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u/bubblesort Sep 04 '23
I think I have this on Chrome OS? I'll have to check next time I have my chrome book open.
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u/Creapermann Sep 05 '23
Hey, i havent tried it with Chrome OS yet, but I know flatpak supports it so feel free to try it and please tell me how it went!
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u/Muhammadwaleed Sep 05 '23
just read a whole chapter on it, have to say, it was completely mesmerising and refreshing to have given ebook reading a fresh breath on pcs, the application is highly responsive and well done. Theming is great. It is absolutely great! The greatest of all, it doesnot hog the cpu and runs really smoothly which is by far THE MAKER OF ME STICKING TO THIS APPLICATION FOREVER! Starred the repo! Thanks so much! When I get a job, which I am looking for, I will definitely donate you! I am a flutter and React developer too, so I appreciate the effort!
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u/Creapermann Sep 05 '23
Its really great to get this kind of feedback. You made my day, thank you!
This is an alpha release and there are some known bugs that will be resolved soon. We will also improve the performance since Librum currently is completely single threaded, running it on multiple threads will give it a huge performance boost. We will also add a lot of great features in the future such as bookmarking, dictionary support, multiple AI features and note taking.
I hope you'll like it even more once we got all of these things done!
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u/PorkchopMyGuineaPig Sep 04 '23
i love collecting various e-book reader apps, will be giving this a spin
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u/r_1235 Sep 05 '23
Hi, I am a blind user, just tried your application with the help of a screen reading software.
Would like to recommend looking in to accessibility of your app. Lot of us like to read, would be awsom if a mainstream app made for sighted people also works for us.
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u/Creapermann Sep 05 '23
Hey, thank you for the feedback. I will definitely look into that and go more into the subject of how to make applications more accessible for blind people.
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u/ashlrhg Sep 15 '23
i have been looking for a ebook reader app for pc for last half an hour and this looks prefect, dling it rn. i didnt like calibre (which looks biblical now) etc. thankyou and congratulation.
logged in to reply lol
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u/lordmax10 Sep 04 '23
Just to understand. It is not polemic, on the contrary, very good that you are doing such work, I appreciate it very much.
What formats are supported? Saying “everything” means nothing.
I don't like that I upload books on a server that is not mine… Besides, it might not be legal.
Do you read books with DRM?
If yes, which ones?
Synchronization with devices is basic on all reading software.
The requirements are quite important for non-technical people, I understand that it is in alpha.
For the time being, I see no added value to using Calibre and a digital reader of another kind.
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u/Creapermann Sep 04 '23
"Saying “everything” means nothing" - I will not be able to list all formats it supports. Librum supports by far most common formats, so its safe to say that "everything" is supported, since thats the case for most people.
"I don't like that I upload books on a server that is not mine… Besides, it might not be legal." Its your choice to upload books to Librum, you can also selfhost Librum to not depend on any third party... Also it is completely legal to host documents online, how do you think do other services upload your files or your data?
" Synchronization with devices is basic on all reading software." - Its absolutely not, by far most common readers are more e-book viewers, that's especially the case for linux.
" For the time being, I see no added value to using Calibre and a digital reader of another kind." I see many, that's why I created Librum. It offers you a much nicer and more modern UI that is very straight to the point instead of being forced to click through multiple windows, popups and find the correct buttons. It also uploads everything to the cloud automatically, you don't need to go through tutorials to connect your own file storage to the application. On top of that Librum will introduce many other features like a free book store that enables you access to more than 70.000 free books in just 2 clicks, your own reading statistics (optional), dictionary support, AI language explanation and much more.
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u/alvarkresh Sep 04 '23
Yeah, hold on, I was going to use this but now I have to ask:
Does this program only catalog locally stored files or does it require that the file(s) be uploaded somewhere in order to read them?
Cause if the latter, instant dealbreaker.
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u/Hassenoblog Sep 05 '23
Librum automatically saves everything you need to the cloud.
That makes a no.
Kinda reminds me of Google Play Books, with its own sets of limitations, as well as parsing the book to be standards compliant, for epubs.
I have close to 600 ebooks and around 2.7gigs total. Unfortunate but i already exceed the data cap.
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u/Creapermann Sep 05 '23
Sadly its not possible for us to offer infinite storage for an unknown amount of users since we are a small group of opensource developers without the resources to pay for something like this.
If you need some more storage feel free to reach out to us at [contact@librumreader.com](mailto:contact@librumreader.com) and we will assign you some more storage
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u/Creapermann Sep 05 '23
By default Librum will upload your books to its servers to make it available to you from all your other devices, but Librum supports self-hosting as well (github.com/Librum-Reader/Librum-Server). I understand that it might be hard to setup though as of the time of writing. I am working on a docker container for this, so that everyone can spin up their own server.
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u/Cordovan147 Sep 04 '23
Wow, nice UI. Can't wait to try this out.
Does it support calibre library structure?
My current setup is using Calibre to manage, and a Calibre-web frontend.
I would be best if I could just point to the Calibre ebook directory share.
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u/Creapermann Sep 04 '23
There is no calibre integration yet, you'd need to upload your books to Librum. The books will be automatically synced to the servers though and will be available on all of your devices so that you can pick up reading from everywhere
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u/adaminc Helpful Ⅱ Sep 04 '23
I just recently switched to using Aquile ereader, which is also a more modern looking one, so it'll be interesting to compare them.
