Ideally, it would not only be just a pdf reader but also have functionality to remove pages, add pages, sign, and edit forms.
Between Okular for reading and quick edits, and the qpdf cli for occasional stranger (particularly encryption-related) things, I can’t remember the last time I touched Acrobat. On macOS, Preview.app (with occasional qpdf) also works very well.
I self host Stirling-PDF for complicated tasks, and use native MacOs app Preview for easy tasks
Sumatra
PDF24
On linux I use qpdf
example; to keep pages 1-9 and 26-end of the original file input.pdf and save them to outputfile.pdf:
reduce pdf file sizeqpdf input.pdf --pages . 1-9,26-z -- outputfile.pdf
converted a 16mb file to 1mb reductionqpdf --compress-streams=y --recompress-flate --optimize-images 1.pdf 2.pdfqpdf --help
Run "qpdf --help=topic" for help on a topic. Run "qpdf --help=--option" for help on an option. Run "qpdf --help=all" to see all available help.
Topics:
For detailed help, visit the qpdf manual:add-attachment: attach (embed) files advanced-control: tweak qpdf's behavior attachments: work with embedded files completion: shell completion copy-attachments: copy attachments from another file encryption: create encrypted files exit-status: meanings of qpdf's exit codes general: general options help: information about qpdf inspection: inspect PDF files json: JSON output for PDF information modification: change parts of the PDF overlay-underlay: overlay/underlay pages from other PDF files page-ranges: page range syntax page-selection: select pages from one or more files pdf-dates: PDF date format testing: options for testing or debugging transformation: make structural PDF changes usage: basic invocationhttps://qpdf.readthedocs.iopdftk