Continuing from where I left off yesterday (All that is evil, part 1), where I rant on Adobe’s good old Acrobat Reader. There goes my chance of getting into Adobe 
Complexity
Just reading about the installation of the latest-greatest made me weep
In short:
- Download a firefox plugin (when using FF)
- This plugin is just the installation manager for Acrobat Reader (more bandwidth wasted)
- Restart firefox
- Download the remaining piece of installer
- Unpacking, Installation proceeds (10 minutes)
- Restart Windows (Back to 1990, Adobe?)
This, for a PDF reader. The latest in killer apps, the next generation cutting-edge software from Adobe. You’d think you were downloading a military secret. Here’s Dale’s take on Acrobat Reader
Reader’s incessant updates (demanding you reset your computer — why?), thundering great list of modules to load, and hour-glass-provoking pauses for thought have given Portable Document Format a reputation for being as welcome as a flatulent camel in the kitchen.
Security
In the previous section, I do not mention the “Critical security updates” which pop-up every few days once you install this program. This is because I believe that updating or finding updates without my consent is a compromise of my own security. It is more of an attack on my privacy than just some stupid complex code built in without much thought.
What security updates ought to be present for a program that does (or rather should do) little more than let users read files? And how critical are they that we are not consulted before Adobe programs phone home as per their wish, claiming bandwidth of our internet connections, and ask us to restart the computer once completed? Why is there no option to stop Adobe acrobat from contacting its server and providing information about my machine and software?
Not many know that later versions of Acrobat Reader allows use of Javascript for users to code snippets within their documents. Now isn’t that creepy. If people want to code, let them use Flash! Why add unnecessary trauma to users with Javascript which, if not rigorously tested, allows for a convenient array of security vulnerabilities?
Alternatives
For Windows, a beautiful piece of software for reading PDF documents (and doing just that, without bundled software, noisy updates and other mischief on our PCs) is Foxit PDF Reader. You can download it here.
For Linux, Evince is good enough. In fact its my favourite since I use Gnome desktop with the default Ubuntu installation. For KDE users there’s KPDF.
On a tangential note, for users wanting to create PDF documents, there’s the fantastic open-source PDFCreator (aptly named). This comes with hell lot of options to configure for folks like me, although the defaults are good enough. So unless you wish for creating PDF forms or something jazzy, the humble PDFCreator will do for most of your tasks.