Amazon Kindle on Linux

Sunday, September 11, 2022

The following is how to install and run the Windows version of the Amazon Kindle app on Linux. Everything here was (eventually) discoverable by searching, but I’m putting it one place so it’s all in a handy list in case I need to do it again.

  1. Install WINE. I used apt install wine wine64 wine32
  2. Download WINE’s customized Gecko, which it uses in lieu of Internet Explorer, for the appropriate version of WINE. If you installed like me, note as it says there, “For 64 bit (WoW64) Wine, both the x86 and x86_64 packages are required.” I downloaded the MSI versions. If you don’t install these, the Kindle app will work properly, as such, but you won’t be able to log in.
  3. mkdir -p ~/.cache/wine and then move the two MSI files to that directory. These should be installed automatically when the Kindle installer is run, unless you have an existing WINE installation; in that case, run wineboot.
  4. Run the Kindle installer: wine KindleForPC-installer-1.38.65290.exe
  5. mkdir -p ~/.wine/drive_c/users/$(whoami)/AppData/Local/Amazon/Kindle Without this, the app will install, but crash on startup—which is ironic, since the purpose of that directory seems to be to store crashdumps.
  6. Use winecfg to set the Windows version to something newer than Windows 7, either as the default, or specifically for C:\Program Files (x86)\Amazon\Kindle\Kindle.exe (not strictly necessary, but if you don’t, the app will complain at you about an unsupported OS).

Caveats: It’s pretty slow, or at least it is on my machine—usable, though, for the books trapped in Amazon’s ecosystem.