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If I am installing calibre with apt-get, it installs version 1.25

# sudo apt-show-versions calibre
calibre:all/trusty 1.25.0+dfsg-1build1 uptodate

while it's current version is 2.6.

Is it possible to install newer calibre, staying with apt-get?

2 Answers 2

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Calibre's website advises against uses the distribution's package for this reason (It's typically outdated/buggy). And I didn't see any repositories with updated calibre, so apt-get wasn't looking like the best option.

You can use wget, though, to download & install the binaries right from Calibre. Calibre's site instructs you to paste the following command into the terminal to install or update:

sudo -v && 
  wget -nv -O- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kovidgoyal/calibre/master/setup/linux-installer.py | 
  sudo python -c "import sys; main=lambda:sys.stderr.write('Download failed\n'); exec(sys.stdin.read()); main()"

Source: http://calibre-ebook.com/download_linux

I just did it, and it worked perfectly. And when Calibre tells you there's a new version, you should be able to paste that same thing into the terminal to update. Or you can write a script to do it automatically.

Is there a reason you wanted to stick with apt-get, other than being familiar with it?

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  • 7
    "Is there a reason you wanted to stick with apt-get" .. the obvious one: apt-get handles most other updates. This adds one more place to (manually) check for updates.
    – muru
    Sep 15, 2015 at 3:26
  • Ah, right. Of course. I guess you could use a script that automatically checks if the version is outdated and updates if it is.
    – Kate
    Sep 15, 2015 at 3:32
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    "Is there a reason you wanted to stick with apt-get". Well, piping unchecked web content into sudo may make one a bit nervous.
    – Evpok
    Nov 4, 2016 at 8:23
  • @Evpok, they have an non-sudo option: "You can also do an "isolated" install that only touches files inside the installation directory and does not need to be run as root, like this:" wget -nv -O- https://download.calibre-ebook.com/linux-installer.py | python -c "import sys; main=lambda x,y:sys.stderr.write('Download failed\n'); exec(sys.stdin.read()); main('~/calibre-bin', True)" Mar 13, 2017 at 14:42
  • calibre 3.19 doesn't start on ubuntu 14.04 unless you set two qt variables QT_SCALE_FACTOR=1 QT_DEVICE_PIXEL_RATIO=1 as explained here mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=288152
    – yoyoma2
    Mar 17, 2018 at 19:26
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This means that the version mentioned by apt-get is the latest version in the repositories that are known to it. If you are able to find a newer repo for Calibre, you could add it so apt-get can look for the packages and install it. But please make sure it's a secure/trusted repository!

Edit: Here is a list on Launchpad with some repositories, but since the official site doesn't mention one itself (at least, I couldn't find it) they're not offical.

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