Editing PDF files is a common enough task; but unfortunately, there’s no good solution for it in Ubuntu by default. While a lot can be said for Evince when it comes to reading PDF documents, the editing story is still underdeveloped.
If you scan the Ubuntu forums for some time, you’ll primarily come across three options: Use the libreoffice command to invoke its PDF editor, convert the PDF to an image using Gimp and then manipulate the image and then convert it back to PDF (the very thought gives us shudders), and use Inkscape to edit PDF files directly.
The problem with the last two methods (ignoring for a moment the fact the output will be less than ideal) is that you need to possess knowledge of how to work with these tools. Inkscape in particular is quite hard, but we’re beginning to digress now.
Install Free PDF Editor for Ubuntu
The Master PDF editor is one of the best editors for the Linux platform. Not only does it offer near-zero learning curve as compared to other tools, it also does a great job of preserving the original formatting of the document. Here’s how to install it on Ubuntu.
Go to the download page and locate the file for your target platform (32-bit or 64-bit). All you need to do from here is download the deb file and install it.
$ wget http://get.code-industry.net/public/master-pdf-editor-4.3.61_qt5.amd64.deb
Once this has been downloaded, install it by:
$ sudo dpkg -i master-pdf-editor-4.3.61_qt5.amd64.deb
Enter your password when prompted, and then go:
$ apt install -f
With this, the Master PDF Editor will be installed and ready to use on your system.
Note: The Master PDF Editor depends on Qt (an incredibly popular library for creating cross-platform GUI applications). In case you run into errors or runtime warnings related to the Qt library, consider heading over to the Qt wiki and installing Qt support for Ubuntu.