Submitted 11 months ago by lenuup@reddthat.com to selfhosted@lemmy.world
I am setting up a new server for my media and wanted to ask for your best ways to manage an ebook and comic collection. I have been using calibre so far, but it is not really designed to be managed remotely.
Try audiobookshelf I use it for both audiobooks and ebooks. It has a best user management and has also mobile apps
I agree. Try it. I only have a couple of ebooks in mine, but it’s a pretty good experience, even on the mobile app.
Calibre-Web can be used remotely just fine…?
I’ve just been down this exact journey, and ended up settling on Kavita. It has all the browse, search and library stuff you’d expect. You can download or read things in the web interface. I’m only using it for epub and PDF books, but its focus is comics and manga so I expect it to shine there.
I don’t think it does mobi, but since I use Calibre on my laptop to neaten up covers and metadata before I drop books on to the server it’s a simple matter to convert the odd mobi I end up with. Installation (using docker inside an LXC) was simple.
It’s been a really straightforward, good experience. Highly recommend. I like it better than AudioBookshelf (which I’m already hosting for audio books) which I also tried, but didn’t like as much for inexplicable reasons. I also considered Calibre-Web, but that seemed a bit messy since I guess I’d use Calibre on my laptop to manage my books on a NAS share then serve it headless from the server with Calibre-Web? I might have that completely wrong, I didn’t spend any time looking into it because Kavita was the second thing I tried and it did exactly what I wanted.
i use calibre on desktop to clean uip library like you. After any updates i sync it to a dir on my nas that calibre web uses. its a really good setup and passes the wife test
Thanks - I thought it would be something like this I just hadn’t made the effort. Calibre-web just runs as a server?
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| LXC | Linux Containers |
| NAS | Network-Attached Storage |
| VNC | Virtual Network Computing for remote desktop access |
[Thread #347 for this sub, first seen 13th Dec 2023, 10:25] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
Calibre over Guacamole, Calibreweb, with Openbooks for usenet searching of books.
--- version: "2.1" services: calibre: image: lscr.io/linuxserver/calibre:latest container_name: calibre environment: - PUID=0 - PGID=0 - TZ=America/Denver security_opt: - seccomp=unconfined volumes: - ./data:/config ports: - 7080:8080 - 7081:8081 restart: unless-stopped labels: - com.centurylinklabs.watchtower.enable=true calibre-web: image: lscr.io/linuxserver/calibre-web:latest container_name: calibre-web environment: - PUID=0 - PGID=0 - TZ=America/Denver - DOCKER_MODS=linuxserver/mods:universal-calibre #optional volumes: - ./data/web-config:/config - ./data/:/books # - ./data/Calibre\ Library:/books ports: - 7083:8083 restart: unless-stopped labels: - com.centurylinklabs.watchtower.enable=true openbooks: ports: - 7082:80 volumes: - './data/:/books' restart: unless-stopped container_name: calibre-openbooks # command: --persist command: --name sodfappsdldjudls --persist environment: - BASE_PATH=/ image: evanbuss/openbooks:latest labels: - com.centurylinklabs.watchtower.enable=true
For downloading, I use Readarr or manually download from where I buy the books. A lot of the time the books I buy have DRM so I end up pirating them anyway 🤷. When readarr sends a book to calibre, it tells it to convert it so I’ve always got epub and mobi available.
For accessing my library, I use calibre-server, which I think comes bundled with the calibre desktop app. It’s got a basic web interface for uploading, editing some metadata, and downloading; and an OPDS API which my e-reader can use to download books. If I’m outside my home network I use my VPN to access it because I don’t trust calibre to be secure enough for internet exposure lol.
Don’t recall why I chose this instead of calibre-web but it works fine for my purposes.
Similar story here. Readarr (two instances, one for ebooks, another for audio). Calibre server with a watchdir to add books from libgen/elsewhere, and organising stuff. Calibre-web because trying to use calibre server on a phone is painful. WebDAV connection through phone app (Moon+) as a backup (LAN only).
Ayy Moonreader+, I use that one too. So responsive.
I’m currently using Calibre and Audiobookshelf, where the latter is basically just using the folder structure of Calibre with and additional folder for some audiobooks. Works okay but is not the greatest solution. The calibre library web interface is quite nice (not the weird VNC-style admin panel, the one on other port). People also mention lazylibrarian a lot but I never tried it.
I’m using the calibre-web version with several kobo ebooks. It pretty good. The best user experience is with the kobo epub format.
I think lazylibrarian is user to search and download books automatically. Are you using calibre as in the native tool, or calibre-web?
Native tool, not the web. So far, I have not felt the need to use anything else; calibre does decent management and connects to my koreader installations on ebook readers, while the abs app handles all interactions with phones. The latter has good wife-approval but the syncing through calibre to readers is complex and not super reliable, so it still requires “admin intervention”
yep lazylib for books and mags. that feed calibre which cleans and converts to kepub, then that all is synched to nas for calibre-web
there are people that only use lazylib as it has odps server aswell
I’m currently using Calibre/Calibre-Web and Audiobookshelf, for podcasts and audiobooks.
This is my setup. Caliber-Web is nice because it just points to your Calibre application database. It’s more robust than the built in web server and I can set it up to sync with my Kobo over wifi.
I use Kavita. I edit the metadata in either Calibre, comictagger, or ComicRack (deprecated) first depending on whether it's a book or a comic.
You might also consider Komga, but I was never able to get it set up correctly on Windows so I can't directly compare the two.
I just recently started using kavita, and absolutely love it. The interface is similar to Plex, if that is a helpful frame of reference.
I’d like to hear some alternatives too. Calibre is fine but it’s pajeetware.
skoberlink@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I tried to avoid Calibre for as long as I could. In my opinion, it’s way too opinionated about how everything is organized. Instead of working with you, the user, it forces you into line with how the developer thinks it should work. The developer is also kind of an ass to his community and, as a dev myself, I have some concerns over some of their choices.
All that said, I finally gave in recently and converted to Calibre because there’s nothing else that works as well. It’s too niche of a space for there to be much competition. To use it remotely - or, more accurately for my use, headless - the docker image I use sets up a VNC viewer to work with the application.
For actually browsing the content that Calibre organizes, I settled on Kavita. There’s no competition for Calibre’s organization but Kavita is easily the best content browser I’ve tried. If you’ve organized and tagged your ebooks with Calibre, it does a great job of making them available on the web and offers an OPDS server as well as the web viewer. I am more into ebooks than comics or manga but I have a few that Kavita also manages well.
code@lemmy.zip 11 months ago
look at calibreweb for web front end. it is VERY good, It even syncs to my kobo wirelessly. love that app