EPDFView vs Evince
October 02, 2025 | Author: Maria Lin
EPDFView and Evince are both free and open-source Linux programs for reading PDF books (and documents). Compared to popular alternatives like Adobe Reader, they are faster, have simpler navigation panels and allow direct printing on Linux.
But Evince is part of the GNOME visual desktop environment and is available in the standard repositories of most Linux distributions. The program supports not only PDF, but also DjVu, PS, TIFF and comic books. It features bookmarks, table of contents navigation, in-document search and the ability to add annotations. The project is actively developed and updated.
EPDFView was originally created as a lightweight alternative to Evince, focused solely on PDF and without its dependencies. The interface is extremely simplified, with a minimal set of functions, but because of that it launches quickly even on low-end machines. The project has not been updated for a long time.
But Evince is part of the GNOME visual desktop environment and is available in the standard repositories of most Linux distributions. The program supports not only PDF, but also DjVu, PS, TIFF and comic books. It features bookmarks, table of contents navigation, in-document search and the ability to add annotations. The project is actively developed and updated.
EPDFView was originally created as a lightweight alternative to Evince, focused solely on PDF and without its dependencies. The interface is extremely simplified, with a minimal set of functions, but because of that it launches quickly even on low-end machines. The project has not been updated for a long time.
