Bookworm vs Calibre
November 26, 2025 | Author: Maria Lin
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A simple, focused eBook reader for Linux. Read the books you love without having to worry about different format complexities like epub, pdf, mobi, cbr, etc.
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Calibre is a free, open-source program (written in Python) for managing e-book libraries on Windows, Mac and Linux. It offers the most rich set of features, divided into the following main categories: library management, e-book conversion, synchronization with e-readers, downloading news from the internet and converting them to e-book formats, e-book viewer-reader, e-book editor and a content server for web access to your book collection. The program reorganizes book files into own structure. There are numerous plugins developed for the program by the community. However, many find the interface cluttered and unwieldy.
Bookworm vs Calibre in our news:
2022. Calibre 6.0 now has text to speech and full text search
Calibre has just released a major update to its ebook management software. The standout feature is Full Text Search; Calibre can now optionally index all the books in your library, allowing you to search your entire collection for a specific word or phrase. To use this new function, click on the FT button to the left of the search bar. This will enable you to index your library and, once indexing is complete, perform searches. Another significant new feature is Read Aloud, which will use your computer's default voice assistant to read any ebook in your collection. This includes Google Assistant, Siri, Alexa and Cortana. You can even adjust the playback speed for those who prefer to speed it up or slow it down. Calibre also now supports CPU architectures, including Apple Silicon, without the need for Rosetta translation. This is a major enhancement, as the app is now optimized for the M1 and M2 chips in Apple laptops and Apple Studio computers.
2019. Bookworm - new ebook reader for Linux
The new program called Bookworm is a ebook reader that was developed for Elementary OS, but also available for other Linux distributions such as Ubuntu or OpenSUSE. Options to install from source or flatpack are provided as well. It reads many popular ebook formats such as EPUB, PDF, MOBI, FB2, CBR and CBZ. There are many options to configure the reading experience. You can change the size of the fonts, load in your own fonts, control the line spacing and margins. You can annotate and write notes and conduct highlights. There is also a dark mode feature, where you can turn the background black and the text white. This is a neat little program that has active development. If you run Linux as your primary OS at home, at least you have an alternative to Calibre to read ebooks on the computer.
