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I am new to Ubuntu, but I believe I have Ubuntu 11.10 installed correctly. I am trying to install Acroread using AdbeRdr9.4.6-1_i386linux_enu.deb that I downloaded from the Adobe web site. How do I do this?

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  • 10
    Worth noting that Ubuntu comes with a PDF reader (evince, aka Document Viewer). Acrobat does have more features, but if all you want to do is read PDF files it shouldn't be necessary.
    – chronitis
    Feb 21, 2013 at 9:59
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    Why would you need adobe reader? Evince document viewer works perfectly in ubuntu and it do what you can do in adobe reader and more, it supports PDF, Postscript, djvu, tiff, dvi, XPS, SyncTex support with gedit, comics books (cbr,cbz,cb7 and cbt) and it is installed by default on ubuntu 12.10. So don't bother yourself installing adobe reader.
    – Mehdi
    Feb 24, 2013 at 11:21
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    Evince doesn't show animations and some certain tests.
    – K1.
    Jun 13, 2013 at 1:41
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    It also doesn't support forward and back buttons.
    – B. Bischof
    Aug 8, 2013 at 22:07
  • 8
    It also does'nt show annotations correctly, some documents are printed and/or displayed incorrectly, filling forms is not visually compatible with the adobe reader. Mar 21, 2014 at 11:39

9 Answers 9

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All Ubuntu versions prior to 13.10

To install Adobe Acrobat you will need to enable the canonical partners repository in the Software Sources tab of Update Manager

enter image description here

Use Dash and search for Software Sources or Software & Updates in 13.04 and later.

If you don't see those options in Software Sources, you can use the following command from a terminal:

sudo add-apt-repository "deb http://archive.canonical.com/ $(lsb_release -sc) partner"

Then in a terminal you can update and install acrobat reader:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install acroread

It is strongly recommended from a security point-of-view to use the version in the repositories.

If - for whatever reason - you wish to download directly from Adobe and install then the following instructions apply:

Using firefox navigate to:

Choose the following options as shown in the image - i.e. download the .deb package

enter image description here

When the Download button is clicked:

enter image description here

Leave it at the default to open in Software Center where you can install it.

If you have set your downloads to automatically save in your Downloads folder:

cd ~/Downloads
sudo dpkg -i AdbeRdr*.deb
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  • 1
    NOTE for 12.10 64bit users - this Q&A applies - askubuntu.com/a/70380/14356
    – fossfreedom
    Nov 6, 2012 at 12:42
  • 5
    I am on 13.10 and even with the partners repos I can't install the reader. Ideas? Mar 19, 2014 at 13:19
  • 3
    Also not working on 14.04. May 17, 2014 at 13:35
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    Is there an updated answer for this? (The site has changed it's format since 2011) Or possibly workaround using the Unix version.
    – No Time
    Aug 17, 2014 at 19:12
79

REVISED: 2016-Nov (minor wording only)

For Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, 16.04 LTS and 16.10, 32- or 64-bit

[ adapted from: http://ask.xmodulo.com/install-adobe-reader-ubuntu-13-10.html ]

Adobe Reader 9 is not in the 'Partner' repository for 13.10 (or later).

  1. Download Adobe Reader (32-bit), from Adobe site:

    From here: ftp.adobe.com .. reader .. 9.5.5

    Check MD5SUM after downloading, input

    md5sum AdbeRdr9.5.5-1_i386linux_enu.deb
    

    the output should be

    88036c68998d565c4365e2ad89b04d51 AdbeRdr9.5.5-1_i386linux_enu.deb
    
  2. Open a command line, change to the directory containing the .deb file.

  3. Install package, forcing to accept 32-bit version and any errors:

    sudo dpkg -i --force-architecture AdbeRdr9.5.5-1_i386linux_enu.deb
    sudo apt-get -f install
    
  4. Add the missing 32-bit libraries: (skip this step for 32-bit)

    sudo apt-get install libxml2:i386 lib32stdc++6
    
  5. (Optional) Run for first time, to get icon in Unity menu bar.

