Comic Books

11 Best Free and Open Source Linux Comic Book Viewers

A comic book is a magazine which consists of narrative artwork in the form of sequential images with text that represent individual scenes. Panels are often accompanied by brief descriptive prose and written narrative, usually dialog contained in word balloons emblematic of the comics art form. Comics are used to tell a story, and are published in a number of different formats including comic strips, comic books, webcomics, Manga, and graphic novels. Some comics have been published in a tabloid form. The largest comic book market is Japan.

Many users associate desktop Linux with their daily repetitive grind. However, we are always on the look out for applications that help make Linux fun to use. It really is a great platform for entertainment.

Some document viewers offer a good range of different formats. Although they are not dedicated comic book viewers, Evince and okular have support for the common comic book archive files, and merit mention here.

To provide an insight into the quality of software that is available, we have compiled a list of 11 proficient dedicated comic book viewers. Hopefully, there will be something of interest here for younger readers or older readers who want to recapture your misspent youth.

Here’s our rating of the software.

Ratings chart for free and open source comic book viewers

Let’s explore the 11 comic book viewers at hand. For each title we have compiled its own portal page, a full description with an in-depth analysis of its features, screenshots, together with links to relevant resources.

Comic Book Viewers
YACReaderSuperb comic reader and comic manager
MComixGTK+ comic book viewer
KOReaderVersatile document viewer for a wide variety of file formats
QComicBookAims at convenience and simplicity
KomikkuGTK-based manga reader for GNOME
ComicalUses high-quality image scaling algorithms
PeruseComic book viewer based on Frameworks 5
gomicsFast and resource efficient image viewer for comic archives
ComixSuperb viewer which is extremely user-friendly
cbrPagerSimple comic book pager
JomicJava based viewer for comic books stored in CBZ, CBR and PDF files
Best Free and Open Source SoftwareRead our complete collection of recommended free and open source software. Our curated compilation covers all categories of software.

The software collection forms part of our series of informative articles for Linux enthusiasts. There are hundreds of in-depth reviews, open source alternatives to proprietary software from large corporations like Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and Autodesk.

There are also fun things to try, hardware, free programming books and tutorials, and much more.
Subscribe
Notify of
guest

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

6 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Frankie
Frankie
5 years ago

YACReader is a fab comic reader. A worthy winner of every accolade going!!!!

JuanVega
JuanVega
5 years ago

BDReader is my favorite. Still has a few kinks but what sets it apart is panels detection. This allows panels to be viewed full screen. You move to the next panel using the arrow keys. Perfect for reading on today’s laptop with 16:9 aspect ratios. It’s not perfect but I work around the issues. This program help make reading comics fun again!

Brett Clifton
Brett Clifton
5 years ago
Reply to  JuanVega

BDReader was a promising comic reader, but appears to have been abandoned – no updates in years. I think most (if not all) main distros don’t include it in their repositories.

Jim Mooney
Jim Mooney
5 years ago

yacreader seemed impossible to install. dependency missing, then couldn’t locate package even after adding key.

Nostradamus
Nostradamus
5 years ago
Reply to  Jim Mooney

Without any information, no one will be able to help you Jim. YACReader can be a bit difficult to install on some Linux distributions, but it’s definitely worth the time taken. And you’ll learn some valuable skills along the way.

Siard
Siard
2 years ago

MComix can read .cbr files made with RAR 5, which YACReader cannot.
MComix can be tweaked better, such as the number of pixels to scroll per arrow key press or mouse wheel turn.
MComix can open a file at the page where you last left, which YACReader cannot.
YACReader, on the other hand, offers some eyecandy which I consider uninteresting.
Therefore, I find that MComix is better than YACReader.