I use Audiobookshelf as the app support is great (allows downloading offline versions and progress syncs when you reconnect to internet). This works amazingly well with my Boox Palma 2 since it runs android.

I don’t download a ton of books, so I just have some simple Python scripts for organizing the content.

I am certain this is an area my self hosted solutions lack, but still happy to share.

For me accessibility is the most important, and I have family that’s not technically savvy, so vpns/Wireguard arent great for my use case. So I use a reverse proxy to expose certain apps and have fail2ban configured to block/ban ips that misbehave. This essentially blocks people trying to guess accounts and I’ve been toying with some ratelimiting. However, as many will say, this is not a very secure system and I should monitor my local traffic more to be aware of bad actors.

At the end of the day though it’s really a battle of ease vs security. Reverse proxies provide easier access, but more risk compared to things like vpns. Also, SSH should be setup for key only (no password) and should never be exposed to the public internet (so no reverse proxy).

I’ve been tempted by things like authentik, but how does that work for things like apps and tv sticks (roku / Chromecast)? Or does it really only work for browser based applications?

Audiobookshelf, Its designed for audiobooks and its folder structure is unintuitive, but it’s got the best website and apps of all the ones I’ve tried (including kogma).

I messed around with a couple of different approaches (Calibre web, kogma, etc.), but the best all around experience I have had is Audiobookshelf. Kogma is probably better if just doing manga, but Audiobookshelf has worked the best for hosting comics/manga/ebooks. The only real annoying things is the folder structure. I’ve needed to use some scripts to reorganize/rename files so it handles them correctly.

Thanks for sharing. Largely just commenting to share support due to the large amount of AI hate you’re getting. This seems like a real app solving real problems (although personally I use audiobookshelf for syncing even if it’s hit or miss on actual ebooks).

Could you imagine having to maintain it yourself though. I mean assumming it even spits out a working version, you’ve probably introduced a ton of new bugs and potential security threats. Additionally, unlike a fork, you can’t even merge in improvements to the software.

While it’s a scary topic, in most cases you’d be shooting yourself in the foot if you incorporated anything this spits out.

Edit:spelling

You’re probably aware, but updating the model periodically is probably a good idea just because things do change overtime.

A model from two years ago was trained on data from at least two years ago. Meaning any technology, code, world event changes wouldn’t be reflected in the model.

Basic ebook support and ereader (epub, pdf, cbr, cbz) + send to device (i.e. Kindle)

Biggest issue is the folder/book structure is very opinionated and isn’t the easiest to work with.

I’ve tried the a number of the ones being mentioned, but the best for me has been Audio bookshelf . It has a good mobile app, allows collections, tries to pull Metadata, offline reading for the apps, etc.

I tried Calibre web and Kogma.

Calibre is just bad software at this point, it’s clunky and not really designed as a server.

Kogma was fine, but a web only interface made it hit or miss. The big selling point for me with audio bookshelf was the ability to download local copies.

Oh yeah, the multiple libraries is a good point!

You can read using the web client or dedicated apps (android and ios). I feel like the clients work just as good if not better than similar software.

I haven’t tested how it handles two versions (audio/ebook) of the same book, but I have ebooks and audio books and it works well for me.

The only real downside I’ve run into is it’s very opinionated about folder structures around authors.

The one I’ve enjoyed the most is https://www.audiobookshelf.org/, it may be “focused” on audio books, but works really well for everything. It also supports offline mode (meaning downloading local copies in the app).

Examples on the page seem to indicate it does OCR then translates the OCR text.

It doesn’t seem as fancy as some translation tools that overlay the translation, if that’s what you meant.

Edit: actually maybe it can - https://discuss.tchncs.de/comment/23834337

I had someone swear to me that Github templating was better, but I’ve only worked with Gitlabs templates. Why do you like Gitlab over Github?

I mean, you also had pretty low quality TV and home media, anything beyond 32 inches wasn’t doing much good for you.

Yeah, I made a separate comment, but AudioBookshelf can play nicely with ebooks and comics. It’s not super smooth, but provides the most features in a self hosted solution from what I’ve tried.

I just use AudioBookshelf for books. It’s a little annoying, but basically just requires an extra nested folder structure.

The best part is offline reading seems to resync back to the server, so you can download books for local reading or read through an internet connection.

Looks like there is a config and cache location in their docker scripts. The easiest way to make a docker application portable is to bind mount the config and cache. That way you have access to the actual files and could copy them to your windows partition.

If you’re already using a volume for that data, I think it becomes a bit trickier. I know technically you can move or copy volumes, but I’ve never tried. Although you could still bind mount a random directory and still copy the files out.