# Alternate PDF readers?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternate-pdf-readers/35145>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [September 30, 2000, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternate-pdf-readers/35145 "2000-09-30T16:12:40Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Fenris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fenris/32/498_2.png) [@Fenris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fenris)\
**Post date:** [September 30, 2000, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternate-pdf-readers/35145/1 "2000-09-30T16:12:40Z")

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I _hate_ Adobe Acrobat, and frankly, it hates me. Even after a fresh format/reinstall the \*#(@$%#ed thing crashes about 75% of the time on this computer. I don’t know why, and at this point, I don’t care anymore.

Does anyone know of any other program that can read .pdf files? Doesn’t have to do anything fancy, just display 'em.

Thanks!

Fenris

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**Author:** ![yabob](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yabob/32/2821_2.png) [@yabob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yabob)\
**Post date:** [September 30, 2000, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternate-pdf-readers/35145/2 "2000-09-30T16:40:37Z")

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The Ghost Script viewer. It’s worth having around anyway, for viewing postscript (.ps). I’m sure there are others.

[http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/index.html](http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/index.html)

Actually, I just use acrobat for .pdf, though I don’t like it much either.

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**Author:** ![friedo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8edcca/32.png) [@friedo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/friedo)\
**Post date:** [September 30, 2000, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternate-pdf-readers/35145/3 "2000-09-30T18:16:59Z")

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Illustrator can read them. If you have access to a Unix machine, try xpdf.