Subscription = addiction

Just like Microsoft office users, stop buying office and just download LibreOffice.

And it's good to know that Thunderbird will never force you to open email links inside of a specific browser.

It will do what every other operating system and program in the entire universe does and open a link in your default browser the way Outlook doesn't anymore without a special setting in the config panel.
- Permanently Deleted
I haven't used LibreOffice for about 5 years, but my experience 5 years ago was that MSOffice was a better program. PowerPoint's auto design wizard alone has saved me dozens of hours making presentations.

I want libre to as good or better, but it just isn't there.
- I find it does the job, however I barely use office programs to begin with.
- It has come a long way in those 5 years.

In the case of my users, it's more like:

"I need licensed Acrobat Pro bc Reader tells me I need Pro to send PDFs."

They don't realize they can send the PDF any other way just fine - email attachment, Google Drive, hell even AirDrop. They just try to share the PDF from within the Reader app, get that message, and give up. Mildly annoying at worst.

Firefox and Chrome both have PDF viewers built into them now, and that means Edge too... So there's no need even for Sumatra, Foxit, or really anything.

I'd still prefer to use Sumatra just because how lightweight it is compared to modern browsers, plus no fucking telemetry
The browsers suck ass with pdf forms though.
- Did you last try a browser 10 years ago or something? They work fine.
That's nice but if a coworker is sharing a PDF there's a good chance it calls for markup.

The problem is IT (me included) had installed Adobe Pro for years apart of the image no matter what.

Then licensing became more of a pain, and we don't really have a great way of telling if a user needs Pro or Reader.

Luckily with OS upgrades from 7 to 10 most of us fixed that and just made Reader available and Pro as a request.

That's crazy! Kind of similar but luckily we did keep it just reader in the image. If requested pro was installed, which of course everyone requested and we didn't really put up a stink because of the same thing you stated! Then the end came for version 11 and switch to DC came and we needed to get our act together... took a few months but we had to have everyone we didn't immediately know submit business justification for its use. Half were denied. I think we have 400 licenses and licensing is all portal based now. I wanna say we had over 800 with it originally. That was super annoying.
We use pdf xchange. Low one time payment for the license, everyone gets it. Done, and done.

Imagine using uwieldy Acrobat to read pdfs instead of Foxit or Sumatra or some shit.

Foxit isn't what it used to be. It's just as unwieldy and intrusive as Adobe. I remember how lightweight it used to be.

Sumatra ftw however.
I use Foxit in work because they won’t pay for Adobe. I have my own Adobe subscription and I really miss Acrobat when using Foxit
I work university IT and anyone using just Acrobat from CC will be moved over to Foxit Pro. I'm sure everyone will love it..

Okular is decent, and open source

I do edit PDFs quite a lot for my job.

But I use PDF Gear which is free. Though I don't trust them much, to be honest, their website feels shady and their campaign on Reddit was suspicious. Works super well though.

"I don't edit PDFs now but I might in the future... and my officemate has it..."

Fuck that, Bluebeam is 900% better

Bluebeam is overwhelming. It's great for reading construction plans, but there's so many features I never feel like I'm using it effectively enough.
- Sounds like you need to switch it to the simple profile, because yeah, there's a lot of commands that most people won't ever need, taking up space in the GUI.

I'm all for an individual person deciding to give MS and Adobe the bird and learning to adopt OSS. If that's what you want to do, feel free friendo and live your fucksubscriptions life.

But OP is posting a situation where a user is asking an IT admin for paid adobe acrobat and.....what, the user has no idea why they need it? That doesn't make any goddamn sense.

If reader gives them everything they need, then you briefly show them what they missed and move on. If there is something they need in paid to do their job, ya fucking pay for it because it's a goddamn $90 sub for a $60-80k employee. It pays for itself in time.

And everyone suggesting that an IT admin should force his users to use OSS have no idea how enterprise IT works. To do that, the business would need to retrain their employees and then handle all the incessant support requests that come in every day because they don't understand the software. Let's not also forget that new job postings would have to ask for familiarity with OSS, which could limit their incoming talent pool.

Plus, lets not forget the main reason businesses prefer to pay for software - support, or what I like to call the "someone to yell at" factor. These companies also tend to have full documentation and training videos that aren't made by volunteer 1st year students trying to get experience and YouTube influencers. So even if an employee has a training problem, IT can probably point to a support website instead of wasting hours on retraining.

And then the human factor. The employee you scoffed at will NEVER put the effort in to learn thw software becausd they now have a bias since you forced it on them. Which means you get to hear the bitching every time you respond to a support ticket. And every support ticket means lost productivity, which means lost money, which means any savings you earned are eaten away little by little, until your boss comes by and asks "what the fuck is wrong with you?"

I'm all for fucksubscriptions on an individual level. I love and use OSS software personally. But in a business environment, it just doesn't make as much financial sense as you think.

I've worked at companies that have a mix of foss and commercial stuff. Not every company is an enterprise business with thousands of people.

In fact, an enterprise with thousands of people would probably not have this problem, because they'd have a better deal from Adobe where they wouldn't need to care if someone has an extra licence.

Yea I know it's not always simple, but it's a problem that subscriptions have started in the business world and have trickled down to end-users as well. You can't even buy a single licence for Office anymore, it's subscription or nothing. In this environment, it's worth thinking about alternatives on all levels, because eventually you may end up paying way more. Not just in money either.
- I was with you at first, but 365 is so so much better than letting people keep using excel2012 a decade later without security patches. Convincing CEO of a 14 person business that they absolutely need to use a modern office edition is impossible - to say nothing of the unaffiliated user. 365 guarantees that patching is up to date.
  
  FOSS Office versions do the same, but if you're gonna pay I'd much rather you have a subscription than set it and forget it.

Is there anything acrobat does better than alternatives? I'm a blubeam man myself but that's probably industry specific. I guess it could have better form field organization and linking.

BB users unite! Maybe if we are loud enough, they will actually make a true arc markup tool rather than the current paraboloid/conic tldisaster they call an "arc".
Acrobat has a decent “auto create form fields” feature that I haven’t seen anywhere else and it saves me a lot of time

I use Gnome document viewer on Gnome and Okular when on KDE when viewing PDFs.

For editing PDFs, always was used to PDF Studio. I heard LibreOffice Draw is decent but never bothered trying it as I am happy with my current workflow... for now.

PS: PDF Studio is a one time purchase

ah, my beloved, hp instant ink addiction

PDF24. Is that a program on the right track?