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Comment by frameset | Hacker News Reader

I pretty much have to use it for some things, but as sibling commenters have pointed out, there are some serious flaws with both it and its maintainer. I've mostly moved to using [Calibre Web](https://github.com/janeczku/calibre-web) which is a software intended as a companion, but I use it almost exclusively.

It has a web interface, and you can deploy it using a container. The killer feature for me that Calibre itself lacks is that has over the internet syncing with the native Kobo firmware. You essentially trick the Kobo into thinking it's calling home to get ebooks from their servers, but you're accessing your own instance of Calibre-web.

This makes my workflow of adding a new ebook as simple as uploading it to my hosted instance of calibre-web, and then next time I pick up my kobo it will automatically download it.

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> I pretty much have to use it for some things, but as sibling commenters have pointed out, there are some serious flaws with both it and its maintainer

Your sibling comments have not mentioned or alluded to any such flaws. Do you have criticism to share?

Other commenters have pointed out that the lack of a self replacing auto-updater in a modern desktop app is striking to put it mildly. It has a pretty bad UI, that seems to be getting worse especially with regard to the shades of grey. If you bring up these flaws the maintainer can react quite poorly, even when the subject is broached politely and in good faith.

And to add my complaints to those of other commenters, hosting the library on another computer or network share is not supported, and you can't use an external DB provider e.g. MySQL.

Seems like a feature. Packages shouldn't update themselves. That's what package managers are for.

Calibre is cross-platform, and windows is about 40 years behind when it comes to software distribution best practices. Windows users don't realize that their OS is the problem, and expect all software developers to work around their OS's retarded idiosyncrasies.

Windows added a package manager with active auto-updates in Windows 8 called the Windows/Microsoft Store. It has supported non-sandboxed installers since a year into Windows 10 (the "Anniversary Update"). Late in Windows 10/11 they added a useful CLI tool for it ("winget") and a bit more than just the Store. Around the same time the Store also added support for "update feeds" other than ones that the Store directly manages.

(If anyone recalls old .NET "One Click" updaters, where you can just dump new versions into the right folder structure at a URL and the updater does the work of checking for new versions, the Store can now check similar folder structures if you'd prefer that way to manage updates instead of uploading updates directly to the Store.)

I think its more Developers don't realize their distrust of the OS is the problem today. Users are mostly happy with the Store, when they can find things on it. It is Developers that still don't like putting things on it, or have weird distrust issues with the Store, which is the issue now.

I'm aware of it, and it is a step in the right direction I suppose. But what's the point of a package manager, if you need another one (windows updates) to install/update other software, and yet another method (each app auto-updating itself) just to update all of the software on your system?

The whole point of a package manager is having one place to do all the updates/installations.

But this multi-billion $ company can't use it's clout and complete control over their OS to enforce one good way of installing/updating software.

A lot of what used to be in Windows Update is now in the Store updater.

Many of the developer complaints about the Store have been the times Microsoft has even hinted at trying to use their clout to move every install/update to the Store. You can find all sorts of yelling and arguments here on HN and elsewhere about Microsoft's various S Edition and S Mode projects over the years all the way back to Windows 8.

Talk about moving to one package manager to rule them all on Windows pushed Valve to return to work on Steam OS and moving to Linux for their freedoms. Talk about moving to one package manager sparked Epic creating the Epic Game Store to bulwark their sales freedoms.

Developers seem to love the freedom to build a million terrible auto-updaters no matter what their users actually want and go crazy every time Microsoft even mentions the idea of a user-friendly single package manager edition/version/mode of Windows.

To clarify, I would be happy if it either used the Windows Store updater (essentially a windows package manager) or updated itself via a self downloading msi package or similar. Instead it has neither.

>as simple as uploading it to my hosted instance of calibre-web, and then next time I pick up my kobo it will automatically download it.

Wow, sounds really nice, you got my attention! My stack to achieve the same result is a bit more complicated: I installed KOreader on my device, and it can read calibre's OPDS catalog feed. KOreader has some other niceties that I enjoy, mostly wallabag support.

How do you trick the native kodo firmware? Does it work outside your home network?

Yes it does, I use a reverse proxy with ssl and have CW on its own subdomain.

There's a plain text config file on the Kobo's memory and one of the config options is the store URL. CW generates you a new one tied to your local CW account in your instance and you replace the standard URL. You can do multi user stuff that way. You can also define a "shelf" and only books on that shelf will sync if you wish, handy if you have a large collection or a small memory Kobo.

The guide on setting up the Kobo sync feature is here: https://github.com/janeczku/calibre-web/wiki/Kobo-Integratio...

> How do you trick the native kodo firmware?

You just change the API endpoint in some file in .kobo on the device.

> Does it work outside your home network?

If you expose calibre-web publicly, sure. In my experience it takes a bit of effort to do that right, but it's doable.

Its wiki is fairly good and usually answers all the questions I have: https://github.com/janeczku/calibre-web/wiki/Kobo-Integratio...

Looks cool, but the wiki calls out that it can't sync reading progress between devices. Which, I understand--how Kobo does it is probably not well-documented. But without that, the solution doesn't seem any better than the Dropbox support with certain Kobo models. It would only be of interest to me if I could sync e.g. my Sage before putting it down and pick up my Clara somewhere else and be able to find my place in the books I'm currently reading.

Not even the Dropbox integration does this yet with sideloaded books, though. I think KOReader might be the only one that has pulled it off so far.

According to some posts (https://www.reddit.com/r/kobo/comments/qhdmt2/how_does_the_k...), the Kobo will sync reading process with other Kobos for kepubs only.

Thanks for the heads up on this project. I use Calibre but I find it highly idiosyncratic. This fits my needs better.

awesome suggestion, just installed and it worked well, going to use it from a vps.

question is that, how safe this is? I need add https and a strong password, is there a docker for that?

(edit: found the link to set up reverse proxy with docker): https://hub.docker.com/r/linuxserver/calibre-web

> there are some serious flaws with ... its maintainer.

Such as?

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