[lolgab]

I installed it on my Amazon Kindle and I couldn't be happier. It shows once again that free software is superior to proprietary software. Free software grows slowly to make users happier and not to attract them with useless features to extract more value from them. Congratulations for this great piece of software.

[lordleft]

I’m a heavy KOReader user and absolutely adore it, but I think it definitely trades user-friendliness for power and flexibility. The Kindle proprietary store has a far more user friendly UI imo, though it’s getting progressively worse (and the fact that kindles now default to showing you the store pisses me off to no end). KOReader plugins really close the gap though.

[CWuestefeld]

I jailbroke my Kindle and moved to KOReader last year, primarily to get away from the Amazon jail. Just the bare KOReader UX was pretty utilitarian. It lacked polish for sure. I'll have to agree that, as noted elsewhere, the KOReader menus can be difficult to get a grip on.

If you're working at just the most basic level of functionality, I don't think KOReader is necessarily worse than native Kindle. The latter is hampered by being very opinionated about how you should experience it, and that includes pushing their store above the user's own library, and this is a real annoyance.

As you start to demand more capabilities they diverge more. Organizing when you've got many books on the device is clunky on both platforms, but in different ways. The native Kindle options for grouping are simple, but not necessarily easy. They're very generic, and very cumbersome to work with. Bare KOReader's support for folders makes more sense to me, and it's easier to deal with bulk books than is Kindle's.

Getting books onto Kindle is super-easy if you get them from Amazon, but complexity ramps up for other sources. Your best bet is plugging it into USB and transferring via the file system. Native KOReader add to this an OPDS capability (if your book repository supports it), which works but is less than pleasant. If you use BookOrbit as your repository, there's a plugin that gives you the remote BookOrbit UI from the Kindle, which makes things a LOT better.

I experimented with Simply UI for a bit but could never get it to work quite right. About a month ago I found Bookshelf, and this makes the UX pretty wonderful. It has a very attractive and intuitive UI. And it simplifies the interactions needed for group management a bit.

Bottom line is that KOReader + Bookshelf are, for at least a power user, a potentially far superior experience compared to baseline Kindle.

[the_lucifer]

> I think it definitely trades user-friendliness for power and flexibility

A tale as old as time with OSS software from what I've seen. So far the only exception that I've seen of a FOSS piece of software with great UX is Blender[1]. With UX not being a first-class citizen on Linux, exposure to a solid universal tooling to create great UX also exacerbates things.

I think the issue of bad UX and OSS are comorbid because good UX needs an extremely opinionated mind at the helm and a culture of prioritizing features and saying "No, this is not important" which OSS generally lacks.

[1]: https://www.blender.org/

[skydhash]

> So far the only exception that I've seen of a FOSS piece of software with great UX is Blender.

Most OSS software favors power users instead of total beginners. And even Blender is not a great exercise in discoverability. You need training to use it.

The stock software in Kobo and kindle can be used within minutes because they don't have a lot of features/options. And it's totally fine if that's what you need. Just like Windows 7's Notepad. But if you need more capabilities, your wish is notepad++/vim level (which does require more learning), which is what koreader is.

[incanus77]

> Most OSS software favors power users instead of total beginners. And even Blender is not a great exercise in discoverability. You need training to use it.

I think it’s more subtle than that. I am a power user — I was compiling my Linux kernel in the 90s, I wrote my own SSH tunnel manager 20 years ago, I always fiddle with settings, etc. etc.

However, I am constantly frustrated with a lot of OSS software because it expects you to think like the developer of the tool, instead of having empathy for the user. What feels obvious to the developer of the tool (I am making up a hopefully-representative hypothetical here, but finding the change of font under “Theme” because it’s how “it looks” but finding the font size under “View” because, well, you view it) feels frustrating and nonsensical to a normal human who relates both the font and its size the same way in their mind. Again, generally — I’m making generalizations here and not calling out any specific software, but trying to illustrate the feeling that I get.

