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Evince vs Okular
September 14, 2025
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Evince is a document viewer for multiple document formats. The goal of evince is to replace the multiple document viewers that exist on the GNOME Desktop with a single simple application.
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Okular is a universal book viewer based on KPDF for KDE 4. This means Okular works on multiple platforms, including but not limited to Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, *BSD, etc. Okular combines the excellent functionalities of KPDF with the versatility of supporting different kind of documents, like PDF, Postscript, DjVu, CHM, XPS, ePub and others.
Evince and Okular are both free open-source desktop reading software primarily for reading PDF books, but also for some other formats. They provide the ability to search in book text, add bookmarks, navigate the book using the table of contents, scale pages and view them in full-screen mode, add annotations.
But Evince is a program that only works on Linux, integrated into the GNOME and GTK environment. It is very easy to use, has a minimalist interface (close to GNOME applications), a minimum of additional functions and customization options. From the other hand it shows very high startup speed and is very lightweight. In addition to PDF, it supports PostScript, DjVu, TIFF, XPS formats.
Okular is a program that was also originally created for Linux (as part of KDE), but now works on Windows and Mac. It allows you to not only read/view PDF files, but also edit them, add comments. It has more extensive annotation capabilities, better comic-book support (CBR, CBZ), advanced export options (e.g. to text), many interface customization options and a plugin architecture that allows to expand the functionality.
But Evince is a program that only works on Linux, integrated into the GNOME and GTK environment. It is very easy to use, has a minimalist interface (close to GNOME applications), a minimum of additional functions and customization options. From the other hand it shows very high startup speed and is very lightweight. In addition to PDF, it supports PostScript, DjVu, TIFF, XPS formats.
Okular is a program that was also originally created for Linux (as part of KDE), but now works on Windows and Mac. It allows you to not only read/view PDF files, but also edit them, add comments. It has more extensive annotation capabilities, better comic-book support (CBR, CBZ), advanced export options (e.g. to text), many interface customization options and a plugin architecture that allows to expand the functionality.
