Install Adobe Reader 9.5.5 under Debian-based distributions of Linux By Armando Caussade, http://armandocaussade.org/ Version 2. April 30, 2019. Copyright © 2019 Armando Caussade. Some rights reserved. Creative Commons License BY-NC-ND 4.0. ----- INTRODUCTION There are many excellent PDF readers available for Linux, but most lack features such as printing out forms with fillable fields, signing forms or doing multi-document searches; this is where Adobe Reader (formerly Adobe Acrobat Reader) comes handy, but it is important to note that Adobe no longer supports the reader on Linux. The final release with binary installers is 9.5.5, made available on May 10, 2013 in both DEB and RPM formats for Debian-based and Fedora-based distributions, respectively; but I will concentrate on how to install the DEB version. Ocasionally, packages named "acroread" or "adobereader-enu" are found on Linux repositories, but I would strongly suggest sticking with the official Adobe release. The publicly accesible links for the installers have been pulled out from the Adobe website, but the DEB and RPM binaries remain available from the Adobe public FTP server (see link below) in addition to a BIN installer and the source code. Be aware that these binaries were all compiled for 32-bit architectures and may need some libraries to run flawlessly on 64-bit versions of Linux. Also, let us not forget that this is an old software package that is no longer supported or updated, and may have unpatched vulnerabilities. Install only if you need to. ftp://ftp.adobe.com/pub/adobe/reader/unix/9.x/9.5.5/enu/ The procedure given below is not unique, as there are alternative routines (using the GDebi package installer, for example, or a smaller set of 32-bit dependencies) that will also work. I devised this procedure on Ubuntu 16.04 and 18.04, and have later tested it on Linux Mint 18 and 19. On Mint 19 I have successfully installed and used Adobe Reader under both the 32-bit and 64-bit system architectures. I should note that installing on older releases like Ubuntu 14.04 and Mint 17 may require a different, older set of 32-bit libraries. PROCEDURE 1. To download Adobe Reader 9.5.5 from the Adobe FTP site, open a terminal and type the following command: $ wget ftp://ftp.adobe.com/pub/adobe/reader/unix/9.x/9.5.5/enu/AdbeRdr9.5.5-1_i386linux_enu.deb 2. After downloading, verify the MD5SUM checksum of the DEB file. The output should read as specified below. $ md5sum AdbeRdr9.5.5-1_i386linux_enu.deb 88036c68998d565c4365e2ad89b04d51 AdbeRdr9.5.5-1_i386linux_enu.deb 3. Change to the directory containing the DEB file, usually your home directory; in this case, type: $ cd ~ 4. On 64-bit Linux, install the required 32-bit libraries using *one* of the commands below; otherwise, skip this step and proceed to #6. $ sudo apt-get install ia32-libs $ sudo apt-get install ia32-libs-multiarch 5. The "ia32-libs" library is no longer available on most current Linux distributions, but can be obtained from the Linux Mint website. Browse to http://packages.linuxmint.com/ and search for "ia32-libs". Download the appropriate file and install. 6. Install the DEB binary using the DPKG command. You will need to force the 32-bit architecture and accept any errors this may cause. $ sudo dpkg -i --force-architecture AdbeRdr9.5.5-1_i386linux_enu.deb 7. Run the INSTALL command with "-f" to resolve any missing dependencies. $ sudo apt-get -f install 8. To run the reader from the terminal type "acroread"; to open a PDF document using the reader, type the following at the prompt: $ acroread /.pdf 9. Optionally, to link the Adobe Reader plugin to the Mozilla Firefox web browser, use *one* of the commands below. 32-bit: $ sudo cp /opt/Adobe/Reader9/Browser/intellinux/nppdf.so /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/ 64-bit: $ sudo cp /opt/Adobe/Reader9/Browser/intellinux/nppdf.so /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins/ 10. If you later need to remove the reader and its associated libraries, use the following command: $ sudo apt-get remove AdbeRdr9 ia32-libs ###