Useful Ubuntu Touch Apps – Sturm Reader

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.

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. The various Amazon Kindle 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 the devices.

Sturm Reader is an ebook reader for Linux tailored for Ubuntu Touch and portable devices. This is free and open source software.

Features include:

• View in your library, by the title, or by the author.
• Import books from apps such as the file manager, Morph Browser, and WhatsWeb.
• App automatically finds all epub files in /home/phablet/.local/share/sturmreader.emanuelsorce/Books. Any book opened is automatically added to the library.
• Contents: Overview, pages, and bookmark functionality.
• Built now for Ubuntu Touch, Flatpak and Alpine Linux.
• Style the book:
  • Change the background colour: Choose from Light, Dark, or Black.
  • Quality slider.
  • Make the settings the default. There’s also a load defaults option.

Website: gitlab.com/TronFortyTwo/sturmreader
Developer: Emanuele Sorce
License: GNU General Public License v3.0

I evaluated Sturm Reader with the Volla Phone Quintus, a smartphone powered by the Mediatek Dimensity 7050 with 8 cores, 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, running Ubuntu Touch 24.04.

Eligibility criteria

For an Ubuntu Touch app to be awarded our love, it must satisfy the following criteria:
	High quality with a good set of features, stable in operation;
	No charge to use the app;
	No intrusive ads in the program;
	Open source and proprietary software can be included;