I need to merge several PDF files into a single document on a Linux system. I've heard that there are command-line tools available for this purpose, but I'm not sure where to start. Can someone recommend a reliable and easy-to-use tool for merging PDF files on Linux, and provide a basic example of how to use it?
One straightforward command-line tool for merging PDFs on Linux is pdftk. It's quite powerful for handling PDF files. You can install it via your package manager; for example, on Ubuntu, you'd use sudo apt install pdftk. Once installed, to merge files, simply run: pdftk file1.pdf file2.pdf cat output merged_file.pdf. This command will combine file1.pdf and file2.pdf into merged_file.pdf. Hope this helps!
Absolutely, pdfunite is another great tool that's part of the Poppler utility package, and it's very straightforward. To use it, first ensure it's installed on your system. On most Linux distributions, you can install it with sudo apt-get install poppler-utils. To merge PDFs, just run: pdfunite file1.pdf file2.pdf file3.pdf merged_output.pdf. This command will seamlessly combine all listed PDFs into a single file. It’s fast and maintains the original quality of the PDFs.
Adding to the previous suggestions, if you're looking for a tool that also provides a GUI, you might want to try PDF Arranger. It allows for more than just merging; you can rearrange, rotate, and crop pages too. It can be installed from your software center or via command line: sudo apt install pdfarranger. Once installed, open it up, drag and drop your PDFs into the window, and arrange them as needed before exporting the merged document.
I’d like to clarify how pdfunite and pdftk differ, as mentioned in posts #1 and #2. While pdftk is excellent for a variety of PDF manipulations and offers more features, pdfunite is specifically optimized for merging PDF files, making it a bit faster for this single task. It's worth considering if you need a simple merge without extra bells and whistles.
