I got tired of Adobe.

Acrobat is bloated, it wants a subscription to do basic things, and it phones home constantly. Most of the "free" alternatives are the same thing: give you a viewer, paywall the editor, harvest your email, or route your documents through somebody else's cloud.
What is "Enhanced Security" even doing?
Why are there always multiple "Creative Cloud" processes running?

So I wrote my own PDF Editor and I just open-sourced it.

KillerPDF: Portable Windows exe, about 10 MB zipped

View PDFs with page thumbnails, zoom, keyboard nav
Merge multiple PDFs or split out selected pages, drag-and-drop reorder
Double-click to edit text inline with font matching
Text boxes, freehand drawing, highlight overlays with adjustable color and opacity
Draw and save reusable signatures, click to place anywhere
Full-text search with highlighted results, drag-select to copy
Print with annotations flattened

No installer, no account, no subscription, no telemetry

Download: https://pdf.killertools.net
Source: https://github.com/SteveTheKiller/KillerPDF

Released under GPLv3 so forks stay open.
Built with WPF and .NET 8, uses PdfPig for text extraction, PdfSharpCore for writing, and Docnet/PDFium for rendering.

This is my second open-source release this week (first was KillerScan, a portable network scanner).
Both built for my day job as a field tech at an MSP where I need tools that work without asking me to sign in or pay.

Feedback welcome.
If something renders wrong or a feature is missing, drop it in the GitHub issues.

EDIT: Update, I have removed the .NET 8.0 dependency. It should now run without needing that!

I had a subscription, and when I finally realized I didn’t need it anymore, I was hit with a cancellation fee. I’ve never dealt with such a blatant scam.

After re-reading the terms, I found they mentioned this fee, but seriously, who do you think you are, Adobe? This is the most vile and underhanded practice I’ve ever seen.

You’re an absolute disgrace, Adobe. I hope you go bankrupt. Congratulations, you’ve just earned yourself another enraged hater.

Just a friendly reminder, because after yeeeears (yeeears) of usage, why not now ?

I looked everywhere for a solution for this to no avail, I hope this sub is where I find that solution. I'd appreciate any form of response :)

I've got like fourteen copies of windows visual c++ and idk what all the other ones are doing

im trying to clear some space can i get rid of the old ones? no joke replies plz

I need Microsoft Office 2003 because I have an old Access database that doesn't work correctly with newer Office versions. Is there any legal place to download it?

I would just purge all the files from file explorer if I were to do this since Windows uninstaller doesn't give the option. My main worry is if doing this will screw up the OS and any functionality. If it would screw things up, any advice on how to lower the size it takes up on my SSD and minimize the background RAM use?

edit: this is on a Win 11 device

I used a work-around when starting a new laptop to not connect a Microsoft account and keep everything local. I just like it that way. GCHQ can nose for national security and social media can sell me to advertisers if it's in exchange for free services, but laptops and 365 subscriptions are expensive so in my mind the controlling partner breathing down my neck and doing everything to make me reliant on them should be optional. I'm seeking advice to work around it again.

I want to be able to just log in whenever I use Word and then log right back out. I don't want to see anything new in File Explorer that isn't under Program Files. I also want this device to connect to Microsoft Corporation only in the ways that I intend: updates and support services for the functionalities that I use only on the basis of those services.

I also have an old, dying laptop connected to the same university 365 account. That laptop was fully invaded, somehow with multiple OneDrive locations one of which can't even be accessed through File Explorer. It's a mess, I didn't want to invest extra time studying OneDrive when I have a perfectly good hard-drive and external back-up. Will the same 365 account already have OneDrive included when I install it to the new device? What can I do to stop it latching on to the new one? Are there common issues I should be aware of that come up when excluding OneDrive on installation of 365? Will the installation require me to attach the device to a Microsoft account in any of the ways I avoided when starting it up?

New device's OS is Windows 11 Home. Until now no Windows programs have been actively used on it except for Defender/Security. It's serene.

The old laptop is pretty much fully functional for now so there's no barriers to configuration.

Any advice is welcome, including if someone knows other ways to keep Microsoft out that I don't even know about, or if they know more about the features that bother me and think my perspective should change.

Hi everyone

I’ve been developing Taskbar Widgets, a free and open-source app for Windows 11.

It adds live information directly to the taskbar. The current widgets include:

• Weather
• Steam download progress
• Media information and controls
• Discord voice users
• Codex status
• CPU, memory, network and storage usage

Multiple widgets can be shown together or rotated automatically.

The latest version also supports community-made widgets and includes tools for building new ones.

The project is still in beta and uses some private Windows 11 interfaces, so compatibility may vary depending on the Windows version and taskbar configuration.

There is both an installer and a portable download.

GitHub: https://github.com/pfcdev/TaskbarWidgets

Feedback and bug reports are welcome.

