PDF your way to a paperless office with Linux

Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Office, Open Source

PDF your way to a paperless office with Linux

by Grant Robertson May 8th 2007

Need to pump out the PDF's but don't have the considerable change required to pick up a copy of Adobe Acrobat? Linux could be your answer. If you already have a Linux machine around the house serving some other duty, you can easily turn that machine into a PDF printing and archiving factory, and simply click "print" on any computer (and from any operating system) in the house to create a paperless document.

Joe Brockmeier of Linux.com explains, "What sort of things might you want to save as PDFs? When you buy stuff online, virtually every site provides a receipt, which you may want later if the order email is lost or if you need to send in a receipt for expense reports. However, you may not want to print all of them out just to keep them around, and Firefox only supports writing to PostScript, rather than PDF."

Tags: Adobe, archiving, Linux, PDF, printing

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Chris A said 2:59PM on 5-08-2007

There are many free apps to do do this in Windows.
cutepdf is one that comes to mind.

FantasiaMushroomDeathCycle said 3:30PM on 5-08-2007

Ever heard of "Acrobat Distiller?"

look it up.

seamus said 3:40PM on 5-08-2007

PDF Creator for Windows is GPL'd and OpenOffice has an export to PDF button.

I think you need certain Adobe programs to get Distiller. It's not free.

Grant Robertson said 3:46PM on 5-08-2007

I've used distiller before, and it's certainly not a freebie. Using a Linux print server like the above example gives you a ton of flexibility, and doesn't cost a dime.

beojan said 3:54PM on 5-08-2007

You have to pay for hardware

http://www.beejex.uni.cc

Ixnay said 10:19PM on 5-08-2007

PDFRedirect is a great tool as well just choose as your printing option.
And its free on c-net

Mark said 9:25AM on 5-09-2007

I use Primo PDF and have not had any problems with it.
I also created a GMAIL account to store PDF receipts and other PDFs.

Eleventeen said 1:15PM on 5-09-2007

OS X does this natively, (at least 10.4).

I do this all the time to avoid having to bookmark and then lose a handy reference document in a sea of unorganized bookmarks. Since Spotlight searches within PDF's, and I have Quicksilver set up to index my PDF directory in it's catalog, it's easier than trying to wade thru bookmarks 3 months from now when you vaguely remember you'd thought you'd found a good site on handy Terminal commands.

Jarrett Kaufman said 1:29PM on 5-09-2007

So the massive number of freeware PDF printers aren't good enough? Now I need to dedicate an entire Linux computer to the task?

Jer said 2:10PM on 5-09-2007

Yes there are plenty of programs to do this under Windows also. I personally use CutePDF If i don't have acrobat available. Only issue I find is that creating PDF from online files is great, but taking physical paper is hell when you have to do it 1 by 1. If store receipts you preview them then adjust to scan..you have to be dedicated to doing this all the time or just spend $400 on a automatic paper scanner.

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