7 of the Best Free Linux e-book Tools
An electronic book (commonly abbreviated e-book) is a text and
image-based publication which can be read on a computer or other
digital devices such as an e-book reader.
The rise of multimedia digital downloads in recent
years has been truly extraordinary. The impact has been so great in
respect of digital music downloads that they have more than doubled in
the past 4 years and caused a continuing decline in sales of CDs. This
has led to some music labels have even decided to stop releasing
singles on a physical format. We do not forsee that major book
publishing companies will abandon paperbacks.
However, the expansion of digital downloads equally applies to books.
The biggest booksellers have reported that they now sell more digital
books than paperbacks.
Digital books are well established. Project Gutenberg, an
online library of books that can be downloaded free of charge, has been
expanding its collection since 1971. Almost its entire library consists
of books that are available in the public domain, although there are a
few copyright texts which are also included.
The popularity of digital e-books has been accelerated by a
number of
dedicated portable e-book readers. Amazon Kindle, Sony's
eBook readers, and Barnes
and Noble nook are extremely popular devices which have
enabled readers to conveniently access a huge library of books,
magazines and
newspapers on the move. What is particularly noteworthy is that Linux
is the operating system that runs each of these devices.
However, Linux is also an attractive way of reading e-books on
a desktop computer or notebook. Linux has a good range of open source
software which helps users to organise their e-book collection, catch
up on a novel, or even to create and publish their own e-book.
To provide an insight into the free software that is
available, we have compiled a list of 7 of our favorite e-book
software. Hopefully, there will be something of interest here
for anyone who wants to read, organise and create electronic books. We
give our highest recommendation to Calibre.
So, let's explore the 7 e-book tools at hand. For each
application we have compiled its own portal page, a full description
with an in-depth analysis of its features, screenshots, together with
links to relevant resources and reviews.
| e-book Tools |
| Calibre |
A complete e-library solution |
| Sigil |
WYSIWYG
e-book editor |
| FBReader |
e-book reader that makes it simple to access free
literature |
| Lucidor |
Simple
e-book reader |
| Evince |
Document viewer for multiple document formats |
| Okular |
Powerful
universal document viewer |
| EPUBReader |
Firefox add-on which lets you read ePub-files in the
browser |
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Last Updated Tuesday, April 24 2012 @ 03:05 PM EDT
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