"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects." (Robert A. Heinlein)

Saturday, 11 April 2009

Installing Calibre on EEEBuntu

I use often my EEEPC as E-Book reader especially when I travel by train. The program I use (FBReader) works fine and, in border-less mode with the page tilted of 90°, makes the EEPC an almost optimal E-Book reader. But since I'm looking for some extra features I decided to install Calibre.
Calibre is literally a all-in-one e-book software with many features from the library manager to external readers synchronization. I'm mainly interested in two features: Calibre library management and the RSS feed reader.
Installation
I simply executed Calibre installation command (all in the same line):
sudo python -c "import urllib2; exec urllib2.urlopen(
      'http://calibre.kovidgoyal.net/
      download_linux_binary_installer').read(); main()"



When asked for installation path I pressed return to leave the default one (/opt/calibre/) download and installation script so started.
When  the script execution ended Calibre launch icon was installed in the "Office" tab while the LRF Viewer icon was installed in the "Graphics" tab.
First impressions
Once started Calibre asked for the e-book path and scanned path for available books, but I experienced an application lock in scanning some of my paths so I had to restart Calibre and add the e-books list manually.
My first impression on Calibre user interface is of a program not well suited for small screens like EEEPC's. Reducing tool-bar icon size ease a little using it. The internal e-book reader is also slower than FBReader and lacks the tilt screen option too so I'll continue using FBReader for e-book reading.
 
What Calibre is worth installing it for is RSS feed reading: I scheduled feed download and Calibre prepared a book for each downloaded feed. I've then been able to read the prepared feed books even when disconnected from the net.
 
 So, concluding, I'll continue read books with FBReader but I'll soon configure Calibre to get news from my favourites feeds to read them while disconnected from the net.

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