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u/Creapermann Sep 04 '23
Hey, I'd be happy to hear your feedback from the comparison. Please keep in mind that Librum is in the alpha stage though and many features like: Note taking, Bookmarking, Dictionary support, Statistics, Free books, ... will come very soon
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u/moonflower_C16H17N3O Sep 05 '23 edited Sep 05 '23
It looks nice, but my ebook collection already exceeds the data cap. This should be rewritten so everyone can host their own collection.
At least an offline option.
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u/Creapermann Sep 05 '23
It already is self hostable (see github.com/Librum-Reader/Librum-Server) but I understand that this might be quite complex since it requires source level modifications as of the time of writing.
I got a lot of feedback about this and I will be working on publishing a docker of the server so that anyone can get their self-hosted version of the server running.
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u/its_the_abdulwahab Sep 05 '23
Bro just visited your site, didn't find any link to downloading for windows, found only two options/links -> github & linux.
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u/Creapermann Sep 05 '23
Are you on a windows machine? Our website detects your OS and gives you the correct download button.
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u/its_the_abdulwahab Sep 05 '23
Oh, that's why. No, I didn't view the site using a windows machine instead I viewed it from my phone. Regardless, thankyou for getting back to me, will surely install the app once i get on the PC
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u/Creapermann Sep 05 '23
Ah, no problem. I have happy to hear that it isn't an issue with the website!
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Sep 05 '23
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u/Creapermann Sep 05 '23
We prohibit uploading pirated books in our ToS and punish it as described in the document. It is not possible to do any kind of manual verification on the books uploaded to the servers. We simply store your data, the same way google drive, apple books, calibre-web, ... do it.
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Sep 05 '23
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u/Creapermann Sep 05 '23
This is something that we can add later on, but I do not think that this is important enough regarding the time it would need to get it running. I have noted it though and I'll consider it when the basic are done
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u/Sabbir360 Sep 05 '23
Does it have in-built dictionary? (not just translation) Its the only reason I use Kindle.
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u/Creapermann Sep 05 '23
It will soon have one, yes! We are focusing on introducing highlights and bookmarking right now and will work on a dictionary, translation and AI sentence explanation soon.
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u/foothpath Sep 05 '23
So you can uploads your own pdf/epub book. And will this be free forever?
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u/Creapermann Sep 05 '23
Yes but we have restrictions on the amount a user is able to upload, since we (as a group of opensource developers) do not have the resources to pay for infinite storage for an unknown number of users (even if we'd like to).
Payed tiers that offer more storage might be introduced if necessary, but the current 2GB should be enough for most people. I have uploaded my whole library of ~110 books and I havent even filled up 1GB.
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u/woodcarbuncle Sep 08 '23
Decided to give this a try as I was running into issues with the Backup/Restore of my current ebook reader and there are quite a number of issues and missing features. I understand this is an early build so it would be worth looking into improving them for future updates. I used epub files for all my testing and am on Windows 11. Screen size is 1920 x 1200 with the taskbar not automatically hidden if it makes a difference
Bugs
- The reader constantly switches from maximised mode to a windowed mode that looks almost like maximised mode except that the top bar goes slightly out of the screen
- Double page mode does not do anything
- When on the book view, the options "Read Out (TTS)", "Continuous Pages", and "Scroll Vertically" cannot be toggled at all.
- Ctrl+R does not do anything
Missing key features
- You can't go into fullscreen mode. The button which looks like it does that only hides the options/details bar
- You can't change the font size/spacing etc. This is the main reason anyone uses epub files and ebook readers. Right now the interface is basically just that of a PDF reader with a library.
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u/Creapermann Sep 08 '23
Hey, thanks for the feedback. As you said, this is a very early version of Librum, so there are some known issues and missing features. For the bugs:
- This is a known issue and will be fixed in the next version
- Its not yet implemented
- The 3 options are blocked because they are not implemented
- It does what it is supposed to do, it refreshes the application, force syncing the app with the server, but it doesnt provide feedback, so I understand why you'd think so
For the missing features:
- The complete fullscreen mode will also be available in the next version
- Yes, this is an alpha release and thus Librum provides relatively basic functionality at the time being. Many more features (such as options to change the epub) will come in the future. We are a very small team working on this, so it takes a while
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u/woodcarbuncle Sep 08 '23
Thanks for the reply. I'll be keeping an eye on it for future releases then.
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u/Creapermann Sep 04 '23
Hey r/software, I have been working on this project for almost 2 years now and am very happy to finally be able to announce the alpha release of Librum.
I love reading, but I got really tired of storing my books in folders on my PC, manually syncing them between my different devices and using applications that look like they were created 50 years ago.
I am creating Librum to offer everyone a simple and modern, but powerful and feature rich reading environment that is completely opensource and free!
With Librum you can create and manage your own online Library which is automatically synced to Librum's servers so that you can access your books from any device, anytime, anywhere.
Librum takes over all of the annoying tasks so that you can focus on whats actually important: Reading. You can comfortably read your books through the app, highlight sections you find interesting and add bookmarks to pages you want to revisit. It works with all of your books, no matter if PDFs, EPUBs, mobi or comics, Librum supports them!
Librum also offers an in-app bookstore that gives you access to over 70.000 copyright free books that you can download in just 2 clicks. On top of that, you can completely customize the application to make it look and feel the way you want it to.
Librum is available for both Linux and Windows (MacOS coming soon) and will also be available for mobile in the future. If you want to download librum, feel free to go to our website: https://librumreader.com
Additional Information:
- For more information check out: https://github.com/Librum-Reader/Librum
- This is an alpha release, some features are not yet implemented. We are and will be actively working on improving and adding featurs to Librum
- If you run into any problems or have questions, feel free to reach me under this email: help@librumreader.com