Linux users typically resort to LibreOffice or command-line tools for PDF-to-Word conversion. Here is a simpler, completely free browser-based alternative that works on any Linux distribution without any installation.
LibreOffice can open PDFs and save as .docx via: libreoffice --headless --convert-to docx filename.pdf. This works but formatting preservation is mediocre for complex PDFs, and it requires LibreOffice to be installed.
Open Firefox or Chrome on your Linux machine and go to pdfeditor.onl/convert-pdf. Upload the PDF, select Word (.docx) as output, and download. No command line, no package installation.
Tip: The browser tool generally preserves PDF text layout better than LibreOffice's direct PDF-to-DOCX conversion for digitally created PDFs.
Drag the PDF from your Linux file manager (Nautilus, Dolphin, Thunar) into the browser tab, or use the upload button. Select .docx output.
The downloaded .docx file opens in LibreOffice Writer. Review the formatting — tables and complex layouts may need minor cleanup, but text content is accurately preserved.
Any Linux distribution with Firefox, Chrome, or Chromium supports the tool — Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian, Arch Linux, Mint, and all others.
For most standard document PDFs, the browser tool preserves text structure more accurately. For very complex multi-column academic PDFs, formatting cleanup is required regardless of the tool used.