Master PDF Editor

There we have it: A commercial program for editing PDF files that is not as expensive as Adobe’s Acrobat and is available not only for Windows and OS X, but also for Linux. Moreover, the Linux version of Master PDF Editor is available free of charge for private use with a limited feature set; this will get you quite far. If you want more, you have to unlock the paid features.

The paid program can create and edit PDFs (text, images), create forms and insert, delete or move pages. PDFs can be signed and annotated. In version 5, Master PDF Editor uses the qt5 graphics library to display its user interface.

Documentation

The Russian manufacturer Code Industry provides detailed online documentation for Master PDF Editor – but only in English and Russian.

Installation

Master PDF Editor is available as .deb or .rpm packeges for 64-bit operating systems. There is also an installer available for the ARM-64 platform. Version for older operating systems based on qt4, which were also available in 32-bit, are discontinued.

On the download page of the manufacturer you can download the package for Debian and Ubuntu, which can be easily installed:

sudo dpkg -i master-pdf-editor-*.deb

Alternatives

In the Open Source department, there is of course Ghostscript, a comprehensive command line tool including an API for PDF and Postscript, but the available GUI programs are outdated and rudimentary. A full-blown, up-to-date open source PDF editor is not available. Or maybe there is: Even though LibreOffice is not a PDF specialist, it can be used to edit PDFs by opening them in Draw. New documents may be created in Writer and then exported as a PDF. Individual PDF pages can also be edited in Inkscape.