In the age of remote learning/teaching I started using Edge to draw in .pdfs I’m showing to my students and it really fits my basic need, but something more focused on the task and in spirit of FLOSS would great. What’s most important to me is ability to draw and easily erase what I drawn; handy page switching. More would be nice of course.
I couldn’t find anything like that, and software like Krita or GIMP doesn’t work well for my needs, that’s why I’m using Edge.
If you want to do this to use it as a virtual whiteboard and/or teach remotely, you can use OpenBoard.
[A]n open source cross-platform interactive white board application designed primarily for use in schools. It was originally forked from Open-Sankoré, which was itself based on Uniboard.
Otherwise, xournal++ as suggested by @drop is what I use for PDF annotation. You can use a tablet like the Huion H420 or Gaomon S620 for precise input on Windows or Linux.
The problem is how a lot of PDFs are structured. With a lot of them you would find design issues if you open them with an editor in order to modify them like if was just a vectorized image.
Yeah. It’s has some cool features for doing snapshots? I wanted to setup Artix on it, but failed with base installation iso, so I went with gtk one and basic settings to get it running asap. I read than ext4 is more stable than btrfs? Or that it just has some issues, so I stayed with ext4. As a backup/sync thing I would recommend running LAN only instance of Nextcloud or use Syncthing. It won’t prevent your system from dying, but getting back up and running should be quite fast and convinient :)
I am not sure how is the drawing thing, but if it is like “underlining things”, selecting, put them in a circle, etc, you could try Okular which is in the Windows Store (must be installed per Windows user as UWP apps are installed in each user independently).
Okular is in main repositories of most distributions too.
Obviously, Linux would be better for avoiding Microsoft, yeah, but if that’s not preferable for other reasons, then Windows without a Microsoft account is still massively better than Windows with it.
And honestly, I don’t feel like auto-upgrades are that important in a niche PDF reader. The chance that someone targets Windows malware against Okular or libpoppler is pretty much 0. So, just grabbing a new version every year or so, is probably fine.
The thing was not specific vulnerabilities but improvements and fixes.
There could be some performance issues in some documents, crash under undetermined conditions and ofc general vulnerabilities not dependent on this tool could be taken into account.
Okular is not just document-library + own code. There are other libraries involved and Qt is a big framework with wide use and surface.
Yeah, alright, Qt is a fair point. That might actually get targeted by an attacker.
Personally, I would still deem a Microsoft account a bigger security risk than only updating Qt every few months (if you set yourself a reminder to e.g. grab the newest version every 3 months).
But yeah, that’s where it starts to become subjective and not something one can give as general advice.
I use Xournal++ for all of my teaching.
Thank you all for replies. I will check every proposition you made and leave a comment which one I picked.
If you want to do this to use it as a virtual whiteboard and/or teach remotely, you can use OpenBoard.
Otherwise, xournal++ as suggested by @drop is what I use for PDF annotation. You can use a tablet like the Huion H420 or Gaomon S620 for precise input on Windows or Linux.
I got Wacom Intuos few years ago as present. So now while I’m explaining something I can draw whatever I need in the moment, to get the idea through.
Xournal++ is a nice tool for that.
Libre office draw can be used for this purpose
The problem is how a lot of PDFs are structured. With a lot of them you would find design issues if you open them with an editor in order to modify them like if was just a vectorized image.
Hm, I made a few pdfs’ in it… There is an option to open documents and draw in them?
Also Artix ftw! (I think, I didn’t make through installation yet, haha)
Ah I removed atrix lol
Why? :<
due to powercut many pksgs broke , so now returned to arch
That’s so unlucky… I guess I will have to get new UPS. Current one works only when system is idle, or for my laptop :p
I guess btrfs is good interm of data protection
Yeah. It’s has some cool features for doing snapshots? I wanted to setup Artix on it, but failed with base installation iso, so I went with gtk one and basic settings to get it running asap. I read than ext4 is more stable than btrfs? Or that it just has some issues, so I stayed with ext4. As a backup/sync thing I would recommend running LAN only instance of Nextcloud or use Syncthing. It won’t prevent your system from dying, but getting back up and running should be quite fast and convinient :)
I am not sure how is the drawing thing, but if it is like “underlining things”, selecting, put them in a circle, etc, you could try Okular which is in the Windows Store (must be installed per Windows user as UWP apps are installed in each user independently).
Okular is in main repositories of most distributions too.
You can also grab a build from KDE’s build server, if you don’t want to use the Windows Store.
The problem are auto-upgrades.
Would be preferable using a GNU/Linux system if wanted to avoid Woe shit.
Obviously, Linux would be better for avoiding Microsoft, yeah, but if that’s not preferable for other reasons, then Windows without a Microsoft account is still massively better than Windows with it.
And honestly, I don’t feel like auto-upgrades are that important in a niche PDF reader. The chance that someone targets Windows malware against Okular or libpoppler is pretty much 0. So, just grabbing a new version every year or so, is probably fine.
The thing was not specific vulnerabilities but improvements and fixes.
There could be some performance issues in some documents, crash under undetermined conditions and ofc general vulnerabilities not dependent on this tool could be taken into account.
Okular is not just document-library + own code. There are other libraries involved and Qt is a big framework with wide use and surface.
Yeah, alright, Qt is a fair point. That might actually get targeted by an attacker.
Personally, I would still deem a Microsoft account a bigger security risk than only updating Qt every few months (if you set yourself a reminder to e.g. grab the newest version every 3 months).
But yeah, that’s where it starts to become subjective and not something one can give as general advice.