Calibre is firstly designed as a desktop app, which I knew may cause some difficulty installing it on a headless system, but it turned out to be an easy process thanks to some documentation I found.Ĭalibre requires the xdg-utils, wget, xz-utils, and a version of Python greater than 2.6. Luckily this is still supported by Calibre and they have easy install instructions here. My home server is currently still on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. It was a little unclear if both packages were needed, so let's find out. Both packages also support the OPDS standard, which a lot of eReading apps use to sync/download eBooks. In most of the reading I had done, the biggest complaint seemed to be that the web interface was not that great, so another open source project called Calibre-Web was started. The most active one I could find was an eBook manager called Calibre, it was open source and seemed to do everything I wanted.

What I wanted was a system similar to Plex that could catalogue, track and serve out my books so that I could consume them in whatever way I wanted (mostly from my eReader, but it is nice to have options from the browser or just to download the file). I already had a decent amount of DRM free eBooks from many of the Humble Bundles, and since the new eInk tablet runs Android, it can run the Kindle and Google Play reader apps for any books that you can't find being sold DRM free (Plus there are ways around the DRM of those platforms, but I won't go into that here.). Once that decision was made, I started looking into possible changes to my setup for storing/consuming eBooks and Comics. With that in mind I decided to go with an eInk tablet that runs Android and has full stylus note taking with handwriting to text recognition. I think the actual act of writing helps cement the information in my head more than typing does, but referring back to or searching old notes becomes difficult with stacks of notebooks.

I have tried reading from a computer/tablet screen and definitely notice a difference in eye strain compared to eInk.įor my work and other projects I still hand write a lot of notes. After using (and loving) a Kindle (Keyboard model) for over 10 years it was finally time for a new eReader. In that spirit I run a Plex server in my home network for my collection of movies and music. While I do still use services like Amazon and Google for certain movies, books, and comics, I like to retain actual ownership of my digital media whenever possible.

Calibre onyx boox