I'm reading bunch of pdf and ps files recently. After a system upgrade in arch linux, segfault in gv happened. For couple years, I was using gv for viewing pdf and postscript files. This segfault made me to dig in to current trends in linux pdf viewer.
My preferences are:
- Supports pdf and postscript files
- Supports mouse-less control
- Has minimalistic user interface
- Starts quickly
- Use less memory
I took a try to these viewers:
- apvlv: Nice vi-style scroll keybindings, light. But does not support postscript ...
- epdfviewer: No support for postscript ...
- evince: Supports postscript and pdf. Keybind support for scrolling.
- mupdf: Light, simple interface (shows nothing other than document contents), keybind support for scrolling. But no support for postscript ....
- zathura: Minimalistic interface, keybinding support. Scrolling worked smoothly than mupdf. Customizable config. Has supports for viewing potscript files with additional plugin.
Those fullfilled my requirement were evince and zathura. Choosing between
these two, zathura met my taste more. Another alternative is mupdf, which
uses less memory than zathura, but has no supports for postscript files. If
memory usage of zathura become a problem, I'll try
mupdf plugin, or seek for alternative
again. Until that happen, using zathura.
Lessons I learned: sometime it's not a bad thing to get segmentation fault with package update, if it give opportunity to look for progress in opensource softwares with same purpose, and find a good alternative.