When I switched to the Mac in 2002, it is because these sorts of things made sense. Yes, there were and are frustrations because of this sort of opinionated design mentality, but I judged the benefits to outweigh the positives. Unfortunately, Apple squandered this culture and skill and nowadays I often find the platform as frustrating as OSS ones, to the point where I have switched back to 50/50 time split between platforms.

[horsawlarway]

I find this is mostly just a "mindset" difference.

OSS software aligns mentally with "tool". It only exists because someone had a problem to solve, and they wanted a tool to solve it. Generally, people should expect to have to learn how to use tools. Then they solve their problem and move on. It takes effort, and the result is mastery which gives you new capabilities.

Consumer software (and especially anything ad supported or social media adjacent, and sadly in many respects, lots of modern SaaS companies) want to be as glitzy and smooth as possible, but they don't actually want you to solve your problem. Instead they'd really prefer that you simply spend as much time looking at their software as possible. So the experience can be quite pleasant, it feels nice, things feel obvious, you get the dopamine hits quick and fast. But after a while you realize you aren't actually all that productive (or even productive at all) when engaging with them. Because the goal of this software isn't to help you solve your problem. The goal is to keep your attention and extract your money. If it happens to solve your problem... sometimes that's fine, sometimes that's actually counter to the primary mission of extracting your time and money.

[panzi]

I love the discoverability of blender in the sense that I can hit space and start typing the name of the thing I want to do and run it from there while it shows me in what menu I could find it and what shortcut to use. And next space it remembers the last thing I ran so to repeat it its even faster.

This requires however to remember the name of the command (or parts of it). I often remember that but not where to find it or the shortcut.

It also requires that you chose the spacebar search option, which is the only correct option if you ask me. (Not a pro. Just messing around with blender sometimes.)

[testaccount28]

you will spend much MUCH more time as a power law user than as a new user, such that almost any % gain in productivity once familiar is worth almost any months of unproductivity when new.

[II2II]

I don't know what the situation is like for Kindle, but there are atleast two open source alternatives for Kobo. KOReader is the Swiss Army knife, Plato is easier to use.

A few people are suggesting that KOReader is symptomatic if the issues with open source software. The reality is it targets a particular group of users.

[gchamonlive]

I think the only proprietary software companies with any shot at longevity are Japanese companies. First Japan leads by far the ranking of oldest companies in the world (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_companies). Then we have actual software like Zelda Breath of the Wild which is a technical marvel comparable to the original Rollercoaster Tycoon considering how well it runs on the severely limited architecture of the Switch.

I think this boils down to profit not being the only driving force for these companies, but prestige and a sense of duty and responsibility towards something larger and less immediate.

[Larrikin]

I think you know nothing about Japanese software.

You're assuming long lasting soy sauce companies have anything to do with software development. Japan produces great video games despite how terrible otherwise the developer environment and culture is there and nearly all of the other software shows it.

[gchamonlive]

Didn't say they are good quality, or the working environment is nice or anything, just that they have higher chances or living a long time. The reasons might not be any more or less commendable, but they are different than chasing the highest profit margin possible in the next quarter

[hoherd]

This podcast about the history of zaibatsu, hardware, and software comes to mind. https://www.disruptingjapan.com/the-forgotten-mistake-that-k...

> Software was not viewed so much as a product, but more like a service, similar to integration, training, and ongoing support and maintenance. It was usually sold on a time-and-materials basis, and sometimes it was just thrown in for free to sweeten the deal. The real money was in the hardware.

> Software development was considered rather low-skill work. It didn’t pay well and was viewed as a kind of clerical work. The job was simply to write software that was close enough to whatever sales had promised the client while they were out drinking last week.

[tdeck]

This sounds like the way software was viewed through at least the 1960s in the US.

[smcleod]

Japanese software and software technology culture is amongst the worst in the world. They're famous for failing to adopt modern ways of working, tools and as an industry is seriously struggling. There's fantastic video in this from Asianometry: https://youtu.be/ky1nGQhHTso

[Cyph0n]

There is nothing inherently special about Japan or Japanese people. You can pull similar examples from many other countries.

[Kirth]

I take it you've never been to Japan...

