Linux users often resort to Ghostscript for PDF compression, which requires a terminal command. Here is a completely free graphical alternative — works in any Linux browser and requires no command line knowledge.
The standard Ghostscript command for PDF compression is: gs -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dCompatibilityLevel=1.4 -dPDFSETTINGS=/ebook -dNOPAUSE -dQUIET -dBATCH -sOutputFile=output.pdf input.pdf. This works but requires terminal access, Ghostscript installed, and knowledge of the right flags.
Go to pdfeditor.onl/compress-pdf in Firefox or Chrome on your Linux machine. Upload the PDF. The compression runs via WebAssembly locally — no server involved.
Click the upload area or drag your PDF from the file manager (Nautilus, Thunar, Dolphin) into the browser tab.
Tip: For power users: the browser tool gives you three clear quality profiles equivalent to Ghostscript's /ebook, /printer, and /screen presets — without memorizing command flags.
Select Balanced for the best quality-to-size ratio. Download the result. The output file is saved to your ~/Downloads directory.
For image-heavy PDFs, Ghostscript often achieves slightly higher compression ratios. The browser tool is faster for casual use and does not require any setup. For batch automation, Ghostscript is still the better Linux tool.
Yes. Any Linux distribution with Firefox, Chrome, or Chromium supports the browser-based tool without any extra packages.