FBReader for Linux
In December 2021, after years of development suspension, we released FBReader 2.0 for Linux. Although the app includes most iOS and Android versions features, this is not a port of the mobile version. It is designed especially for desktop/laptop computers.
FBReader 2.0 is free of charge but not open-source. Currently, it is available on the Snap store. That means you can install the reader on the most popular Linux distributions like Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu, and more others. We release the AppImage package in 2022.
Current version: 2.0β16 (1.999.16), published 18th July 2022
The table shows the status of the most significant features in the latest version.
| Supported formats | ePub, fb2, fb2.zip, mobi, rtf, MS doc, plain text, cbz |
| Not supported formats | cbr, cb7, pdf, djvu, docx |
| Book reading, styles, hyperlinks, hyphenations | Fully implemented |
| Page header and footer | Fully implemented, is customisable |
| Page turning/text scrolling | Spacebar and right arrow key turn page forward; left arrow key turns back. Up and down arrows scroll text line-by-line. Mouse click on right/left margins turns ahead/back. Mouse wheel as well as up and down arrows scroll line-by-line |
| Multi-book (multi-window) mode | Fully implemented |
| Two-column mode | Fully implemented. The text switches to two-column mode automatically. You can tune the logic in the “Columns & Margins” preferences section |
| Text selection | Implemented, excluding automatic text scrolling when user selects end of the page |
| Table of contents | Fully implemented |
| Bookmarks | Implemented: adding, removing, style selection, navigation over the bookmarks list; adding/editing/removing styles; to be implemented: text editing |
| Language selection | Automatic language/encoding detection only; there is no way to fix a detection error manually |
| Advanced text navigation | Click on the page footer navigates over the text; undo/redo buttons allow to jump back. The position stack persists between runs |
| Dark theme | Fully implemented; on Linux, you have to switch it manually in the window menu (three dots in the upper top corner) |
| All titles list | Fully implemented |
| Lists of recently added/opened books | Fully implemented |
| Books by author | Fully implemented |
| Books by series | Fully implemented |
| Books by tags | Not implemented yet |
| Custom shelves | Not implemented yet |
| Book download | Fully implemented |
| Book meta info dialogue | Fully implemented |
| Book deletion | Fully implemented |
| Multiple book selection, group operations | Not implemented yet |
| Browsing | Implemented, some OPDS features are still under development |
| Book downloading | Fully implemented |
| Navigation history | Implemented, not persists between runs |
| Bookmarks | Fully implemented |
| Search | Implemented, needs some improvements in multi-catalogue search |
| Built-in catalogues | Project Gutenberg and Smashwords Online Catalogue |
| Adding of custom OPDS catalogues | Fully implemented |
| Network authorisation | Implemented for some catalogues |
| Titles list from server | Fully implemented |
| Uploading new books to the server | Fully implemented |
| Deleting books | Fully implemented |
| A way to force upload a recently deleted book | Not implemented yet |
| Positions | Fully implemented |
| Bookmarks | Fully implemented |
| Custom shelves | Not implemented yet |
| Network catalogues list, library bookmarks | Not implemented yet |
| Preferences dialogue | Implemented; some minor pages and options are still missing |
| Settings export/import | Fully implemented |
