How to install Foxit Reader on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish

Foxit PDF Reader is a free and efficient PDF reader available for Linux, macOS, and Windows, with support for Linux and macOS added on September 15, 2015.

Features of Foxit Reader on Linux:

• Fast and Lightweight: A responsive, minimal-resource PDF reader.
• Tabbed Interface: Easily manage multiple PDFs in a single window.
• Password Protection: Secure your PDFs with password protection.
• Zoom and Rotate Pages: Adjust your view to suit your needs.
• Text Search: Quickly locate specific text within your documents.
• Annotation Tools: Add text markup, sticky notes, or use the typewriter tool.
• Print Support: Conveniently print PDF documents.

While Linux systems often come with a default PDF viewer, I’ve found Foxit PDF Reader particularly useful when dealing with documents that contain checkboxes or complex formatting.

Installing Foxit PDF Reader on Ubuntu, Linux Mint, or Any Linux Distribution

1. Download Foxit Reader: Visit the Foxit Reader download page and choose either the 64-bit or 32-bit version based on your OS architecture. Alternatively, download via terminal using wget:
   • 64-bit:bashCopy codewget http://cdn01.foxitsoftware.com/pub/foxit/reader/desktop/linux/2.x/2.4/en_us/FoxitReader.enu.setup.2.4.4.0911.x64.run.tar.gz
   • 32-bit:bashCopy codewget http://cdn01.foxitsoftware.com/pub/foxit/reader/desktop/linux/2.x/2.4/en_us/FoxitReader.enu.setup.2.4.4.0910.x86.run.tar.gz
2. Extract the Downloaded Archive: Open a terminal (press CTRL + ALT + T), navigate to the download location, e.g., Downloads:bashCopy codecd ~/Downloads Then extract the tar.gz file:bashCopy codetar xzvf FoxitReader*.tar.gz
3. Set Execute Permissions: After extraction, set the .run file as executable:bashCopy codesudo chmod a+x FoxitReader*.run
4. Install Foxit Reader: Run the .run file with root privileges to start the installation wizard:bashCopy sudo ./FoxitReader*.run During installation, I recommend installing it in the /opt/ directory for easy organization.

Once installed, you can launch Foxit Reader from your application menu or search for it in the Unity Dash.

Foxit Reader offers a sleek user interface with helpful features like a tabbed view for multiple documents and extensive annotation options, which the default PDF viewer, Evince, lacks. Although it doesn’t support PDF creation on Linux (as it does on Windows), Foxit is one of the best PDF readers available.

Alternative PDF Reader: Okular

Okular is another PDF viewer that supports annotation and text highlighting. It can also open .epub and .azw3 files. To install Okular:

sudo apt install okular

Since Okular is a KDE application, you can use the qt5ct tool for additional configuration:

sudo apt install qt5ct