Wouldn't wanna live there permanently. Wouldn't want to have been born Japanese. But my god the products and services are head and shoulders above my baseline expectations; it's simply nicer.

[Cyph0n]

I have lived in Japan.

> Wouldn't wanna live there permanently. Wouldn't want to have been born Japanese.

So I take it you understand that there is no free lunch.

[tdeck]

The apps I need to use for Rakuten Mobile are certainly... special.

[gchamonlive]

I agree. I didn't say it's special, only different. Can you say adult adoption is something common in the US?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_adult_adoption

[Cyph0n]

I have always found the adoption loophole to maintaining a family business hilariously smart.

I also understand why it’s not something common outside of Japan. Selling your family name in exchange for (maybe) keeping your business alive is distasteful at best.

[gchamonlive]

It's weird and shows how heinous the working culture is, salarymen are almost property of the company they work for

[jamesnorden]

I thought I was reading a summary about the Yakuza.

[sophrosyne42]

Bro has never played the thousands of shitty visual novels. Hell even from software games, which are beautifully well designed, are technically embarrassing

[gchamonlive]

They are, but the central theme of the convo here isn't quality but longevity

[theshackleford]

> Breath of the Wild which is a technical marvel comparable to the original Rollercoaster Tycoon considering how well it runs on the severely limited architecture of the Switch.

What? It can’t even maintain a stable 30fps on its own target hardware. That’s not an example is point to for something running “well.”

[smith7018]

Yeah, it's genuinely my favorite game of all time but to compare it to Rollercoaster Tycoon as "a technical marvel" is doing a massive disservice to Chris Sawyer.

[nargek]

Software

Software Japan

[kelvinjps10]

What extra features has over regular kindle software? I find kindle features enough but I want to know if I’m missing something

[nonninz]

As someone who thought the same (stock was enough for me) until I had some free time and switched, here are some things I'm really enjoying, in no particular order:

- Format support: EPUB, CBR/CBZ (comics, graphic novels), PDF

- Dark mode

- Fully programmable gestures and shortcuts

- Automatically syncs with my readeck instance (think readitlater/instapaper) to dowload the articles I save for example here on HN

- Calibre integration over wifi

- RSS/Atom

- Custom dictionaries

If you are into manga, there is an extension for directly downloading them on the device

I'm really happy I made the switch.

[dml2135]

What's the point of Dark mode on an eink screen?

[DarkStar851]

For some people it's less eye straining if they're reading at night, doesn't help for me personally, but it's a popular feature

[CWuestefeld]

Because most of the page is dark, with light only coming from the text, the total light emitted is much less. That makes it less annoying to my wife, when I'm reading before going to sleep.

[jabroni_salad]

I have no idea but users seem to like it despite all the ghosting.

The reason I use koreader is because it can sync my progress on disparate devices. I have a normal sized kobo and also a phone sized viwoods eink device.

[4thguy]

Being able to put epubs bought elsewhere and reading them without needing to convert the files is a huge plus

[maccard]

Where do you buy your epubs from?

[ghostDancer]

In my case from different places like itch.io , smashwords.com, gumroad.com, some fundraisings that provide epubs. You also have some nice free places like standardebooks.org. Or you can sail the digital seven seas if there's no availability.

[esrauch]

Theres a long trail of smaller stores, including Kobo store and ebooks.com

Standard Ebooks for high quality public domain books, though they also offer azw.

[bluGill]

https://www.gutenberg.org/ has more books than you will be able to read in your lifetime for no cost. Some are classics for a reason, some are garbage - same as any other publisher.

There are a number of other free ebook sites out there as well.

[Cider9986]

I wouldn't assume that purchases are taking place.

[TaLiTr]

Considering that the GP said

> Being able to put epubs bought elsewhere

I'd say it is in this case.

[matteuan]

Kindle already supports that, or at least my 5 years old vanilla Kindle can.

[m4lvin]

really, epub without conversion? Which kindle can do thay?

