I haven’t been using my Kobo as much as I used to because I’ve been reading everything on my laptop. I used to try and read before bedtime, but reading puts me straight to sleep, so that’s not an effective strategy.
On the computer, however, I find it easy just to open an app and read a couple pages here and there, as time allows. I don’t use this as an alternative to anything. I still scroll through Mastodon and keep up-to-date with articles in my feed reader. It’s just that when I’ve caught up on everything else, jumping into a book for a few minutes at a time is a pleasant experience, and a way to get through books much faster.
There’s nothing wrong with my Kobo, and in a lot of ways it’s a better reading experience. But then again, I find reading on my laptop very pleasant. The matte display never hurts my eyes, the sharp text of my hi-DPI display makes everything look crip, and being able to see the cover art and internal images in full color is a great touch.
I still use my Kobo, and it has plenty of benefits (portability!), but I can’t deny that my habits have changed.
To read books, I absolutely adore the Foliate app. It’s a prime example of what a high-quality, well-designed app for the Linux desktop can be. It shows my entire library in an organized and visually pleasant way, it lets me customize the reading experience to suit my preferences, and then it gets out of the way so I can read. I love some of the more desktop-oriented features, like jumping between links within the text, being able to choose scrolled vs. paged mode, and having access to reading progress and the table-of-contents in a way that adapts to the window size. And of course, you have all of the expected features like being able to adjust font size, typeface, spacing, background colors, etc.
Back in the days of glossy, low-resolution LCDs I couldn’t read on a computer without getting a headache and screwing up my vision, but things have improved, and it’s now the main way I read. If you are skeptical about it, I might gently encourage you to try it if you are looking for a way to sneak in more reading time here and there. I’m also told reading on phones isn’t half bad, either!