it actually works! (It takes more care and evil tricks to use things like task gates and call gates in real mode, but nobody really uses those at all in any CPU mode unless they have to). This was heavily used back in the early 90s by various 386-only games, running in real mode only with atypical selectors in force to make more memory available: they often called this "unreal mode".

But in 64-bit long mode this clever CPU trickery cannot work: selectors in long mode are always 0-based (and have other limitations) and cannot be used to simulate real mode segment registers any more, since those can have almost arbitrary bases and limits. So the CPU cannot implement V86 mode, and won't even let you try. The only way to implement V86 mode atop long mode is to run a virtual CPU using the VMX virtual machine extensions and transition that virtual CPU to 32-bit protected mode and then set up V86 mode in that. (And there are plenty of long-mode-capable Intel CPUs with no VMX extensions, since they decided to use that for market segmentation, so you can't rely on that working.)

[Quoth]

Non-MS people provide emulators for 16 bit on 64. The problem was that MS Dos box AKA the NTVDM was using CPU features in 32 bit x86 not on the x86-64, but DOSBox and other EMULATORS don't need any x86 CPU features, which means it works on x86-64 based OS, though the Windows version is maybe 32 bit.

It's simpler for MS to offer VM support for XP, Win7 etc and to ignore 16 bit because DOSBox has worked better for 16 bit, especially graphics and sound for over 15 years than NTVDM, which was really just for DOS text and as a backend for native 16 bit code for WOW for 16 bit Windows on NT, which never have great compatibility.

Current OS versions for DOSBox
Mac OS X 0.74-3-3 dmg (Universal)
Windows 0.74-3 Win32 installer
Fedora 0.74-3 rpm
Source 0.74-3 Source
Debian 0.74-3 deb
FreeBSD package 0.74-2 ports
RISC OS 0.74-2 zip
Gentoo Linux 0.74 portage
OS/2 0.74 exe (OS2)
Solaris 10 - sparc 0.73 pkg
BeOS 0.63 binary (x86)
From https://www.dosbox.com/download.php?main=1
There are older versions for Symbian (ancient ARM) etc.

DOSBox is now included with WINE (at least the Win32). You have to set an environment variable on 64 bit Linux before installing WINE (add x86 Architecture) or only WINE64 is installed. Which is a bit mad, because WINE is mostly useful for 32 bit Windows applications, which don't run at all on WINE64

[NullNix]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Non-MS people provide emulators for 16 bit on 64. The problem was that MS Dos box AKA the NTVDM was using CPU features in 32 bit x86 not on the x86-64, but DOSBox and other EMULATORS don't need any x86 CPU features, which means it works on x86-64 based OS, though the Windows version is maybe 32 bit.

Yes, that's the third option, of course: just emulate the entire CPU. These days that does indeed usually work better than any other option (among other things, the huge slowdown is often beneficial because it leads to the resulting software running at close to the speed it expected to be running at in the 80s/90s ).