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Part of the reason I went with a kobo over the kindle is that they support ePubs. The kindle honestly seemed a bit nicer hardware wise but I like the ability to

Part of the reason I went with a kobo over the kindle is that they support ePubs. The kindle honestly seemed a bit nicer hardware wise but I like the ability to build and read my library of DRM free books well into the future. No complaints about the kobo so far and it's lasted me nearly a decade by this point. Once it finally kicks the bucket I'll definitely stick with them.

robinsoh 4y ago
I've also heard (but not verified) that kobo's firmware isn't locked down the way amazon's is, so you can compile and install your own apps and modify system scripts. In other words it's your device, not Amazon's.
- mkozlows 4y ago
  It's true, and the open source koreader software is great.
  - BbzzbB 4y ago
    Made my Aura much more responsive, with better UI. Easy install too.
- llui85 4y ago
  Kobo's firmware is very open, although it's technical enough that your average (non-developer) end-user would have trouble modifying. You upload a `KoboRoot.tgz` file to a hidden folder when it's plugged into USB, which is extracted to the root directory of the device (which is linux + busybox, with a QT gui 'nickel'). Newer FW versions also have a development telnet server which can be enabled in settings. The MobileRead forums are where most of the unofficial discussion/development happens: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=223 https://www.mobileread.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=223 https://www.mobileread.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=247 https://www.mobileread.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=247
  - yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
    IMO this is how it should work everywhere; the device works well out of the box for normal users, but if the owner wants to modify it, the means is right there and is actually pretty straightforward if you're technical enough to care. (There is room in the middle but dividing people into "wants to mod their device" vs "doesn't know what a tarball is" seems sane)
  - robinsoh 4y ago
    > Kobo's firmware is very open, although it's technical enough that your average (non-developer) end-user would have trouble modifying That's good to hear. I have no problem with a device vendor focusing on just making sure their device works well, as long as they're not trying to close it off and actively working against external developers. I'd heard stuff like Kindle blows physical fuses so that one can't install older firmware and stuff like that so they actively prevent users from having control of their device. I have no desire to be a customer of such types of vendors.
    - teekert 4y ago
      I have a pocketbook touch hd3 [0]. It's nice, tbh I feel that my Kindle Keyboard (died after 10 years) was higher quality, mainly because the buttons on the hd3 can move a bit. Other than that it's a nice device, it can read all formats and has a feature to make the front light more red. [0]: https://www.amazon.com/Pocketbook-Touch-HD-Metallic-Grey/dp/B07KPLXZJ4 https://www.amazon.com/Pocketbook-Touch-HD-Metallic-Grey/dp/...
tvhahn 4y ago
Ya, I love my kobo. I recently cracked the screen on mine (after about 8 plus years). I went straight to best buy the next day and got a new one.
Tagbert 4y ago
Calibre makes converting epubs and loading them onto Kindles. It handles a wide range of different ebook formats. I probably would work with your Kobo as well if you have some non-epub source documuments.
- AlotOfReading 4y ago
  You can use Calibre to convert with kindles, but some documents don't convert well without a lot of effort/tuning and you really shouldn't have to. Spend your money elsewhere. The biggest downside of Kobo for me has been Rakuten's update cadence. The system updates opt-out doesn't actually work from what I can tell and my device only comes out of airplane mode once every few months. Every damn time I do so it has to download an update, lagging out for a long time, and changing the UI in exciting new ways.
  - bowsamic 4y ago
    I’ve never had any problem converting an epub to a mobi
    - AlotOfReading 4y ago
      You'd generally expect that to be the case as they're fairly similar formats internally. Nevertheless, I did probably thousands of conversions in a decade+ of owning various kindles and encountered issues more than a few times. When my last kindle finally kicked the bucket I simply switched to a kobo.
      - bowsamic 4y ago
        That's a pretty low failure rate then
  - aaomidi 4y ago
    https://www.sendepubtokindle.com/ https://www.sendepubtokindle.com/ Works perfectly.
sgtnoodle 4y ago
