What's a good lightweight non Adobe PDF reader for Linux? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by over_clox@lemmy.world to c/linux@lemmy.world

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I'm running Termux with XFCE desktop on Android. I only just realized that the only program I currently have installed that can properly open PDFs is GIMP, and that's extreme overkill as I just want a lightweight reader, no need to manipulate them as images ya know.

Also, related side question, are there any lightweight Linux terminal programs that can export PDF as plain text? I'm kinda hoping to pipe the text output of George Orwell 1984 through espeak reader and have Linux read it out to me...

Edit: Plain text and speech engine questions solved, and rather simple no less. This is the refined version BTW, --stdin is necessary to make espeak read the entire document.

pdftotext go-1984.pdf -|espeak --stdin

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[-] brickfrog@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

The default .pdf viewer in your Linux distro should be enough.. on Debian Trixie with GNOME it seems to be Evince and it works well and lightweight (especially compared to anything Adobe related!). I don't know too much about Termux but I guess if you can install Evince in there then it should be fine.

Otherwise like others mentioned most web browsers nowadays can view .pdf files, people usually have a web browser already installed so that's probably the easiest solution unless you need/want something different.

[-] over_clox@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

Oh that's funny, Termux ain't your regular cup of penguin tea. Initially, it doesn't even come with nano, the terminal based text editor. Termux runs on top of Android, non-rooted, and the base install might as well be like booting a barebones Linux terminal off of a few floppy disks.

So, there's no such thing as a default app that comes with the 'operating system', you basically gotta build it up yourself.

It's a fun journey though...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I__bpMIBj30

this post was submitted on 12 Nov 2026

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