Faster alternative to Evince for PDFs
from karet@sh.itjust.works to linux@lemmy.ml on 23 Apr 10:50
https://sh.itjust.works/post/36613418

I’ve been using evince to open PDFs. But for larger PDFs it is quite laggy, for selecting the text and stuff like that. Is this just a limitation of my computer, or are there faster alternatives to evince?

#linux

threaded - newest

fox2263@lemmy.world on 23 Apr 11:00 next collapse

Okular perhaps

entropicdrift@lemmy.sdf.org on 23 Apr 14:56 collapse

Okular is the best I’ve found

just_another_person@lemmy.world on 23 Apr 11:05 next collapse

I feel like this is just a thing with PDF viewers that don’t paginate their views properly. Try LibreOffice or Xournal as a test to see if they perform better. I never have a problem.

Ozonowsky@lemmy.world on 23 Apr 11:07 next collapse

you should try papers. it’s a new app that’ll replace evince as the default document viewer for gnome in a future version. it’s still in development but i’ve been using it for a long time and it’s really good.

ClownsInSpace2@lemm.ee on 23 Apr 12:40 collapse

Do you feel like it improves on evince in any way? I saw it a while back but it didn’t look too different imo

Ozonowsky@lemmy.world on 23 Apr 13:28 collapse

i’m no expert but even though it looks like evince as far as i know is a completely different app build from the ground up

ClownsInSpace2@lemm.ee on 23 Apr 13:37 next collapse

For sure, that makes sense. I was just curious if you had noticed any added functionality

Ozonowsky@lemmy.world on 23 Apr 15:36 collapse

currently it is able to digitally sign pdfs, which evince can’t do

that_leaflet@lemmy.world on 24 Apr 13:10 collapse

Papers forked from Evince.

a14o@feddit.org on 23 Apr 12:13 next collapse

Try Zathura! I’ve been loving it.

a14o@feddit.org on 23 Apr 12:17 collapse

I should add that Zathura comes with a minimal graphical interface and you sort of need to learn the vi-like keyboard controls (or look them up with man zathura). But boy is it fast!

JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world on 23 Apr 13:17 next collapse

to open PDFs

mupdf

for selecting the text and stuff

This is what is slowing things down.

wwwgem@lemmy.ml on 24 Apr 01:48 collapse

I used to use the famous Zathura for a long time, but it’s really minimal. Sioyek is an incredible pdf reader so overlooked.
Amongst a lot of other things, it lets you:

  • quickly preview or jump to figures/references/equations/tables… (even if the PDF does not have links)
  • search paper names in any search engine you like (defaults are google scholar and library genesis) by middle clicking on their name or using keybindings
  • mark locations (using lower case for local mark and upper case for global mark) or create bookmarks for quick navigation
  • highlight text
  • save annotations in a local database or embed them in a new version of the PDF file to share them with others
  • automatically reload a file when it changes

I wrote a brief overview of it quite some time ago.