Foxit reader, a free linux pdf viewer

Recently I came across a mail in which a person was asking for an alternative to adobe acrobat reader. Even though adobe reader provides a lot of functionalities he was not happy with its buggy nature and wanted to switch to another safe alternative. He then mentionted that he was already trying a different one, Foxit Reader.

His point of view gave me a wonderful idea to write about alternatives for various famous softwares. I am starting it with the pdf reader that guy mentioned foxit reader.

Foxit reader was developed as a product for windows but now they have launched a linux desktop version too. And even though it might not provide all the functionalities provided by adobe reader but still it is probably the best alternative to adobe. The key feature of foxit would be its small size and short load time.

I have used a few pdf readers in linux and Foxit reader was probably the best performer. Evince sometimes is incapable of handling high quality pdfs (ebooks) and acrobat took a lot of time to load. You can download the zipped package here.

Another good thing about it is that the package size is really small (hardly 4 M). After downloading it either extract it in the window (right click => extract here) or run this command in the terminal

[shredder12]$ tar -xvjf foxit_package.tar.bz2

Give executable permissions to FoxitReader. Run this command.

[shredder12]$ chmod 755 FoxitReader

Now, you are all set to go. One more benefit, no installation . Jst run the following command:

[shredder12]$ ./FoxitReader

Now, open a pdf and just try out the features that it provides. I am sure you won't be disappointed. Here is a screenshot of foxit.