Acroread debian

acroread_debian Debian 7.7 SMP Debian 3.16.3-2~bpo70+1 (2014-09-21) 14_11_13 # http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/3505/how-to-install-adobe-acrobat-reader-in-debian # Step #1 - Download Adobe maintains all the official versions of Adobe Reader on their FTP site so you can simply go there and download the latest version, packaged as a .deb file. The primary URL for all versions of Adobe Reader ftp://ftp.adobe.com/pub/adobe/reader/unix/ Step #2 - Installation

The file we just downloaded is the 32-bit version of Adobe Reader. Adobe only provides Reader as a 32-bit binary, there is no 64-bit variant, but this is perfectly fine, we just need to install it a bit differently than most .deb packages.

1. First we need to add the 32-bit architecture to our system (multiarch), then update.

$ sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386 $ sudo apt-get update

2. Now attempt to install Adobe Reader

$ sudo dpkg -i AdbeRdr9.5.5-1_i386linux_enu.deb

Then tell apt to fix any broken installed packages. This would seem to be a hack, but it basically gets apt to do the heavy lifting for us and install/fix any missing or broken packages with relatively little fuss.

$ sudo apt-get install -f

3. Alternatively, one can use gdebi. This will automatically resolve the dependencies.

$ sudo apt-get install gdebi $ sudo gdebi AdbeRdr9.5.5-1_i386linux_enu.deb

4. Now, attempting to launch acroread with

$ acroread

gives

/opt/Adobe/Reader9/Reader/intellinux/bin/acroread: error while loading shared libraries: libxml2.so.2: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Adobe forgot a dependency. We can figure out which package to install using apt-file.

$ apt-file search libxml2.so.2

which gives libxml2. So we do

$ apt-get install libxml2:i386

to install the i386 version of libxml2.

5. Now invoke acroread using a non-root account.

$ acroread

Here is a screenshot of Acrobat Reader running on Debian Wheezy.

NOTE: Adobe installs Acrobat Reader in /opt, which is icky, and in violation of the FHS.