PDF-XChange can be installed and run quite smoothly with wine. However, it is a bit tricky to set it as default application as it is not registered automatically and so won’t be on the list of choices when using mimeopen to set default app.
My solution is to change default.list in ~/.local/share/applications (or /usr/share/applications if you want to make the behavior global) directly. Simply add or modify default.list with
application/pdf=PDFXChange.desktop
Note that if default.list does not exist and you create it from scratch, you will need to add
[Default Applications]
at the beginning of the file.
Of course, you will also need to have PDF-Viewer.desktop under the ~/.local/share/applications (or /usr/share/applications) as well. If things went well when you installed PDF-XChange, the .desktop file should be created automatically and located at ~/.local/share/applications/wine/Programs/PDF-XChange PDF Viewer. One can simply pull it to ~/.local/share/applications or /usr/share/applications.
The other problem I came across is that the default behavior only open the program but not the file when I click it. For that one, one will need to add Z:%f at the end of “Exec=” line in PDF-XChange.desktop.