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Software · Office & notes

PDF Chain

Graphical interface for the PDF Toolkit (PDFtk).

  • Completely free
  • Linux
  • Open source

Overview

PDF Chain is a PDF toolkit, available on Linux.

Features described in its Flathub listing: PDF merging, PDF splitting and page extraction, form filling.

Overview written by LicitPro from the documentation published by the authors and the cited sources; we have not tried the resource ourselves.

Excerpts that establish this information
  • “Graphical interface for the PDF Toolkit (PDFtk)” — Flathub, 10 November 2026
  • “Merge PDF Documents or Collate PDF Page Scans” — Flathub, 10 November 2026
  • “Split PDF Pages into a New Document” — Flathub, 10 November 2026
  • “Fill PDF Forms with X/FDF Data and/or Flatten Forms” — Flathub, 10 November 2026
  • “Attach Files to PDF Pages or the PDF Document” — Flathub, 10 November 2026

At a glance

All of PDF Chain is free: no feature is locked behind a paid plan, and its code is open.

Its licence (GPL-3.0) is a copyleft open source licence: you may use, study, modify and redistribute it, including commercially; modified versions must keep the same licence.

Strengths

  • Open source code
  • Commercial use allowed

About

If PDF is electronic paper, then PDFtk is an electronic staple-remover, hole-punch, binder, secret-decoder-ring, and X-Ray-glasses. PDFtk is a simple tool for doing everyday things with PDF documents, and PDF Chain is a nice frontend application to it. Features: Merge PDF Documents or Collate PDF Page Scans Split PDF Pages into a New Document Rotate PDF Documents or Pages Decrypt Input as Necessary (Password Required) Fill PDF Forms with X/FDF Data and/or Flatten Forms Generate FDF Data Stencils from PDF Forms Apply a Background Watermark or a Foreground Stamp Report PDF Metrics, Bookmarks and Metadata Add/Update PDF Metrics, Bookmarks or Metadata Attach Files to PDF Pages or the PDF Document Unpack PDF Attachments Burst a PDF Document into Single Pages Uncompress and Re-Compress Page Streams Repair Corrupted PDF (where possible) ---------- DISCLAIMER ---------- Latest version of this software is very old and so it may contain bugs, so to be on the safe side make sure to NOT open any untrusted pdf files with it. For this same reason we have limited this application to only save files to standard locations: "Downloads", "Documents". You can also save to external devices (like USB pendrive).

Description from Flathub — AppStream (Flathub)

Sources and checks

  • Facts collected from Flathub (credit card, source code, publisher, licence, free status, platforms, commercial use, version) —
  • Last technical check: 7 November 2026
  • Description from Flathub — AppStream (Flathub)

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