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this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2023
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I did 2 months ago. The OS is truly awsome but many many software are just inferior to the windows version. For example there is no proper pdf reader that can sign a pdf and add or remove a page. You have to do it in two separate software or with a CLI application. I'm a daily anydesk user, I have license as well, their console is broken on ubuntu (or just gnome, not sure). I had to weed out certain things from gnome from a javascript file so I can use my PC while anydesk running. So depending on what you want to do it can be a very good experience or a borderline hell trying to replace your basic software with something worse. I will not give up at this point and I stand by it it is not linux's fault, however you are not just using an OS but many software on that said OS and many of those software will suck. Fortunately things like Photoshop no longer an issue as you have Photopea in the web browser. Web3 is really helping linux out.
Xournal++ should be a proper PDF reader that can sign a PDF and add and remove pages. Haven't tried doing the latter personally though. It looks a bit old and might be hard to find, but it's always worked suspiciously fine for me and is still in active development.
The "Adobe Acrobat" brand apparently also has a web app for signing PDFs. This is like, the first web search result for "PDF signing".
I've also tried Inkscape import as vector and then reexport, which works fine for visually signing single pages. Just make sure you render the text to paths on import, instead of converting them to SVG text— And don't actually do this, because it's kinda dumb, so just use Xournal++ or the Adobe website instead, but there are options.
Granted, depending on how your experience with Xournal goes, these options are indeed not as convenient or easy as they should be.
No! This term refers to, like, three three different things already, all of which have largely been either practical failures or grifts. Prescriptivism is usually just pedantry, but HTML5 web apps aren't even on that inauspicious list.
There are already solutions to sign a pdf or reorganize the sheets or make comments. My point was its all a separate tool which defeats the point. Like if you want to use paint and the fill bucket is in a separate application. Just makes no sense. I honestly willing to pay for a complete solution I dont want it for free.
Ah, well, "UNIX Philosophy", maybe. Each tool does one thing, and does it well, and it's up to the user to figure out what they want to accomplish by using multiple tools together— Though it probably made more sense in CLI than in the GUI realm. I think it works for 95% of cases. I don't want to need an entire office suite just to be able to make a mark on a page. But when you're working a lot on one particular document (be it a PDF, video edit, source code, digital illustration, or whatever), then yeah, having a "complete solution" with an efficient workflow can be hugely important as well.
You could check if CodeWeavers Crossover, the money behind the WINE project, can run your preferred Windows applications but do it on Linux:
https://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility
Or maybe WINE will do it for free:
https://appdb.winehq.org/
Unfortunately, pdf signing is problematic still on Linux, I use it as a daily driver and found a compromise with existing functionality. You can try okular, which is able to sign PDFs without altering them, but has a huge signature block and doesn't permit adding a scan of a signature. My workaround: I created a stamp in the PDF reviewing tools with my signature, I can place that on the document and then sign it afterwards. Unfortunately, that doesn't work for pre-signed PDFs as it will alter the signed version.
Alternatively, LibreOffice Draw can sign PDFs, but also can't insert signature scans (yet, there's an open feature request) and is sometimes not understanding when PDFs change to landscape, in general it's not nice to render a many-pages document in LO Draw and hope that it won't mess up the document upon signing.
For adding / removing pages, I agree - it's a pity there's no GUI application, but I have gotten used to qpdf / pdftk and they are quite powerful and more efficient 90% of the time. Still doesn't excuse no GUI application, but it keeps me able to work.
Xournal++ is old, but it can directly write on PDFs with both pen tablet and scanned image insertion, and can probably add/remove/reorder pages too— Technically I think its file format links to/embeds the whole PDF file, and then probably exports a new one with stuff added on top, or something like that, but the end result is usually that you can directly edit the PDF.
Or do you mean some kind of cryptographic signing? Well, it looks like Adobe offers a webtool too?
I meant tamper-proof cryptographic signatures, yes. A webtool is absolutely out of the question if you consider that it means uploading your potentially confidential document to an enterprise like Adobe.
You can sign and remove pages using LibreOffice Draw
you can but it has many other issues as it is not a PDF reader. It has no bookmarks, every PDF is opened editable so if there are shapes or text you can accidentally move them, there is no continuous scrolling through a document it is divided into individual pages. PDF is simply not solved on linux at the moment.
Does your PDF Reader and PDF Editor have to be the same application?
No. I rarely edit PDFs. I sign them, bind them, reorganize pages, comment on them. I was an adobe x user then a foxit reader guy on windows, there you can do it all. There is a foxit reader for linux with fraction of the features and have crashed for me constantly (back to my original point that multi OS developments have inferior linux version) Ideally I would prefer a single software to manage my PDFs just like for example I prefer a single software to play my different format of videos.
I use Journal++ to sign pdfs. Works with hand written as well as scanned signatures.
I use AnyDesk regularly myself and haven't run into an issue aside from the dark theming of my desktop making some text a bit hard to read.
What's the issue you're having?
gnome has those little icon on the top bar and anydesk also creates one while running. That little icon created a big unclickable are in the corner of the screen and i could not close my full screen windows. I had to delete a javascript file from gnome that places those icons in the topbar to solve this issue as anydesk has no setting to hide it.
That's actually an Ubuntu specific problem then, since vanilla gnome doesn't come with tray icons