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April 21, 2011

Getting Amazon Kindle in Ubuntu (GNU/Linux) - 'The Easy Way'


Here I am going to show y'all how to get Amazon's Kindle application for reading commercial ebooks working in Ubuntu.

Note here I use the Knoppix distribution instead of Ubuntu, which is similar in many ways.

 

Refer to the linked article, Getting Amazon Kindle for PC running in Ubuntu under Wine, for the original guide.

However often times we determine what Ebooks we want to purchase based on what we see at the local book store.  Kindle is meant to render these more closed source and commercial products for us.

My first thought when I discovered it's not readily available for (GNU) Linux operating systems - apart from holy Android, of course - was of disbelief; isn't Linux the operating system on the original Kindle ebook reader? As one would expect, there are plenty of guides published online demonstrating various 'hacks', relating to the Kindle device and Kindle ebook format, for the more ambitious and confident, fit and patient (with ... much time to kill, maybe). "In the spirit of Open Source" and, more importantly, considering the casual and novice computer user who tends to run the Ubuntu flavour of GNU/Linux, I will interpret one short guide for you to make it work with only the graphical interface.

My mother - or "my mum" or "me ma"  - has been painfully 'switching'* between Windows and Ubuntu for at least twenty-four hours now, since she phoned me from Germany, trying to refer to an ebook she downloaded with Kindle and compose an essay on 'The Democratisation of the Media' in the process of her study respectively. She is a good example of an Ubuntu user who benefits from the advantages of running Linux (or not running Windoze) but has neither the interest nor the time to memorise and learn to apply typed commands, however basic they might seem to a relatively 'expert' user. The following destructables are dedicated to Mum... "Happy travels!"

 Step One – Install Wine

 In the Ubuntu main menu / Applications, click on Ubuntu Software Centre.

Type "wine" in the search field and click on the "WINE" entry in the results list.

If the button to the right is "Remove", you can close the window. Otherwise, if the button is "Install", you want to install Wine now. Click on Install. You will have to enter your administrator password to install the software. You can close the window when the process has finished.

Step Two – Obtain Kindle for PC (Windows Version)

Click on the following text (or copy it and paste it in a new browser window) and download the file 'KindleForPC-installer.exe' to 'Downloads' or a folder you can easily remember: http://d1xhj100piaj9u.cloudfront.net/25338/KindleForPC-installer.exe

Step Three – Run Kindle installer

Open up the Downloads folder (or wherever your downloads go) and right-click the icon, "KindleForPC-installer.exe". Click WINE in the pop-up menu.

The install process is completely automatic and 'came and went' in a split second on my computer.

Step Four – Change Windows Version for Kindle under Wine

We'll do this exactly as in the guide.

In the Applications menu, this time click on Wine Configuration under Wine. Click on the Add Application button. Double-click 'Program Files', 'Amazon', 'Kindle For PC', 'KindleForPC.exe'.

Click on the box following 'Windows Version:' and click to choose 'Windows 98'. Click on the OK button.

 

Step Five – Mark the Kindle Desktop icon as Trusted

This wasn't necessary in my case. Also, you can already click on Kindle For PC under Wine in the Applications menu.

Go back to the Ubuntu Desktop, right click on the Kindle for PC icon and left click on properties.  Go to the Permissions tab.  Click the check box to allow executing file as program.

You should now be able to start Kindle, and see it as in the first picture, every time from the icon on the desktop or the item in the Applications menu. We're done!

 

 

Another point to make is that the extra step to "Configure Wine" won't be necessary whenever the latest version of Kindle from the Amazon website works with Wine. I can't say when this will be either. Also this whole process will be made redundant as soon as Amazon catches on that there is a significant demand for a Linux edition of their Kindle application.

Just one more thing: I don't recommend the software and don't use it myself - I don't even have an account! This was a special favour for my mum and maybe I will go on to check out the free Lucidor software mentioned in the source article. Anything free and Open Source sounds promising to me...

I hope this helps someone out there. Good luck, Mum!


Written by choben at 12:43 AM.

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April 18, 2011

desktop dishevelment


Now that I've had my new laptop (Samsung QX310, Intel Core i5, NVIDIA GeForce 310M) for over two weeks, I think I'll have to learn not to use it - or to spend more time using it instead of sitting here trying to make it do stuff when I simply don't know how.

Talking of doing stuff, here is my 'To Do' list:

That's only the "important" tasks directly related to my computer, and doesn't include the many wonderful ideas I gurgitate, regurgitate and cogitate every day:

What I have been doing is,

I installed Ubuntu on my friend's laptop today when he asked me if I could remove the viruses from Windows. He can sort out the viruses when he wants to use Windows again. I shrunk his 500Gb NTFS filesystem by 100Gb and made a 2Gb partition for 'swap', 50Gb partition for 'root' and a 48Gb partition for '/home'. I then edited '/etc/fstab' (when the ntfs-config front end embarrassingly wouldn't start) to mount the NTFS partition on boot and pointed Rythmbox to his music collection deep down in his Windows documents folder. I managed to demonstrate the subsequent success just as we were about to get out of his car in town! He seems quite satisfied and has lots of playing around to do yet before I introduce him to extra software repositories, Wine and Clamwin.

I believe this has inspired me to advertise as an 'Agent Ubuntu' private GNU/Linux consultant in the local region where you might otherwise never hear of the term. Watch this space...

Also for the first time ever I was standing among a majority of GNU/Linux users today: myself, my only friend who was using it before I met him, and the third person who before long was admitting she ought to change her OS soon. It was funny when I did point it out in a casual geek kind of way.

Knoppix and Sabayon were the first Linux distributions to work instantly with my wireless card (and with Ubuntu I couldn't even use the ethernet!) so I went ahead and installed Sabayon. Using it turned out to be quite tiresome and I got a lot further with Opensuse 11.4 when I realised it worked too. I still haven't managed to make the NVIDIA graphics driver work yet. I downloaded Ubuntu Natty Narwhal (11.04) Beta out of curiosity and really quite liked the current Unity desktop, but it doesn't like NVIDIA drivers either. Trawling forums, I found many related problems and few relevant solutions. I might just put that on hold until the experts get it covered in future releases. I'll make this clear that in support of GNU/Linux and Opensource software, I am disappointed in the hardware manufacturers who after a year don't release drivers for Linux or better yet release them as Opensource. Samsung laptops are not as common but a year since the production of a Broadcom wireless card, an NVIDIA graphics card and whatever touchpad is a long time to wait for proper functionality!


Written by choben at 11:40 PM.

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