Kindle Paperwhite and Linux

[dargaud]

Hello all,
I'm tempted by an Amazon Kindle Paperwhite but I have a few questions that are either specific to this model or maybe to all Kindles (I've never seen one). What happens when you connect one to an Ubuntu PC ? Do you see its content in mass storage mode or is it the same locked-down **** as an iPhone ?

If so, can you put pdf, epub, cbz, cbr, etc on it and read them or is it limited to accessing content via wifi/3G only from Amazon ?

Yeah, I know it's not out yet, but how do the older models fare on that ?
Thanks

[David D.]

I have a Kindle Fire and my wife has a second generation Kindle. With both, when connected to my computer via USB cable, the Kindles are mounted as "Kindle" and the contents are accessed as a storage device. Content from your computer can be added to the appropriate folder on the Kindle by dragging and dropping.

The best format for adding books is mobi. Books in other formats can be converted to mobi using a program called Calibre. Calibre is available in the repositories and is an ebook manager as well as a converter.

[oldrocker99]

I've heard advice to not buy the Kindle, since you're limited to only what Amazon will let you do; if you buy the Google tablet, which in Maximum PC Magazine, was rated higher than the iPad(!!), you can always install the Amazon app, and get stuff from other sources.

[dargaud]

Yeah, but I don't want a tablet (active screen) but an eReader (passiver eInk screen). Everything on the Paperwhite seems nice except for the impossibility to read cbr/cbz files that you can easily put together yourself. There's probably an easy scripted way to convert one to a pdf or something else.

[gvorik]

The following was taken from the "Calibre' manual as you can see the formats you are concerned about can be dealt with by Calibre... Hope this helps !!!


calibre supports the conversion of many input formats to many output formats. It can convert every input format in the following list, to every output format.


Input Formats: CBZ, CBR, CBC, CHM, DJVU, EPUB, FB2, HTML, HTMLZ, LIT, LRF, MOBI, ODT, PDF, PRC, PDB, PML, RB, RTF, SNB, TCR, TXT, TXTZ


Output Formats: AZW3, EPUB, FB2, OEB, LIT, LRF, MOBI, HTMLZ, PDB, PML, RB, PDF, RTF, SNB, TCR, TXT, TXTZ

[dargaud]

Thanks. I'd used Calibre a couple years ago (to prepare files for a friend) and I hadn't noticed the cbz/cbr capabilities back then.