The following chart shows how the Adobe Reader installer has grown in size over the years. When possible, 64-bit versions of installers were used.
↫ Alexander Gromnitsky
Disk space is cheap, sure, but this is insanity.
The following chart shows how the Adobe Reader installer has grown in size over the years. When possible, 64-bit versions of installers were used.
↫ Alexander Gromnitsky
Disk space is cheap, sure, but this is insanity.
This is a great use of data to make a point!
Saw the logarithmic graph and instantly felt it didn’t do the data justice. Thankfully others already reported this and it’s been updated with a linear chart showing the magnitude much more clearly. 🙂
Nearly everything including trivial apps have exploded in size. It’s tempting to say this is not sustainable, but we could have said this ten years ago and would have been wrong. So here’s to Adobe v35.1 requiring a 5.5GB download in 2035 (rough extrapolation of current data).
Meanwhile for comparison, xpdf-4.05 installer archive weighs in at 2.5M, and the entire libreoffice-25.2.5 suite with applications install, extra languages, help files, dev kit, etc. is 430M. Base package installer archive on its’ own is only 197MB, and portions of that are optional. Modern software dev has no particularly good excuses for being so bloated.
Different runtime version bundled with the installer ? I guess Java for Acrobat.
I feel this is completely dodging the point. Full download of OpenJDK (not just the JRE, but all the bells whistles and gongs too) explains less than half the difference in size between a functional PDF reader, and the monstrosity of Adobe’s product that’s labeled as a PDF reader, which happens to outweigh several different modern office productivity suites.
The practice of bundling everything including the kitchen sink when the user asked for hand towel has some benefits, but at best it still seems rather silly to me. At worst, it’s a plague for resource drain and an can even become a nightmare for auditability.
Adobe includes the whole Acrobat product in what used to be the Reader install package, so if you have a subscription with Acrobat included, all its features are unlocked when you sign up with your Adobe account.
Beside the cheap storage costs, nobody cares about optimization in any way.
What is a good, free, pdf reader that has an auto updater?
that has basic features like rotate and zoom?
I need an auto updater because of security. if it auto updates I don’t need to manage it.
I could use Edge or so, but I prefer some application for users to manage themselves better
Okular is available in the Microsoft Store. Originally a KDE application, but the Windows version works surprisingly well, considering that it is so little known.
uhh… Sumatra PDF?