How can I install Adobe Digital Editions on Ubuntu?
I've read that this is possible using Wine, but I can't download the installer from the Adobe page (as this installer is an online flash installer and requires Windows).
(I need to open the book I have purchased which is currently in .acsm format)
I've been through a process of installing, uninstalling and reinstalling various versions of Adobe Digital Editions (ADE). There is useful information on which versions of ADE will work on which versions of Wine at the WineHQ website. I found the options below worked for installing ADE on an Ubuntu 14.04LTS system (32-bit).
For all these options, I was able to open some acsm files and download related ebooks. However, only ADE 4.0 allowed me to download ebooks from Google Play that I required. Attempting to download these Google Play ebooks produced a 2038 error on ADE 1.7 and an “E_STREAM_ERROR” on ADE 3.0. I suspect this is due to recent changes in DRM.
INSTALLING ADE 1.7 --- Install Wine and WineTricks (you may need to add the Wine ppa – see https://www.winehq.org/download/ubuntu). Open WineTricks. In the first dialog box take option “Install an app”. On the second dialog box, take option “adobe_diged”. WineTricks will do the rest. Voila! Note that there are numerous older posts in forums that recommend ADE V1.7 over V2.0 and V3.0.
INSTALLING ADE 3.0 --- You'll need Wine and Winetricks for this too (see above for their installation), but the process is a bit more involved. You need to download and install dotnet35sp1 and windowscodecs before running the ADE installation exe. This can be done by opening a terminal and entering this command:
$ winetricks -q dotnet35sp1 windowscodecs
INSTALLING ADE 4.0 --- This option also requires Wine and WineTricks but it requires more advanced versions and the process is even more involved. Nonetheless, there are very comprehensive instructions at: https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=30928 – follow this link and find the instructions under the comment titled, “How to install ADE-4.xx on ubuntu-14.04 step by step in a console”.
The clue was in the text underneath the install box:
If you have trouble installing Digital Editions, see the installation TechNote.
See the "Manually install Adobe Digital Editions for Windows" section. That has a direct link to download an .exe setup file.
I won't link it from here as they will probably update the link in time.
For what it's worth, I'm answering how to install Adobe Digital Editions 2.0.1 (which I needed because of the old-fashioned encryption they used before version 3) for Debian testing ("bookworm" as I am writing this answer). Here are the installation steps I have used, which should be quite the same for any recent Ubuntu distribution:
sudo apt install wine winetricks
env WINEPREFIX=$HOME/winedotnet35sp1 WINEARCH=win32 winecfg
env WINEPREFIX=$HOME/winedotnet35sp1 winetricks -q corefonts
env WINEPREFIX=$HOME/winedotnet35sp1 winetricks -q dotnet35sp1
env WINEPREFIX=$HOME/winedotnet35sp1 wine ADE_2.0_Installer.exe
cd $HOME/winedotnet35sp1/drive_c/Program\ Files/Adobe/Adobe\ Digital\ Editions\ 2.0/
env WINEPREFIX=$HOME/winedotnet35sp1 wine ./DigitalEditions.exe
As I can remember, the installer yielded an error to me at the end of its process, but the piece of software worked fine, then.
Maybe I had to add a 32-bit architecture to my system, thanks to dpkg --add-architecture i386, to download the correct packages but I took me so much trials to make this piece of software working that I could not tell whether this is necessary or not. Anyway, as far as I know, a multi-architecture environment is managed differently under Ubuntu.
https://patdavid.net/2018/05/installing-adobe-digital-editions-on-linux-with-wine/ (where a link to the 2.0.1 ADE installer can be found as well)
there is an alternative way, which I'd like to share:
[Tags]: [libgourou, acsm, Adobe Digital Editions, DeDRM, Linux, Kubuntu, Ubuntu]
code bash
git clone https://forge.soutade.fr/soutade/libgourou.git
Copy the sources, e.g., to /home/user/userprograms/ or another directory of your choice.
Reference:
https://askubuntu.com/questions/1470645/transfert-my-legally-borrowed-e-books-to-my-kobo-e-reader
There also seems to be a Docker solution:
https://github.com/bcliang/docker-libgourou
code bash
sudo apt update
code bash
sudo apt install libcurl4-openssl-dev libssl-dev libzip-dev libpugixml-dev build-essential
Change to the directory where you cloned the source code and compile libgourou:
cd /home/user/userprograms/libgourou
make
This command compiles the library and utilities.
If you update the libgourou source code (e.g., with git pull), you should also update the internal libraries:
make update_lib
After successful compilation, you can install the library and utilities on your system.
By default, they will be installed in /usr/local.
sudo make install
For the libgourou utilities (utils) to find the library, you need to add the path to libgourou.so to your LD_LIBRARY_PATH. The easiest way to do this is permanently.
Open your shell configuration in your home directory with a text editor:
nano ~/.bashrc
or
nano ~/.zshrc
Add the following line to the end of the file:
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:/usr/local/lib
Apply the changes by reloading .bashrc or .zshrc:
source ~/.bashrc
or
source ~/.zshrc
The compiled utilities can now be found in the /usr/local/bin directory (unless you used a different PREFIX during installation) or directly in the utils directory if you want to run them from there.
With
code bash
adept_activate -h
you will get a list of possible options. In the following there are some examples of how to use the utility.
Bash
adept_activate -u YOUR_ADOBEID_EMAIL -p YOUR_ADOBEID_PASSWORD
This typically creates a /home/user/.config/adept directory with your configuration files.
Example Output:
''user.name@mail.com fully signed and device activated in /home/user/.config/adept/''
'''Alternative Activation:''' with email only
adept_activate -u YOUR_ADOBEID_EMAIL
The program will then prompt you to enter the password.
After successful execution, a directory named .config/adept (by default in your home directory) will be created, containing the configuration files for your activated device. These files are used by libgourou and its utilities to manage DRM-protected books.
Bash
acsmdownloader /PATH_TO_YOUR_ACSM_FILE/book.acsm
e.g.: bookxyz-pdf.acsm
--> Resulting file depending on ACSM type (epub or PDF); e.g. "bookxyz.pdf"
code
adept_remove
e.g.: adept_remove bookxyz.pdf
Output: DRM removed from bookxyz.pdf
Note:
DRM removal is only permitted for private use, provided the book was legally acquired. You must refer to the contract with Adobe for the exact terms!
Reference:
Transfert my legally borrowed e-books to my Kobo e-reader
There also seems to be a Docker solution:
https://github.com/bcliang/docker-libgourou