[fodkodrasz]

Stuff which may be above the kindle stock features (as seen on Paperwhite 10):

- Allowing to highlight text across pages. Used to work in the past but no longer works

- Allowing exit to library from mobi files without a cold reboot of the device. Used to work, no longer works.

- Not deleting contents of my library on an update overnight? (files still on disk, metadata gone, no longer visible on Kindle)

- consistently working dictionary, offline, at least for English texts? (used to mostly work, with recent updates it is broken)

- Not getting worse on every update

- Better keyboard layout, maybe supporting smaller languages

- Not deleting purchased books remotely

- better bookmarks and navigation support. I find Kindle useless for the technical reading and learning materials, as navigation and cross-referencing is slow clunky and useless, I need paper books for that, or a computer.

- Better image display? Also hinders proper use for digesting technical content.

- Text Search?

- EPUB support.

[joshstrange]

- Better and faster UI. I always thought the Kindle was just slow, nope, it's just really bad software

- Customise any/everything. Font size, line spacing, paragraph spacing, margins, header/footer content, the list goes on

- Ability to use things like BookOrbit (or alternatives) to manage your books and sync your progress/stats.

- LLM-integration through plugins like KOAssistant, highlight a word/phrase/passage to get it explained to you. This was invaluable for me when reading through a series from the 1950's about the late 1700's, lots of phrases I'd never heard. Many I could grasp the meaning from context but it was way more fun to hear the "why" behind the phrase. Same with historical events that I am less knowledgeable about than I wish. Let's me stay "in the book" instead of picking up my phone.

- Full control, some people don't care/need this but I love being able to SSH into my Kindle and do whatever I want. I love having my entire book reading experience end-to-end be fully open source and self-hosted.

[CWuestefeld]

Ability to use things like BookOrbit (or alternatives) to manage your books and sync your progress/stats

I discovered BookOrbit about two months ago. I think that it, together with the KOReader plugin that exposes the remote BO UI, may turn out to be a game changer in how I organize and access my ebook repository.

[joshstrange]

Same here, I jailbroke my kindle just 1-2 months ago (when the PW5 JB came out) and I had been using BookOrbit for only a few weeks before then. Since then I've read over 15 books and been loving BookOrbit and KOReader.

[nonninz]

Thanks for the BookOrbit hint. Seems very interesting.

I see it supports audiobooks and ebooks. Do you know if there is any way for keeping sync between an audiobook and ebook?

[joshstrange]

It does not have any sort of "whispersync" but, ironically?, I feel like whispersync could be recreated with things like Whisper and parsing the epub/whatever to line up progress. BookOrbit is in active development from what I can see (I'm not connected to the project, just a happy user) and it wouldn't surprise me if that was a feature in the future. It's something I've mulled over building for a while (even before Whisper).

For my Audiobooks I don't use BookOrbit because my setup is:

- Buy on Audible

- Rip DRM off

- Add to Plex

- Use Prologue (iOS only) to listen

And I freaking love that setup so I'm not looking to replace it currently.

[rahimnathwani]

IMO the most important one is more options for PDF rendering, often allowing you to read PDFs without squinting.

[kelvinjps10]

Well tbh the reason I like it has to do more with calibre (free software)

[vouaobrasil]

Never updating if you don't want an update. I see no reason for my e-reader to have updates. I have a Kobo and after I updated it once about 5 years ago I haven't since because it already does everything I need it to.

[teroshan]

Not only is it the superior piece of software, the freedom it offers by dissociating the choice of hardware from the choice of software is another example why free software and interoperability is something we should strive for.

[hashworks]

Funnily koreader comes with a lot of features that are useless to me, but I love that I can just disable the respective plugins.

[hs86]

I like the Readwise integration via plugin and the EPUB support, but for the first few days with it, I was busy understanding the menu hierarchy and trying to figure out how to match the styling and spacing of my native Kindle books. The out-of-the-box experience is unfortunately just "tasteless," and I needed some time to warm up to it.

[GlacierFox]

Yeah and like the majority of open source software, the UI is garbage and unintuitive.

[thewhitetulip]

It shows reading stats that I absolutely love!!