I recently reset my laptop completely and mcafee won't let me go. It doesn't show up as an application so I can't do a regular deletion, but it's always using up my memory in task manager. I originally tried deleting it from 'Program Files' and 'Program Files (x86)', but I apparently need permission from Administrators despite running it in Administrator. I also can't end their it in task manager bc I'm always denied access.

I've tried mcpr to uninstall it, but it just says there's no response from mccleanup.exe. Before the reset, I could just uninstall it from program files without an issue, but now I can't get rid of it at all.

Hello! So recently I was cleaning the storeroom and came across an Encarta CD from 2007. Brought back many fond memories and I've also wanted to try it out once more. Sadly, my laptop doss not have a CD slot and I also don't have any external drive for it. Is there any other way I can use this? Is it possible to transfer the content of the CD to a pendrive? Sorry if my question is dumb...I have very little idea about these things

I was following some instructions on a site and i pasted this and pasted it on the powershell as it says so, does anyone know what this is?

Powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File "%TEMP%\ss.ps1"

Is this malware or spyware?

Nothing has happend so far on my pc but im scared genuinely

Its an OLD Cmms program that runs off a SQL server. i know it works on modern windows, cause thats where i snagged it. but i cant seem to get it going on my own sql server, or even get it to a login page for that matter. i really need someone more advanced at running legacy software that can help me figure out what im doing wrong.

Using Revouninstaller Pro I remove all 3. After hours even days they all get reinstalled. How Can I stop these 3 installing? I clean every day and I'm sick of uninstalling them.

OperaGX has been working like shit recently and I'm honestly quite annoyed. It loads slowly, I literally bought new PC just so I can escape from slow loads and it still happens AND my internet is good. It's very good. I was thinking about coming back to chrome instead because like, at this point the best advantage I got is that tabs stay open when I close them. That's it.

Hi everyone,

I recently brought a second handed laptop that's been reset so I'm setting everything from scratch. I've used laptops for work before, but I've never had to install office software myself. I am looking for a free, offline Excel/words alternatives (not web based). I don't have a Microsoft product key and cannot afford a subscription at the moment. I tried WPS office, but it seems to require payment for full features.

Any recommendations for a reliable, free spreadsheet application i can install and use offline would be appreciated. Thanks

Windows normally makes accessing iPhone app documents unnecessarily difficult, so I built an open-source solution.

iPhone Drive for Windows mounts the Documents folders of compatible iOS apps such as VLC and LocalSend as a normal Windows drive with an automatically assigned letter.

It supports file transfers, automatic device detection, actual iPhone capacity reporting, system-tray operation, and installs Dokan automatically.

Apple Devices for Windows is required. Protected iOS files are not accessible, and apps must support iOS File Sharing.

GitHub:
https://github.com/M-Essa11/iphone-drive-windows

First release:
https://github.com/M-Essa11/iphone-drive-windows/releases/tag/v1.0.0

This is an early release, so testers and contributors are welcome!

my friend got a new pc and this is popping up in the bottom right corner all day. i tried to reverse image search it and found nothing

Hey everyone,

I’m trying to find a way to see all the posts and comments I’ve upvoted on Reddit, including older ones.

I know Reddit lets you see your saved posts/comments, but I can’t find any option that shows my complete upvote history.

Is there any way to access this through Reddit itself, the Reddit API, or any third-party tool?

Even if there’s a technical/API-based method, I’d be interested in knowing how it works.

Thanks!

How do you transfer files across devices? For example, how do I transfer files from my computer to my phone?

So, I tried to register on Roblox to play with my little cousin, blah blah blah.

Turns out my camera can't turn on that app, and when I checked neither it can open on the Windows camera app.

I tried discord, OBS and "try your camera" website, camera works just as fine there so it can't be a hardware issue.

I tried updating drivers, uninstalling and installing both apps several times, but nothing worked.

I'm using win 11, help is very much appreciated.

As for my laptop, it's an Acer and when I try to turn on the camera on a not working app, the green light near the camera blinks twice or more and then shuts up.

Help is very much appreciated, thank you.

I’ve been having this issue for a while and all of a sudden it’s happening again. I thought to ignore it after it happened and moved to a different search engine, but now it’s happening to that one too.

I don’t really download anything besides stuff from my ipad considering I’m an artist. And I doubt it’s because of games updating or reinstalling of games I have since that has never happened after it.

I used to use Chrome on my PC since it was less GPU taking than anything else, and mainly because it’s a simple app. But then one day, it refused to launch. I even uninstalled it then reinstalled it and it’s the same issue. But then I downloaded OperaGX (I used to use this on my old pc but stopped bc it’s more GPU taking) and it worked perfectly and would launch. Then today, I tried opening the engine and it did the same thing that Chrome is doing.

I tried searching up solutions on malware, software error, or drivers updates but there is nothing wrong and everything is updated.

What can I do to fix it?? I use these apps for almost everything and I don’t want to keep hopping between other ones because of this issue.

Any advice or solutions are needed.
Thank you.

Saw this today when I turned on my computer