How to install and use Caliber on Linux

Caliber is a great program for e-book management. Caliber is not only allowed to maintain and organize your eBook library, but also to perform format conversions.

Caliber can also allow you to read e-books on your system without the need for an e-reader. Of course, you can always read the e-book on your smartphone.

Install Caliber

For a full installation, including all dependencies, you can use the following command:

sudo -v && wget -nv -O- https://download.calibre-ebook.com/linux-installer.sh | sudo sh /dev/stdin

The command will do all the settings on your system. If you get an untrusted certificate error, you should try the following command:

sudo -v && wget --no-check-certificate -nv -O- https://download.calibre-ebook.com/linux-installer.sh | sudo sh /dev/stdin

NOTE : You should have the xdg-utils, wget, xz-utils, and python 2 programs pre-installedon your system to compile the code. Make sure you have these installed before executing one of the above commands.

Starting with Caliber

Once installed, you're ready to create your eBook library. When you start Caliber, you should see a screen similar to the following:

The library is empty and you can easily find books online to add. The fastest way to add them, if you haven't already, is to search. Caliber has built-in search capabilities. At the top of the screen is a button that says Get Books . After you press the button, another window will open. Here, you can enter the author's name, book title or keywords. On the left side is a list of sites that are being searched according to the criteria you entered. You can deselect any website you don't want to search.

Let's look at an example. In "Title" , enter "Rikki Tikki Tavi" . This is one of the best books in the 'Jungle Book' series. After the search is complete, you can see the results shown in the following figure.

If you are looking for a specific format, such as EPUB, you can look under the 'Store' heading for a list of page names and formats. By default, the list is sorted by price, and all free books are at the top (if any).

If an entry has multiple formats listed, you will be prompted which format you want to download after double-clicking the entry you want to download. Once selected, you will be asked to add the downloaded book to your library.

If you double-click an entry without the format type listed, you will be taken to a specific website where you can manually download the book.

Let's say you already have e-books on your system. You can easily drag and drop files into the Caliber interface. You can also add books to the library by clicking the 'Add Books' icon at the top left of the Caliber window.

Book information

Most books, depending on the format, will have additional data in the file. For example, there may be a book cover image. If the cover is not what you want, does not exist, or does not match the book, you can replace it with another cover.

Click on the book entry once to select it, then right-click and choose 'Edit Metadata' and 'Edit Metadata Ind Individually' . Now. You will see a window similar to the one below:

As you can see, the cover photo is not always good. In the example e-book, the image is black. There is a button in the middle of the screen labeled 'Download Cover' . Press this button and let Caliber do a new cover search. Once a cover page is displayed that interests you, you can click on it to select it as a new cover photo.

You may have noticed that the Comments section to the right does not show a valid summary for the book. To try to fix some master metadata you can click on the 'Download Metadata' button at the bottom of the window. After you find the book's metadata, you'll be given a choice which to use if you find multiple options. You will then be presented with a list of all the cover images to choose from as this is part of the metadata.

Make sure you click OK to save any metadata that has been altered in download.

Book format

You can also convert e-books from one format to another. The formats that Caliber accepts and can convert from one format to another are:

1. AZW3
2. MOBI
3. DOCX
4. EPUB
5. FB2
6. HTMLZ
7. LIT
8. LRF
9. PDB
10. PDF
11. PMLZ
12. RB
13. RTF
14. SNB
15. TCR
16. TXT
17. TXTZ
18. ZIP

To make a conversion, you need to click the Convert Books button at the top of the Caliber screen. By clicking on the icon, you can convert an e-book. If you click the down arrow to the right of the button, you can choose to convert books individually or in bulk.

No matter what you convert, the output format is listed on the top right of the conversion screen.

Converting e-books can be helpful. Sometimes, you can scour the Internet for a particular e-book and find it only in some strange format that your e-reader won't recognize. Using Caliber, you can convert it to a format that is better for you.

Editing e-books

If you come across a buggy, sometimes annoying e-book, you can fix it.

On the main Caliber screen, you should highlight the e-book you want to edit and then click the Edit Book button at the top right of the screen.

After opening the e-book for editing, you will see three columns of information. The leftmost column shows the different HTML files in the EPUB. The middle column contains the HTML content of the file you have selected on the left. The right column shows what the HTML content should look like in the E-reader.

E-Reader

To read your book, you need to double-click on the e-book entry and the e-book will open in the Caliber e-book reader. Here, you can resize windows and read e-books from your library.

You can read through the e-books and edit them on the go, if needed.

Caliber is a very useful tool for e-books. You can also download Caliber for Windows and MacOS, but keep in mind that it's better to use it on Linux!

Hope you are succesful.

David Pac

Update 14 April 2021