Best Ways to Read E-books on Ubuntu

With the advent of Kindle, Nook, and the Apple iPad, many bibliophiles are slowly moving away from paperbacks and hardbound books. Earlier a book lover used to spend hours looking for that perfect book in a rustic library, now they just search for their favorite title on Amazon.com and they can start reading in minutes. Of course, not all are happy with this e-book market, and many authors -- though e-books being an established platform-- often sneer at this surging new medium of publishing.

That said, e-books do have certain advantages over their paper-made counterparts. Firstly, e-books offer the flexibility of reading your favorite books without the added weight. You can carry thousands of books in one small device making it much more lucrative for voracious readers. Also, e-books are slightly cheaper than paperbacks, especially on the Amazon Kindle store. So, in short, there’s no doubt that e-books are here to stay in the long run, and who knows, they might completely replace the paperback industry.

So, if you too are an Ubuntu user like us who loves to read the best books, here are some great software applications that should come in handy. These apps not only allow you to easily read e-books, but also manage them effortlessly.

Calibre

Calibre is more of an e-book management tool than an e-book reader. The free software lets you organize your e-book collection in a nice library along with metadata tagging. For books that don’t have any tags, Calibre also allows you to automatically download the metadata, thus making your library much more organized.

Secondly, if you own a Kindle, Nook, or any other popular e-book reader, you can hook it up with Calibre thus allowing you to transfer books from your computer to your device. Furthermore, you can also convert e-books from one format to another. So let’s say you download a PDF book and want to convert it into ePub, you can do that easily by pressing the convert button on the toolbar.

Finally, last but not the least, Calibre does serve as a good e-book reader. We have to admit that it’s nothing fancy; however, it does let you read your favorite novel without much distraction. Worth a download if you’re looking for a one-stop solution for your e-book needs. If you’re looking for something simpler though, then simply go for the other tools mentioned on the list.

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