I have a Clara HD and it's a fun little Linux device (no android nonsense, just a good old shell), Koreader is pretty great (a few rendering bugs aside) and I can even ssh into the thing _and_ pull files down from my computer with WebDAV though the koreader UI.
[0]I know about Calibre. I'm not willing to jump through any hoops for ePubs. This should be basic functionality on any ereader.
The MobileRead forums[4] are quite active, you'll find a lot more there.
[0] https://github.com/koreader/koreader [1] https://www.willus.com/k2pdfopt/ [2] https://github.com/baskerville/plato [3] http://pbchess.vlasovsoft.net/en/ [4] https://www.mobileread.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=223
> [0]I know about Calibre.
Amazon actually provides their own tool to produce a Kindle document from an ePub. The assumption seems to be that you'll naturally produce Kindle ebooks by writing ePubs and converting them. But the tool doesn't work!
I wanted to have line numbers floating to the left of the main text. ePubs are just HTML, and it's easy to do this. It works fine in ePub readers. But while I tried multiple different ways of accomplishing this in an ePub, none of them made it through the conversion to Kindle.
https://github.com/koreader/koreader https://github.com/baskerville/plato
It's a filter for idiots.
One of the unfortunate things you'll realize about the (FMCG) advertising industry, is that most of the results from advertisements is made from the impressionable customers.
Impressionable people are the money makers, but they're not the savviest. Hence you're essentially building business models that are targeted at the lowest common denominator.
You don't even want the clever customers, they make you less money.
Some research has been done on "Why are the various scam emails so absolutely horrible, wouldn't they get way more hits if they actually had a native language speaker check them first?"
They concluded that the awfulness of it is a useful filter for the most gullible of the gullible. You can only string along so many people.
> Far-fetched tales of West African riches strike most as comical. Our analysis suggests that is an advantage to the attacker, not a disadvantage. Since his attack has a low density of victims the Nigerian scammer has an over-riding need to reduce false positives. By sending an email that repels all but the most gullible the scammer gets the most promising marks to self-select, and tilts the true to false positive ratio in his favor.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/...
You log in/create an Overdrive account on your Kobo (Libby is made by Overdrive), add your library card to your Overdrive account and you're good.
Then when you search for books on the store on your Kobo you click the three dot menu (next to the buy button) and "Borrow" will be an option if it's available from your library.
Otherwise after connecting Overdrive you can use the Libby app on your phone or wherever to borrow books, then just connect to wifi and sync your Kobo, and it automatically downloads the borrowed books
In addition to "Ok, fine, you can do that thing you're doing anyway" with the recent updates, the SQlite approach works fine and has remained so for... oh, years, at least.
The stock PDF reader is fine for ebooks, but sucks for reference PDFs. However, it's trivial to install koreader, and that is good for reference PDFs. I replaced an iPad and GoodReader with a Kobo Elipsa and koreader for reference docs, and it's great. Plus, insane battery life with the backlight off.
And if you want to install some goofball bit of software, well, drop it in the right directory and don't go whining to Kobo if you break things. it's an insanely hacker-friendly device that's also a solid e-reader.
I've been following the Pine Note work with some interest, but, really, all I'd want to do with it is stuff koreader on it and use it like a Kobo.
They changed that last month (as a software update, so it's retroactive to existing devices):
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30037152 ("Kobo unveils Sideload Mode to their e-readers ")
I'd be surprised if it was on purpose. More likely they know 9,999 people out of 10,000 are going to create a trackable account, and the simplest thing is to ignore the "hacker" outliers, who would probably not be particularly profitable anyway.
Maybe the devices are loss leaders and you can't afford to have many users not following up with purchases from you. Or maybe you are at risk of being sued over some shady licensing deal if you don't lock down. Or someone like Microsoft bribes you to lock out competitors. Or maybe you're just a control-freak asshole company.
Or a mix, like Sony.
I have ALWAYS side-loaded all my books using Calibre.
However - about once or twice a year, I do turn on WiFi and download OS/system updates - which actually made the device faster and more reliable, so...
Turned out that the root folder contained a sqlite database. I opened it up, looked at the schema and inserted a new user manually. It worked just fine. No problems since.
I have no idea if the new devices are any different but given the overall quality of the thing I wouldn't be surprised if they made it so trivial to bypass their online service integration on purpose.