F-Secure Says Stop Using Acrobat Reader

[knutjb]

Besides all the manuals and engineering data, the legal world, HR departments, general office documents... It was the first practical locked document, now it's way big and a target. Companies don't like changing programs because they will have to provide training no matter how simple the conversion because most people don't react well to change and most are not computer whizzes, plus the time to recreate forms, compatibility with customer systems, not to mention the IT departments will have to make sure there are no software compatibility problems or security issues as well. All that cost money. Many have proprietary software so it's not so simple of conversion for them. They expect a fix and will wait for it. Adobe has too much to lose so they will fix it.

 

[Guest]

It's not that Acrobat is popular, it's that Adobe are absolute cunts, all of their products come with backdoors and phone home whether you want them to or not. Not to mention they're greedy bastards, you should see how they treat their corporate customers... talk about biting the hand that feeds you...

So, of the free Windows PDF readers, are any open source? I use Linux, but I'd like to know what to recommend to others...

 

[Mr_Man]

I've been using Foxit for about a year now. It opens so much faster, takes up WAY less hard drive space, and has a smaller memory/processor footprint. Since I'm on a rather old computer, that's a big selling point.

 

[WheelsOfConfusion]

[citation][nom]NoLuv4Adobe[/nom]So, of the free Windows PDF readers, are any open source? I use Linux, but I'd like to know what to recommend to others...[/citation]
Sumatra is open source. GSview is a front-end for Ghostscript on Windows, but I hear it's nag-ware.

 

[n3ard3ath]

That's what happens when you keep installing unnecessary background processes on users machines. If the holes are in those processes, and you keep it running, you're vulnerable for all the time your machine is opened and connected to the internet. And Acrobat tends to install those kind of agent processes, which supposedly makes the program faster to start (even with that agent Acrobat is slower than say Foxit) and keeps it automaticly up to date. No thanks Acrobat. And grats to the hackers to have found so many holes in that piece of shit.

 

[Guest]

The pdfreaders.com (which you link to in the article) recommends xpdf and kpdf. Fact is, those pdf viewers recently had to fix security holes very similar to those present in Acrobat Reader 9.x before 9.1 and 8.x.x before 8.1.4.

 

[demonhorde665]

what a load , i've neer gottten a virus with adobe acrobat it's plain and simple , don't open "strange" pdf's only open pdf's from companies you know youc an trust (such as my schoolweb site and autodesk pdf's for 3ds max). reall to me anthing else is teh "strange". it's plain and simple go with choices you can trust

 

[demonhorde665]

[citation][nom]Tindytim[/nom]I'm not saying we should change for security reasons, I'm saying we should change because PDF sucks as a format, not to mention it's closed and proprietary, I don't feel I should have to pay money to save a document in the PDF format. SVG can do everything is can, and it can do it better.Althought, from a security stand point, Inkscape (the more prominent SVG editor) is much safer as it doesn't connect to the internet for any purpose. Not to mention SVGs are just XML documents that can be made by hand (if you were really paranoid about security).[/citation]


pdf will not go away becuase it is what is still taught to many student's , I'm in school for game art design , and our school requires a lot of adobe software thier reader being one of those. it's all about industry familiarity compaiens like pdf . becasue it has such a large user base that knows pdf already . switchign would be time consuming adn costly to any company.

 

[salem80]

I'm use FoxitReader from more then two years ago
.... i found it very fast against Acrobat Reader ..
now after that i will never use Acrobat Reader for good ..

 

[city_zen]

Another good (and free) alternative is PDF-XChange Viewer, which also has a shareware version (PDF-XChange viewer PRO) with some additional features

 

[city_zen]

Oops, sorry, I've just checked again and it seems that the free version of PDF-XChange viewer has an Ad-Bar, so it's ad-ware not freeware. The shareware version obviously removes it.

 

[sanapo1]

PDF-XChange is excellent alternative to Adobe. Your computer can be safe if in your PDFs JavaScript was disabled. After playing around with it I deleted Adobe PDF viewer immediately. You can draw, make notes, circle. It's fast, easy, free - no problems. Performs functions that are pay in other software.