KDE is arguably the most popular window manager for Linux. One of the features of KDE is a built-in PDF writer. To use it, select Print from the File menu. On the Print dialog box, select Print to File (PDF/Acrobat) from the list of printers. You can choose where you want to print the PDF in the Output File field. From there, click Print and you have a PDF. You can also select Mail PDF File from the list of printers. This will not only create a PDF from your document, but also open a new message in KMail (the KDE mail client) with your PDF as an attachment.
On top of that, you can change the resolution and the color settings for the PDF by clicking Properties on the Print dialog box. From there, click the Device Settings tab and change the settings as necessary.
The main drawback of KDE's PDF writer is that it works only with applications that were specifically developed for use with KDE, for example, the KOffice suite.
OpenOffice.org
OpenOffice.org is a free office suite, sort of like Microsoft Office, that runs on Linux and Windows. One my favorite features of OpenOffice.org its built-in PDF writer. To create a PDF, all you have to do is open a document and select Export to PDF from the File menu. You'll be asked to give the PDF file a name, and you can even tell OpenOffice.org where to save the PDF. Then, you just click the Export button and you get an instant PDF of your document.
The PDFs that it exports are plain vanilla: no bookmarks, no links, and minimal compression. Thanks to an OpenOffice.org macro called extendedPDF, you gain more control over the PDF files that you create. Not only do your PDFs contain links and bookmarks, but you can also specify colors for the links; the quality of the PDFs that you're creating, for on-screen viewing, printing, for use as e-books, or for pre-press work; and even the version of the PDF specification with which the resulting file is compatible. This setting ensures that your PDFs can be viewed in newer and/or older versions of a PDF reader.
There are two versions of extendedPDF: Basic and Universal. The Basic version has all the features that are listed in the preceding paragraph. The Universal version, which costs around $40 (U.S.), enables you to add security to your PDFs. Using the Universal version you can, for example, prevent people from copying text from your PDFs or printing them.