Gold Ayan's Tinker Garage

Looking for a software to manage my ebooks. almost everyone recommends to calibre

Installing

Binary installation

sudo -v && wget -nv -O- https://download.calibre-ebook.com/linux-installer.sh | sudo sh /dev/stdin

once installed i am able to open the calibre

Library path

you can change the location where the books are stored by clicking the Calibre library in tool bar. The default location will be

~/Calibre Library

Appearance changes

Default appearance of the calibre looks pretty old let's change it. select preference and click look & feel

  • Dark mode
  • Set the font to Jet brains Mono nerd font (My preference)
  • Change the icon pack to Monstre

You can select different layout option using layout button in the status bar

Adding book

You can start adding books

  • By drag and dropping the books
  • Add books button
  • Using calibredb command

When you are trying to access calibre functions from the terminal ensure the GUI application is not opened or it will raise some errors

Calibredb

One of the coolest way to add books is to use calibredb command line tool. Check whether calibredb is accesible from terminal using the following command

calibredb list

This will list all the books available in calibre. To add new books to the library

calibredb add [options] file1 file2

you can more operation using calibredb like editing meta data, remove ebook.

Calibre web server

  • Start the web server using following command

    calibre-server
    
  • Web server with custom port

    calibre-server --port=9876
    

OPDS

  • OPDS is a protocol to access your ebook library in other devices
  • URL for your OPDS is HOSTNAME:PORT/opds eg: 192.268.1.10:8080/opds
  • Software that i use to consume content from OPDS

Convert ebooks from terminal

  • you can convert books from GUI. i prefer terminal tools

    ebook-convert input_file output_file [options]
    

Backuping up

To backup the library all we need is to copy the content of Calibre Library like a monthly once or twice. Depends on your needs

Others