How To Install calibre on Ubuntu 21.04

One-liner install command

For those in a hurry, here's a one-line installation command:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt -y install calibre

But if you are interested in the detailed steps with descriptions, the following information is for you.

What is calibre and what are the ways to install it?

Before beginning this tutorial, you will need access to a server or computer running Ubuntu 21.04. This guide was written specifically with a server running Ubuntu 21.04 in mind, although it should also work on older, supported versions of the operating system.

Also, make sure you are running a regular, non-root user with sudo privileges configured on your server. When you have an account available, log in as your non-root user to begin.

There are several ways to install calibre on Ubuntu 21.04. You can use (links are clickable):

In the following sections, we will describe each method in detail. You can choose one of them or refer to the recommended one.

Install calibre using apt-get

First, update apt database with apt-get using the following command.

sudo apt-get update

After updating apt-get database, You can install calibre using apt by running the following command:

sudo apt -y install calibre

Install calibre using apt

Because calibre is available in Ubuntu 21.04’s default repositories, it is possible to install it from these repositories using the apt packaging system.

To begin, update apt database with apt using the following command.

sudo apt update

After updating apt database, You can install calibre using apt by running the following command:

sudo apt -y install calibre

Install calibre using aptitude

If you want to follow this method, you might need to install aptitude first since aptitude is usually not installed by default on Ubuntu 21.04. Update apt database with aptitude using the following command.

sudo aptitude update

After updating aptitude database, You can install calibre by running the following command:

sudo aptitude -y install calibre

How to upgrade (update) a single package calibre using apt-get?

First, you will need to update packages index. Run update command as usual:

sudo apt-get update

Next, to upgrade only the calibre, e.g. single package, you should use the following format with the apt-get command/apt command:

sudo apt-get --only-upgrade install calibre

Note that this command will not install any new packages! If you wish to install the package if it doesn't exist you may leave out --only-upgrade part.

sudo apt-get install calibre

How To Uninstall calibre from Ubuntu 21.04

To uninstall only the calibre package you can execute the following command:

sudo apt-get remove calibre

Uninstall calibre and all its dependencies

To uninstall calibre and its dependencies that are no longer needed by Ubuntu 21.04, you can use the command below:

sudo apt-get -y autoremove calibre

Remove calibre with all configurations and data

To remove calibre configuration and data from your system you can run the following purge command:

sudo apt-get -y purge calibre

Remove calibre completely (configurations, data and all of its dependencies)

And lastly, you can run the next command to remove absolutely everything related to calibre package, e.g.: configurations, data and all of its dependencies. Just use this command:

sudo apt-get -y autoremove --purge calibre

Extra info and code examples

Calibre is meant to be a complete e-library solution. It includes library management, format conversion, news feeds to e-book conversion as well as e-book reader sync features. Calibre is primarily an e-book cataloging program. It manages your e-book collection for you. It is designed around the concept of the logical book, i.e. a single entry in the database that may correspond to e-books in several formats. It also supports conversion from a dozen different e-book formats to LRF and EPUB. A graphical interface to the conversion software can be accessed easily by just clicking the "Convert E-books" button. Supported input formats are: MOBI, LIT, PRC, EPUB, ODT, HTML, CBR, CBZ, RTF, TXT, PDF and LRS. Calibre has a modular device driver design that makes adding support for different e-reader devices easy. At the moment, it has support for the SONY PRS 500/505/700 and the iPhone (with the stanza reader software). Syncing supports updating metadata on the device from metadata in the library and the creation of collections on the device based on the tags defined in the library view. If an book has more than one format available, calibre automatically chooses the best format when uploading to the device. Calibre can automatically fetch news from a number of websites/RSS feeds, format the news into a e-book and upload to a connected device. There is support for generating LRF/EPUB e-books. The e-books include the *full* versions of the articles, not just the summaries. Calibre has also a built-in e-book viewer that can display all the major e-book formats.

Conclusion

You now have a full guide on how to install calibre using apt, apt-get and aptitude tools. Also, we showed how to update as a single package and different ways to uninstall the calibre from Ubuntu 21.04.

See also: