FBReader, an excellent epub/ebook reader

 I personally have gotten into epub books, or "ebooks" because of using my Android tablet.

The documents from JW.org are many times available in epub format.

I really like the Watchtower and Awake epubs, because the scriptures are right at your fingertips. You tap (or click) the scripture, and you can read it, you tap it again, your back to your place in the Watchtower.

Here are some screenshots of FBReader in action on an Android tablet http://www.fbreader.org/FBReaderJ:

FBReader ends up being not only my favorite epub viewer in Ubuntu, my personal favorite OS, but also is my favorite epub viewer on Android.

FBReader in my opinion, works better, faster, and is less clunky than the Nook and Kindle software available for Android.

Simple is usually better, and in this case there seems to be no exception to this rule.

From "man fbreader" on Ubuntu:

"FBReader is an e-book reader. It supports most open e-book formats, and can read compressed e-book archives."

From FBReader.org's About Us page:

"First public version of FBReader (for Sharp Zaurus platform) was written in early 2005 by Nikolay Pultsin. In July 2007 Nikolay founded Geometer Plus LLC. The company is registered in Russia, St.Petersburg."

If you are in the market for a epub reader on your computer or your tablet, give FBReader a try.

Here are some screenshots from my Ubuntu laptop of FBReader:

You can get FBReader on Ubuntu by either searching for it in the software center, or by typing sudo apt-get install fbreader in a terminal application, which is usually available via ctrl alt t, or the menu.

On Android, you usually can get FBReader via your Android Market of choice.

The website http://www.fbreader.org/FBReaderJ also contains downloadable versions for Android.

P.S., On the tablet, their are options to change the background image. I personally went with a solid color instead of the distracting background images, and made the background color less than perfect white which is all 255's in the color settings. I made red 245, green 245, and blue 245.

 But lower = darker, so if this is too bright for you, then you might want to go to 235, for instance.

The reading glare was too much for me at perfect white. (Again, all 255's for perfect white.)

LXMenuEditor, fast & small menu editor

Earlier I wrote about adding CLI based apps to the menu using terminator terminal emulator.

For this task I usually use Alacarte, a menu editor made for Gnome.

In my search for everything with a smaller footprint, I came across an excellent menu editor for LXDE, XFCE and Gnome.

LXMenuEditor's tar file is only 78k in size. Fully extracted and installed it is only 222 kb.

So the first thing I like about it is that it downloads in a blink of an eye.

Secondly, unlike Alacarte, it has no dependencies other than Java, which I install on all of my daily use machines anyway.

And it runs faster than Alacarte in my opinion, and is solid as a rock in the version I tested, LXMenuEditor-20120515.

And it has a fairly straight forward, simple gui interface:

Click to enlarge picture

 LXMenuEditor's official SourceForge page is here:
http://lxmed.sourceforge.net/

They have very simple and easy to follow install instructions here:
http://lxmed.sourceforge.net/help.html

Check it out for yourself if your in the market for easy menu editing without the bloat of Alacarte!