Introduction
It is suggested that you choose software based on the Unix philosophy; DOTADIW/"Do one thing and do it well". Programs usually come in three kinds, ones that run in a display server such as Xorg or Wayland, those that run in a browser (this is usually very harmful for reasons outlined in the browsers page) such as Electron (a Chromium based framework, that is reportedly spyware), and TUI or CLI programs that run in a terminal or tty (definitely the most minimal, a good example would be pass).
There is some criticism regarding GTK3 and GTK4, largely that they break compatibility to often (both in terms of app functionality and theming), that they are bloated, corporately controlled (through GNOME), or are simply ugly as compared to GTK2 (there are patches for this for GTK3).
Programs labeled green are ones I use unless uncontested.
DO NOT go with a web/cloud based password solution. Pass is probably the best option or you can use pen and paper.
| Name |
Formats supported |
UI toolkit |
Programming language |
Systems supported |
Screenshot |
| Zathura |
PDF, XPS, PS, CBZ/CBR, DjVu |
Wrapper ("girara") around GTK3 |
C |
Linux, BSD, Mac |
| MuPDF + Mutool |
PDF, XPS, EPUB, XHTML, CBZ, various image formats |
Direct X11 |
C |
Linux, BSD, Windows, Android, iOS |
| DjView4 |
DjVu |
Qt5 |
C++ |
Linux, BSD, Windows, Mac |
| Original Xpdf |
PDF |
Motif |
C |
UNIX |
| Xpopple (forked Xpdf) |
PDF |
Motif |
C++ |
? |
| pdftoroff's Hovacui |
PDF |
Embedded (X11 and Linux framebuffer supported) |
C |
Linux |
| Antiword |
Word 2, 6, 7, 97, 2000, 2002 and 2003 => Plain text or PostScript |
N/A |
C |
RISC OS, BeOS, Amiga, Plan 9, MorphOS, Solaris, Linux, OS/2 VMS, EPOC, Tru64/OSF, DOS, FreeBSD, Mac, NetWare, Zaurus, Minix, Windows |
| unoconv (depends on Libreoffice) |
ODF, MS Office New and Old (.doc[x],.ppt[x],.xls[x],etc), PDF, (X)HTML, RTF, Docbook, etc |
N/A |
Python |
? |
| EPUBReader |
EPUB2/3 |
N/A (Your web browser) |
JavaScript |
Browser plugin for UXP/WebExtension Firefox and Chromium |
 A screenshot of EPUBReader with a custom background color, font style and size. |
Newsboat is written in muh Rust. Liferea can be used with GTK2.
DO NOT use an electron based editor like Atom, LimeText or similar.
I use (Graphical) Vim but use whatever works for you that isn't cloud-based or massive bloat.
