My two favorite apps for managing book, music, and movie collections.

Although many users we switched to streaming services like Netflix or Spotify (we are law-abiding people who would never use Popcorn Time nor will we ever use it again) there are those who prefer to continue having their multimedia content stored on the hard drive. In this post I will comment my two favorite applications for managing book, music and video collections.

I have to apologize for the lack of originality of the recommendations. The idea for this post was born when someone told me that he managed his extensive disk collection using Excel. In general I am in favor of people using the program that is most comfortable for them. But, if you have a database manager like Access in the same office suite that you are paying Microsoft, don't expect them to have a good opinion of your intelligence. I was about to tell you about the free and open source alternatives, but preferred not to.

I left, thinking that it was best to share my recommendations with people in a position to appreciate them. In this article I am going to talk about two specific collection management programs. In the one that follows I will comment on programs for the management of collections in general. Although they are known to most users of open source programs, I hope that collectors with a little more common sense than my friend will find them useful.

Managing book collections with Caliber

We can spend hours discussing which is the best browser. Surely we would come to blows trying to decide which is the best Linux distribution. But one thing is for sure. There is no better tool than Caliber for managing book collections.

Among its most notable features we can mention:

• • • Es multi platform. It even has a portable version that you can use on a pendrive.
    • Allows convert books between the most popular formats and adapt the converted file to the screen of different mobile devices.
    • Download metadata of the books from the Internet or allow us to create them in a personalized way.
    • Has a powerful search engine.
    • It makes it easy to stream content between devices wirelessly or wired.
    • It has an editor that allows us to create our own electronic books.
    • Its e-book viewer allows you to change the typography and the background and text colors.
    • Download content from The Economist, New York Times, New Yorker Magazine, The Guardian, BBC News, National Geographic, CNN, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Scientific American, Wired Magazine, The Telegraph, Forbes, Ars Technica and any other RSS feed we add.
    • Allows make backups from our book collection.

Although Caliber is in the repositories of the main Linux distributions, they do not always have the most up-to-date version. I improved itr is to use the command indicated on their download page.

Managing music and video collections with Kodi

In my particular case, Kodi it's like using the Ferrari to go to the Carrefour. But if you have a large collection of music or videos, you should already have it installed. And I don't even tell you if you can dedicate a device exclusively for the program.

Kodi allows play audio, video, podcast and other types of digital content, both stored locally and online.

In the case of audio files, Kodi can play the most popular formats: including mp3, flac, wav and wma. It has a good tag search engine and allows for smart playlist creation.

If you like movies, with this program pYou can watch movies online or watch the ones you have saved. If you install the corresponding plugins you can find and download subtitles.

The TV show library supports Episode and season views with posters or banners, labels, program descriptions, and actors.

With regard to photos, they can be imported and viewed as presentations.

Kodi allows you watch and record live TV from an easy to use interface. It works with a number of popular backends, including MediaPortal, MythTV, NextPVR, Tvheadend, and many more.

The program has a remote interface that allows us to use it from the browser of other devices.

By installing add-ons we can obtain additional benefits. However you have to be careful. You just have to install the ones from the official page.

There was a problem with Kodi and Linux distributions that release new versions periodically. Dependency incompatibility. But that's fixed since Kodi is available in Flatpak format.

Of course there are many other options. To handle only music are rhythmbox, Amarok o Banshee. csBook It has everything you need if Caliber seems too much for you. plex It is an excellent alternative to Kodi, although some features are paid.