Evince vs Sumatra PDF

Evince and Sumatra PDF are, at first glance, remarkably similar, much like two hitchhikers who both own towels but have chosen radically different patterns. They are both open-source, both lightweight and both capable of handling an alarming variety of file formats with the kind of quiet competence that suggests they’ve seen things—things involving obscure document extensions most people have never heard of. They exist primarily to let you read documents without needing to sell your soul to bloated, overbearing software that insists on updating just when you’re about to do something important.

Evince, in particular, feels like it was designed by a committee of well-meaning but slightly overcaffeinated people who are absolutely convinced that desktop integration is the meaning of life. It was born in 2005 under the watchful eye of the GNOME Project, largely shaped in the land of efficiency and precision—Germany. It plays well with Linux, has a fondness for annotations and generally behaves like the kind of software that wants you to know it has depth—a quiet, dignified sort of depth, like an ancient librarian who will absolutely find that reference you need but will judge you just a little bit for asking.

Sumatra PDF, on the other hand, is the software equivalent of a no-nonsense backpacker who refuses to carry anything heavier than a toothbrush and a change of socks. Created in Poland in 2006, it exists solely for the purpose of opening PDFs as fast as humanly possible, preferably before the user has even finished thinking about clicking the file. It sneers at unnecessary features like annotations or form filling, because such things, it believes, slow people down. It is the embodiment of minimalism, like a Zen master who has transcended all worldly concerns except for one—making sure you can read your document without interruption and then disappearing into the digital ether as if it had never existed.

See also: Top 10 PDF Readers