A friend sold me an original kindle for maybe $20 one time. I used it to read about 75% of Orson Scott Card's novels within the Ender's Game series. After about a year, it stopped turning on. It was probably 7 years old by then, so I just got rid of it. I bought a 2" thick sci-fi book a few years ago, "Pandora's Star". It seemed pretty interesting, but way too much book to carry around. I got a kobo and put what I vaguely recall was named "koreader" on it. It was pretty nice. It stopped working after 6 months, though. I took it apart, and at least one power management IC is shorted out. Its e-ink display permanently says, "Sleeping..." It's been a paperweight on my nightstand for about 2 years, and a minor source of anxiety for me. I don't plan on buying another kobo device any time soon because I hate e-waste. My wife got me a kindle paperwhite to replace it, and it didn't take much work to get the same book onto it. I think I'm maybe 25% of the way through the book, but I can't really say because I don't understand what the numbers in the lower corner mean. I also printed the Rust programming language manual to PDF and managed to copy it onto the kindle without much fuss.
- dendodge 4y ago
  > I don't understand what the numbers in the lower corner mean If you tap on the numbers in the lower corner, you can cycle through various options including % read. My personal preference is for time left in chapter.
  - alanbernstein 4y ago
    My preference is for number of pages left in chapter, but for some reason Amazon doesn't seem to be able to implement that.
    - dendriti 4y ago
      Some Amazon Kindle books DO have "real" page numbers. It's an additional feature that must be supported. The problem of page numbers on reflowable text is much more difficult than it may appear.
      - 4y ago
sleepycatgirl 4y ago
Yep. Same here. Oh, and not to mention, how easier... is to just poke things? At least with Clara HD, don't have to fear about bricking it, because worst case scenario, I can just reflash the system image, and have it working again. And few days ago I just went and replaced internal microSD card with a bigger one (First making image of original one, then flashing it to bigger, and extending partition) and it just worked. Sadly or not, I like to hoard things locally, on the reader itself. And that includes manga. So yeah, being able to replace microSD Card was very convenient. And the device itself is a tiny bit more responsive overall too, alongside better transfer speeds :D
bmaupin 4y ago
Kobo isn't perfect but they have other nice features as well, such as Overdrive integration to check out books directly from the device, and Pocket integration for reading webpages offline. My only complaint is no equivalent of Send to Kindle for Kobo, so I always have to plug the device in if I want to copy an EPUB to it.
nowahe 4y ago
If you have a kobo, I highly recommend checking out koreader[1], which is an open-source ebook reader and is highly configurable (to the point where you can even write custom css rules from withing the e-reader), integrates with calibre natively (you can even connect to your Calibre library over Wifi), has a solid support for CBZ (with features like auto-cropping the border around your comic, automatically or manually), and more. Having used it, I don't think I could go back to Kobo's reader (and even less to Amazon's, which is a joke in term of configuration options). [1] : https://github.com/koreader/koreader https://github.com/koreader/koreader
- evanreichard 4y ago
  Yeah I use KOReader on my Kindle Paperwhite 5 and it’s definitely superior in every way.
WorldMaker 4y ago
After a certain OS version kindles all support plain (DRM-free) ePub files just fine, Amazon just has yet to update their "Send to Kindle" tools (both the Windows File Explorer extension tool and the "email to an amazon email address you setup" tool) to allow the .epub extension, but you can copy the files directly over USB and there are silly workarounds like renaming from .epub to something the tools do recognize. There's file extensions they will load just fine under. The interesting question is why if the systems support ePub, Amazon doesn't update the "Send to Kindle" tools to also support the extension? Those tools support .doc, .txt, .pdf, and other random things, just explicitly not .epub. It could just be that those tools are low maintenance and don't update often in general. Maybe it's simply as sinister as they don't want people to know kindles support ePubs, even though they do (because they have to) and the "Send to Kindle" tools are the primary interface people use for "what does my kindle support?" as very few users bother to directly USB their kindles and rely on wifi updates. It's strange.
- WorldMaker 4y ago
  Read the article: apparently the good news is that the "Send to Kindle" tools are announced to support .epub file extensions directly soon. The article makes the assumption that "Send to Kindle" will be reformatting .epub files to Kindle native formats and uses that assumption as the basis to rant about the Kindle native formats, but anecdata (such as the USB support and file rename workaround) again suggest kindles already support ePub well enough and that assumption may not be valid and "Send to Kindle" may not wind up reformatting ePub files (much).

