Over the years PDF has become an extremely important file format. If you want to create documents that can be viewed under all major operating systems, PDF is the ticket, as it maintains the overall look and feel of documents regardless of what platform they are viewed under. Businesses and consumers increase productivity using PDF documents and forms.
Besides offering universal compatibility, the format is reliable, ease of creation, security, and version independence. The format also supports annotations, and a very practical format.
Since late 2014, Adobe’s proprietary but useful Adobe Acrobat Reader has been no longer supported under Linux. Adobe’s website still only lists Windows, Mac OS and Android as supported operating systems. This is one of the many dangers of closed source software – at the whim of corporate bosses, development and distribution can simply disappear overnight, possibly never coming back.
Fortunately, there are some excellent open source alternatives to Adobe Acrobat Reader. The software featured in this article offer more than displaying PDF files; many are versatile document viewers.
Here’s our verdict on the PDF viewers captured in a legendary LinuxLinks-style ratings chart.. We only include free and open source software here.
Let’s explore the 16 PDF viewers. For each application we have compiled its own portal page, a full description with an in-depth analysis of its features, an image of the software in action, together with links to relevant resources.
| PDF Viewers | |
|---|---|
| PDF.js | JavaScript library that renders Portable Document Format files |
| Okular | Universal document viewer supporting advanced document features |
| MuPDF | Lightweight PDF and XPS viewer |
| KOReader | Document viewer for a wide variety of file formats including PDF |
| Sioyek | Designed for viewing research papers and technical books |
| Papers | Fork of Evince |
| Evince | Multi-page document viewer |
| Atril | A simple multi-page document viewer for MATE |
| Zathura | Highly customizable and functional document viewer |
| qpdfview | Tabbed document viewer. It uses Poppler for PDF support |
| Xreader | Simple multi-page document viewer |
| Xpdf | PDF viewer and toolkit |
| PreviewQt | Preview all kinds of files |
| llpp | Fast and featureful PDF, EPUB, XPS and CBZ viewer |
| JFBView | PDF and image viewer for the Linux framebuffer |
| NightPDF | Dark mode PDF reader |
This article has been revamped in line with our recent announcement.
The software collection forms part of our series of informative articles for Linux enthusiasts. There are hundreds of in-depth reviews, open source alternatives to proprietary software from large corporations like Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and Autodesk.
