Compress PDF file. The first step is to convert the PDF file to a PostScript file using following command: # pdf2ps -dLanguageLevel=3 file.pdf. Above command will create a file named file.ps and the size of the file.ps may larger than original file size. Next, compress the file using following command: There are command line utilities available on Linux called GhostScript that can reduce PDF file sizes. We can compress PDF files using ghostscript command line utilities on Linux. The ps2pdf software is needed to print these documents. In this command, ps2pdf converts an open PDF to a ps2pdf file and then back to it again to reduce it. Let's check out various ways of reducing the PDF size on Linux. We shall show you the command line and GUI ways to compress the PDF files on Linux. Terminal Tuts The major benefit of PDF documents is the intended representation remains almost same on any operating system or device. However, scanned PDFs can be of large sizes and you may need to optimize or reduce the size of the file to share it with a friend. This article discusses several ways to do that on Linux with near-original quality. GC Warning: Repeated allocation of very large block (appr. size 33525760): May lead to memory leak and poor performance. real 0m23.677s user 0m23.142s sys 0m0.540s $ du myFile*.pdf 108M myFile.pdf 74M myFile__SMALLER.pdf It is faster than gs but compresses upto 30% in this case for a 107.5MiB input file. Densify compresses PDF files using Ghostscript, a suite of software based on an interpreter for the PostScript language and for PDF. Its usage ranges from the rasterization or rendering of such files, or the display or printing of document pages, to the conversion between PostScript and PDF files. Download and install Densify beyond a certain limit, with pdf containing raster images, it is impossible to achieve an high compression ratio without sacrificing the quality.You must decide if you need quality or prefer degrade images for pdf intended NOT FOR PRINT but only to view on screen. A pdf with low-res images is useless, in my opinion, you need in any case an high quality backup copy to not lose ability to print Method 1: Reduce PDF file size in Linux command line You can use Ghostscript command line tool for compressing a PDF file. Most Linux distributions include the open source version of Ghostscript already. However, you can still try to install it just to make sure. Learn how to reduce the size of a PDF file in Linux. Both command line and GUI methods have been discussed. How to Compress PDF in Linux [GUI & Terminal] Notice This topic is archived. New comments cannot be posted and votes cannot be cast. Notice This topic is archived. This solutions shrinks the size of PDF files. ps2pdf a script which convert Post Script format document into PDF format. pdf2ps uses gs to convert the Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) file "input.pdf" to PostScript (tm) in "output.ps". Before performing following task take backup of the PDF file. Let's get started. Install Ghostscript To install. sudo apt-get install pdfjam. Then try variants of these commands. pdfjam --scale 0.5 your.pdf. or try the --papersize flag. Run pdfjam --help for a full list of options. Share. Improve this answer. answered Dec 3, 2012 at 0:34. To install. sudo apt-get install pdfjam. Then try variants of these commands. pdfjam --scale 0.5 your.pdf. or try the --papersize flag. Run pdfjam --help for a full list of options. Share. Improve this answe