robinsoh 4y ago

I've also heard (but not verified) that kobo's firmware isn't locked down the way amazon's is, so you can compile and install your own apps and modify system scripts. In other words it's your device, not Amazon's.

mkozlows 4y ago
It's true, and the open source koreader software is great.
- BbzzbB 4y ago
  Made my Aura much more responsive, with better UI. Easy install too.
llui85 4y ago
Kobo's firmware is very open, although it's technical enough that your average (non-developer) end-user would have trouble modifying. You upload a `KoboRoot.tgz` file to a hidden folder when it's plugged into USB, which is extracted to the root directory of the device (which is linux + busybox, with a QT gui 'nickel'). Newer FW versions also have a development telnet server which can be enabled in settings. The MobileRead forums are where most of the unofficial discussion/development happens: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=223 https://www.mobileread.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=223 https://www.mobileread.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=247 https://www.mobileread.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=247
- yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
  IMO this is how it should work everywhere; the device works well out of the box for normal users, but if the owner wants to modify it, the means is right there and is actually pretty straightforward if you're technical enough to care. (There is room in the middle but dividing people into "wants to mod their device" vs "doesn't know what a tarball is" seems sane)
- robinsoh 4y ago
  > Kobo's firmware is very open, although it's technical enough that your average (non-developer) end-user would have trouble modifying That's good to hear. I have no problem with a device vendor focusing on just making sure their device works well, as long as they're not trying to close it off and actively working against external developers. I'd heard stuff like Kindle blows physical fuses so that one can't install older firmware and stuff like that so they actively prevent users from having control of their device. I have no desire to be a customer of such types of vendors.
  - teekert 4y ago
    I have a pocketbook touch hd3 [0]. It's nice, tbh I feel that my Kindle Keyboard (died after 10 years) was higher quality, mainly because the buttons on the hd3 can move a bit. Other than that it's a nice device, it can read all formats and has a feature to make the front light more red. [0]: https://www.amazon.com/Pocketbook-Touch-HD-Metallic-Grey/dp/B07KPLXZJ4 https://www.amazon.com/Pocketbook-Touch-HD-Metallic-Grey/dp/...

tvhahn 4y ago

Ya, I love my kobo. I recently cracked the screen on mine (after about 8 plus years). I went straight to best buy the next day and got a new one.

Tagbert 4y ago

Calibre makes converting epubs and loading them onto Kindles. It handles a wide range of different ebook formats. I probably would work with your Kobo as well if you have some non-epub source documuments.

AlotOfReading 4y ago
You can use Calibre to convert with kindles, but some documents don't convert well without a lot of effort/tuning and you really shouldn't have to. Spend your money elsewhere. The biggest downside of Kobo for me has been Rakuten's update cadence. The system updates opt-out doesn't actually work from what I can tell and my device only comes out of airplane mode once every few months. Every damn time I do so it has to download an update, lagging out for a long time, and changing the UI in exciting new ways.
- bowsamic 4y ago
  I’ve never had any problem converting an epub to a mobi
  - AlotOfReading 4y ago
    You'd generally expect that to be the case as they're fairly similar formats internally. Nevertheless, I did probably thousands of conversions in a decade+ of owning various kindles and encountered issues more than a few times. When my last kindle finally kicked the bucket I simply switched to a kobo.
    - bowsamic 4y ago
      That's a pretty low failure rate then
- aaomidi 4y ago
  https://www.sendepubtokindle.com/ https://www.sendepubtokindle.com/ Works perfectly.

