Calibre works exactly the way you suggest, so I'm not sure why you haven't found it.
It comes with an app called ebook-viewer that doesn't do anything except view ebooks. It doesn't automatically add it to the calibre library management.
I love Calibre, even calibre-web, which I can use as an ebook store by modifying the URLs in my Kobo eReader so that I can download ebooks from my server directly from the eReader over WiFi.
I use Calibre to manage my collection, create book covers if I need to for non-boo k documents, web for organising and occasional looking up of things, and eReader for reading.
So? Don't run the command for the library manager. No one is forcing you to open it. They are completely independent commands. You might as well complain that all you want to do is list directories but linux only provides coreutils which also includes chcon and I don't want to run chcon.
> Calibre works exactly the way you suggest, so I'm not sure why you haven't found it.
JFC, that's not how the installation and the first run of Calibre works at all. I'd write "I'am not sure why you think people would think calibre is first a manager library and not a book reader after installing it" but I'd be lying.
I think Calibre advocates forgot what it's like to setup it for the first time and what a messy ugly process it is for new timers. A containerized version needs VNC access to set it up and perform some un-intuitive UI actions https://docs.linuxserver.io/images/docker-calibre/#applicati...
I've used https://www.kavitareader.com/ but it's not perfect either, this space could be "disrupted" by a Plex like product with opensource + licensed offerings but the target market is pretty small I think.
However, it needs flatpak runtime. If you already have different flatpak apps, this is not an issue, it is going to be shared with them, but if this is going to be your first-and-only flatpak app, you need to add few hundreds MB.
Just recently setup some ebook software on my linux laptop trying not only use Apple for everything these days.
Calibre was the very first thing I tried but it seems like it was going to be a time sink. I can't quantify that precisely maybe because of the design? I didn't seem like I could just get going easily.
Foliate was the next thing I tried and seemed perfect. Easy to start, limited options, good design. It was a lot closer to what I was used to on my mac.
I'm sure Calibre probably does a bunch of things perfectly and I should revisit it, but that's the experience coming from a novice.
It comes with an app called ebook-viewer that doesn't do anything except view ebooks. It doesn't automatically add it to the calibre library management.