At the command line you can use the 'less' command to view the content of a pdf document, 
without any graphic support, just in shell alphanumeric mode.
This only require a piece of code on the linux startup file of your choice, 
which could be ~/.bashrc, ~/.profile or another one. 
That's the code: eval "$(lesspipe)"
Now you have a very empowered less command, capable not only to output pdfs contents, 
but also doing things as explorer .iso and .tar.gz contents, view Microsoft Words docs and more. 
[other details --> http://cur.lv/9kdx]