Last updated on August 31, 2020 by Dan Nanni
While HTML is an excellent medium for distributing and consuming information on the web, it is not an ideal format as far as printing and archiving purposes are concerned. For that, PDF is a better format, as PDF documents have well-defined page layout, and have all contained images embedded into PDF files. If you would like to convert HTML pages to PDF format on Linux, follow this guideline below.
In Linux environment, you can use a command line utility called wkhtmltopdf
to convert any HTML webpage or any live URL to a PDF file. wkhtmltopdf
uses Webkit web browser rendering engine to perform HTML page download and HTML-to-PDF conversion.
wkhtmltopdf
on LinuxOn Debian-based system, you can install wkhtmltopdf
from base repositories:
$ sudo apt-get install wkhtmltopdf
Please be aware that wkhtmltopdf
installed via apt-get
has reduced functionality and other limitations. First of all, it cannot run without X11 system. Also, it cannot add hyperlinks or a table of contents in the converted PDF file.
If you would like to use wkhtmltopdf
without X11 system, while enjoying its full features, you can use a static binary of wkhtmltopdf
that is distributed from its official website, where pre-build binaries are available for Debian, Ubuntu, CentOS, openSUSE, Arch Linux and others. This version is built with Qt and X11 integrated.
wkhtmltopdf
To convert HTML to PDF using wkhtmltopdf
, use the following command.
$ wkhtmltopdf http://www.cnn.com cnn.pdf
Note that if you want to capture web pages hosted on https
site, you need to install openssl
first, and run xkhtmltopdf
.
On Debian-based system:
$ sudo apt-get install openssl
On Red Hat-based system:
$ sudo yum install openssl
If xkhtmltopdf
does not work for some reason, an alternative way to convert HTML web pages to PDF files is to use Google Chrome browser. If you don't have Google Chrome installed, install it first.
On Google Chrome, go to the URL of the web page you would like to convert to PDF. Then, choose Print a page
menu of Google Chrome, and change Destination
to Save as PDF
. Once you click print button, the web page will be saved as a local PDF file that you designate.
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