sgtnoodle 4y ago

A friend sold me an original kindle for maybe $20 one time. I used it to read about 75% of Orson Scott Card's novels within the Ender's Game series. After about a year, it stopped turning on. It was probably 7 years old by then, so I just got rid of it. I bought a 2" thick sci-fi book a few years ago, "Pandora's Star". It seemed pretty interesting, but way too much book to carry around. I got a kobo and put what I vaguely recall was named "koreader" on it. It was pretty nice. It stopped working after 6 months, though. I took it apart, and at least one power management IC is shorted out. Its e-ink display permanently says, "Sleeping..." It's been a paperweight on my nightstand for about 2 years, and a minor source of anxiety for me. I don't plan on buying another kobo device any time soon because I hate e-waste. My wife got me a kindle paperwhite to replace it, and it didn't take much work to get the same book onto it. I think I'm maybe 25% of the way through the book, but I can't really say because I don't understand what the numbers in the lower corner mean. I also printed the Rust programming language manual to PDF and managed to copy it onto the kindle without much fuss.

dendodge 4y ago
> I don't understand what the numbers in the lower corner mean If you tap on the numbers in the lower corner, you can cycle through various options including % read. My personal preference is for time left in chapter.
- alanbernstein 4y ago
  My preference is for number of pages left in chapter, but for some reason Amazon doesn't seem to be able to implement that.
  - dendriti 4y ago
    Some Amazon Kindle books DO have "real" page numbers. It's an additional feature that must be supported. The problem of page numbers on reflowable text is much more difficult than it may appear.
    - 4y ago

sleepycatgirl 4y ago

Yep. Same here. Oh, and not to mention, how easier... is to just poke things? At least with Clara HD, don't have to fear about bricking it, because worst case scenario, I can just reflash the system image, and have it working again. And few days ago I just went and replaced internal microSD card with a bigger one (First making image of original one, then flashing it to bigger, and extending partition) and it just worked. Sadly or not, I like to hoard things locally, on the reader itself. And that includes manga. So yeah, being able to replace microSD Card was very convenient. And the device itself is a tiny bit more responsive overall too, alongside better transfer speeds :D

bmaupin 4y ago

Kobo isn't perfect but they have other nice features as well, such as Overdrive integration to check out books directly from the device, and Pocket integration for reading webpages offline. My only complaint is no equivalent of Send to Kindle for Kobo, so I always have to plug the device in if I want to copy an EPUB to it.

nowahe 4y ago

If you have a kobo, I highly recommend checking out koreader[1], which is an open-source ebook reader and is highly configurable (to the point where you can even write custom css rules from withing the e-reader), integrates with calibre natively (you can even connect to your Calibre library over Wifi), has a solid support for CBZ (with features like auto-cropping the border around your comic, automatically or manually), and more. Having used it, I don't think I could go back to Kobo's reader (and even less to Amazon's, which is a joke in term of configuration options). [1] : https://github.com/koreader/koreader https://github.com/koreader/koreader

evanreichard 4y ago
Yeah I use KOReader on my Kindle Paperwhite 5 and it’s definitely superior in every way.

WorldMaker 4y ago

After a certain OS version kindles all support plain (DRM-free) ePub files just fine, Amazon just has yet to update their "Send to Kindle" tools (both the Windows File Explorer extension tool and the "email to an amazon email address you setup" tool) to allow the .epub extension, but you can copy the files directly over USB and there are silly workarounds like renaming from .epub to something the tools do recognize. There's file extensions they will load just fine under. The interesting question is why if the systems support ePub, Amazon doesn't update the "Send to Kindle" tools to also support the extension? Those tools support .doc, .txt, .pdf, and other random things, just explicitly not .epub. It could just be that those tools are low maintenance and don't update often in general. Maybe it's simply as sinister as they don't want people to know kindles support ePubs, even though they do (because they have to) and the "Send to Kindle" tools are the primary interface people use for "what does my kindle support?" as very few users bother to directly USB their kindles and rely on wifi updates. It's strange.

WorldMaker 4y ago
Read the article: apparently the good news is that the "Send to Kindle" tools are announced to support .epub file extensions directly soon. The article makes the assumption that "Send to Kindle" will be reformatting .epub files to Kindle native formats and uses that assumption as the basis to rant about the Kindle native formats, but anecdata (such as the USB support and file rename workaround) again suggest kindles already support ePub well enough and that assumption may not be valid and "Send to Kindle" may not wind up reformatting ePub files (much).