this post was submitted on 15 Dec 2023
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My question is basically the title. I'm making my own Puppy Linux remaster and it already has a .PDF reader for it that is very small. I think it's called Evince? It has a native GTK UI and starts in a second, uses very little RAM and CPU. Now I need a .EPUB reader. I've seen a couple different .EPUB reader apps out there for different distros, and they all the .EPUB readers seem to fall into a couple categories:

  • humongous JS monstrosity that runs inside a web browser OR packages an entire chrome copy into it with a bloated dependency hell

  • something else that is humongous and has dependency hell but non secretly a massive web app inside a web browser under the hood.

So is there some third option that's small and light and easy to install like the normal .PDF reader? I'm just asking because I honestly didn't find one that fit the bill.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

You're going to have a web browser installed, right? .epub files are just zips with HTML/images/CSS inside. Just find the HTML file with named "toc" and go from there.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago

I.e. install a Browser extension that does this

[–] [email protected] 15 points 8 months ago (2 children)

As far as I know, MuPDF is not that heavy, and can view both PDFs and EPUBs (and others).

I personally use zathura, which is a very, very light weight document viewer, has vi style key bindings, and has plugins for viewing PDF, EPUB, CB, and others. Works pretty well in a keyboard centric desktop environment (I use Hyprland).

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago

zathura is amazingly lightweight and does the job right. i even use that on my phone (which is not that powerful).

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

+1 for Zathura.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago

Assuming you have a Firefox derived browser installed, you could just add an EPUB extension to the browser.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago (2 children)

MuPDF https://mupdf.com/ It does PDF and Epub and is pretty light.

epy https://github.com/wustho/epy is a cli Epub reader

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago

I didn't realize MuPDF did both! That might be what I need. Thank you.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Also, are you banned? I can only see your post in my inbox, but not on the thread.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

if he was banned you couldn't see him anywhere, probably federation being funcky, or your app not updating both at the same time

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago

Just checked the modlog. I don't appear to be banned. Funky Federation stuff.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

I have no idea how I would be banned, I'm not super active. How can I find out if I've been banned?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

Take Emacs. Then you have everything. 😎

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

puppy is really an underappreciated distro.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

Epy reader is command line, so not very discoverable, but I freaking love it

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

There's a couple of command lines e-reader apps you may want to try.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago
[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

One option is to convert to txt for any text-only epubs that you have. There are a ton of lightweight options if you're willing to use format-shifted copies on your computer.