I've been hearing about the much-hyped release of Adobe Reader 7.0 for Linux from everywhere and finally decided to take a look at it myself (I was reluctant to do it because my favorite Linux PDF reader was and still is CVS version of KDE's stock KPDF). Installing it is no rocket science, really, but closely integrating it with the system is a more difficult task. Here's how I accomplished it.
- Download latest tarball from ftp.adobe.com
Untar it in a temporary directory:
user@local:~$ cd /tmp; tar zxf /path/to/downloaded/AdbeRdr70_linux_enu.tar.gz
as root, run the included INSTALL script:
root@local:/tmp# cd AdobeReader; ./INSTALL
read Software License Agreement or skip to next step by pressing Q. Type 'accept' and press Enter to proceed to installation.
Enter the path to directory where you want Adobe Reader 7.0 to be installed. However, in this case, to make it play along with previously installed Acrobat Reader 5.0, we'll put it to
/usr/lib/Acrobat7
:Enter installation directory for Adobe Reader 7.0.0 [/usr/local/Adobe/Acrobat7.0] /usr/lib/Acrobat7
Agree to create the required directory and installation will continue and (hopefully) exit without errors.
Go to
bin/
sub-folder:root@local:/tmp# cd /usr/lib/Acrobat7/bin/
Open
acroread
script with your favorite editor, e.g. usingvi
:root@local:/usr/lib/Acrobat7/bin# vi acroread
Go to line number 17 and comment it out by prefixing its contents with a hash symbol:
#install_dir=`dirname "$ScriptDirectory"`/Reader
insert the following new line underneath (in fact, anywhere in the beginning of this file):
install_dir=/usr/lib/Acrobat7/Reader
Copy the resulting
acroread
script to/usr/bin
:root@local:/usr/lib/Acrobat7/bin# cp acroread /usr/bin
Now browse to
Browser/
sub-folder to perform Mozilla and/or Firefox plugin installation:root@local:/usr/lib/Acrobat7/bin# cd ../Browser; ./install_browser_plugin This will install the browser plugin for acroread. Enter the install directory for Adobe Reader 7.0.0 [/usr/lib/Acrobat7] 1. Perform global installation 2. Perform user-specific installation (Mozilla/Firefox/Netscape) Enter your choice [1/2] 1 Enter the browser install directory - /usr/lib/mozilla The plugin seems to be already installed. Are you sure you want to overwrite ? [y/n] y Installation successful. Added the file /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/nppdf.so Do you want to install another browser ? [y/n] y The plugin seems to be already installed. Are you sure you want to overwrite ? [y/n] y Enter the browser install directory - /usr/lib/mozilla-firefox Installation successful. Added the file /usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/plugins/nppdf.so Do you want to install another browser ? [y/n] n
That's it! Go to about:plugins and see if there is an entry of 'Adobe Reader 7.0' in the list of installed plugins. Also try to launch stand-alone Adobe Reader by pressing Alt+F2 and typing
acroread
(Enter).
Enjoy!