Top 5 Open-Source PDF Viewers for Small Businesses
One of the best ways to distribute information over Internet or by email is the use of compressed PDF. This file is often more popular than saving in MS Word format (.doc or .docx) for e-books, marketing reports, and other digital assets such as e-textbooks and magazines.
“When you convert documents, forms, graphics, and web pages to PDF, they look just like they would if printed,” said Adobe. “But unlike printed documents, PDF files can contain clickable links and buttons, form fields, video, and audio — as well as logic to help automate routine business processes.”
PDF files make it easier to access and share information at zero cost. However, users need to use specific apps, before they can open this file type.
There are plenty of good applications, including open-source PDF viewers that are capable of reading PDF files.
- Adobe Reader
- Evince
- Foxit Reader
- Okular
- Sumatra
The developers at Adobe pioneered the PDF viewer, also dubbed Adobe Reader. This is one of the most widely used PDF viewers on the Internet that works on Windows and Mac platforms. The user interface is clean and offers a variety of features tailored for students and professionals.
Evince is another functional document viewer for multiple formats, which include PDF files. The application comes with the GNOME desktop environment. Therefore, it is automatically included in distributions like Fedora, SUSE, and Ubuntu. It’s lightweight and quickly loads when launching PDF.
Foxit Reader is a Linux PDF viewer known for its quick, cross-platform functions. It offers multiple options such as DEB, RPM, and B2z packages, and is available on most distributions. It’s one of the best solutions for creating, editing, and compiling all the data into a compressed format.
Okular is a Linux-based PDF viewer in KPDF for KDE 4 and works on multiple platforms such as Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, *BSD, and more.
The developers state that Okular combines the best functionalities of KPDF with the versatility of supporting different kind of documents, like PDF, Postscript, DjVu, CHM, XPS and ePub.
Last but not the least, Sumatra PDF Viewer is included in the list of Top 5 open-source PDF viewers. It has a plain intuitive interface with a menu and toolbar at the top to help users navigate the pages of the documents. Basic features for PDF readers are included in the application such as zooming in and out, face page, and book view.