    acroread <path>/<MyDocument>.pdf
    

For Ubuntu 12.04 LTS

  1. Add 'Canonical Partner' repository

    sudo add-apt-repository "deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu $(lsb_release -sc) partner"
    
  2. Update your system

    sudo apt-get update
    
  3. Install Adobe Reader, and font extensions

    sudo apt-get -y install acroread acroread-fonts
    
  4. (Optional) Run for first time, to get icon in Unity menu bar.

    acroread <path>/<MyDocument>.pdf
    
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9

For saucy (13.10), you can include the raring partner repository. This is how I did it:

sudo echo -e '# for acroread\ndeb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu/ raring partner' > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/raring-partner.list
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install acroread

apt-cache show acroread
# Package: acroread
# Architecture: amd64
# Version: 9.5.5-1raring1
# Depends: debconf (>= 0.5) | debconf-2.0, acroread-bin, nspluginwrapper
# [...]

apt-cache policy acroread
# acroread:
#   Installiert:           9.5.5-1raring1
#   Installationskandidat: 9.5.5-1raring1
#   Versionstabelle:
#  *** 9.5.5-1raring1 0
#         500 http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu/ raring/partner amd64 Packages
#         100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
3
  • Welcome to Ask Ubuntu. Can I suggest to add the info, that one only needs to do the first three lines. And that rest is to show what has been installed (and is thus optional).
    – MadMike
    Jan 22, 2014 at 13:08
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    sudo echo string > protected_file doesn't work. Instead use echo string | sudo tee protected_file Feb 18, 2014 at 15:30
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    This method also works for Trusty (14.04). See askubuntu.com/questions/455135/… for a discussion.
    – landroni
    Apr 25, 2014 at 12:00
3

I combined above methods and so I can install Adobe Acrobat Reader on
Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Xenial Xerus and Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Bionic Beaver:

cd ~/Downloads
wget ftp://ftp.adobe.com/pub/adobe/reader/unix/9.x/9.5.5/enu/AdbeRdr9.5.5-1_i386linux_enu.deb
sudo apt-get -y install libxml2:i386 libcanberra-gtk-module:i386 \
gtk2-engines-murrine:i386 libatk-adaptor:i386 gtk2-engines:i386

sudo apt-get install ./AdbeRdr9.5.5-1_i386linux_enu.deb

Then one can launch it with acroread.

Note: what makes Adobe Reader almost unique and useful - it is its search in files (accessed by pressing Ctrl+Shift+F).

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  • Can confirm, works great for me on Ubuntu 18.04. Oct 19, 2020 at 19:23
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It seems that Adobe is not going to support linux in the near future (see post here), unless there is an increase in numbers of linux users requesting support. This can be done via filling the following Adobe feature request form: Feature Request/Bug Report Form.

As an alternative, you may want to switch to Foxit or master pdf readers, who are actually faster to open and provide more free features than Adobe reader.

2

Ubuntu 16.10 on amd64 seems to require

sudo apt-get -f install
sudo apt-get -y install adobereader-enu

Without i386 in 64-bit env acroread gives file not found and GTK errors, so run:

sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get -y install libc6:i386 libncurses5:i386 libstdc++6:i386 libglib2.0-0:i386 libsoup2.4-1:i386 libgtk2.0-0:i386
sudo apt-get -y install libicu-dev:i386 gtk2-engines-murrine libcanberra-gtk-module:i386 gtk2-engines-murrine:i386

This may be redundant as main bin is i386

sudo apt-get -y install gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-* libgtkmm-2.4-1c2 libcanberra-gtk-module
1

Acroread is now available in Quantal's partner repo.

See this Launchpad bug:

It says Precise in the title, but it applies to precise, quantal and raring.

0

You can do:

# sudo dpkg -i AdbeRdr9.4.6-1_i386linux_enu.deb

But I recommend evince as better pdf reader. It's the default in quantal.

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0

NOrbert's answer worked for me, but only when I added the --reinstall option when installing the acroread package.

sudo apt-get install --reinstall ./AdbeRdr9.5.5-1_i386linux_enu.deb

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