Wednesday, October 24, 2007

acroread 8.1 on ubuntu gutsy amd64

add the medibuntu repositories:
sudo wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/gutsy.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list
wget -q http://packages.medibuntu.org/medibuntu-key.gpg -O- | sudo apt-key add - && sudo apt-get update


Install acroread:
sudo apt-get install acroread

Get xulrunner for the 32-bit libgtkembedmoz version (see acroread FAQ):
wget http://releases.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/xulrunner/releases/1.8.1.3/contrib/linux-i686/xulrunner-1.8.1.3.en-US.linux-i686.tar.gz
tar xfzv xulrunner-1.8.1.3.en-US.linux-i686.tar.gz

After acroread startup, insert the xulrunner directory under
Edit -> Preferences -> Internet -> libgtkembedmoz Folder

Restart acroread.

9 comments:

Vaughn Grisham said...

Thank you very much for the how-to.

After installing, how do I get firefox to use Adobe Reader to pull up pdf files?

leo said...

You're very welcome!

To let firefox open pdf files directly in the browser, you'd need the mozilla-acroread package. Unfortunately, this package is not available for the amd64 architecture right now (see here).

As stated in the last post there, you could try to use the 32-bit package, and wrap the plug-in (nppdf.so) using nspluginwrapper to make it 64-bit compatible.

Vaughn Grisham said...

Drat! So essentially, in order to open a PDF file, a 64-bit user has to download and manually open PDF files. I tried using Evince, and while it will work with Firefox to automatically open PDF files, it won't print them unless they too are downloaded and opened manually.

leo said...

You could still try the nspluginwrapper approach above if you want to see the pdf files directly in the browser.

However, you should not need to download the pdf files and open them manually even without the plug-in. When clicking on a pdf file, firefox usually asks if the file should be opened or downloaded. You can choose to use acroread to open the file (you need to specify the full path the first time). I find that quite convenient and actually prefer the acroread window over viewing the pdf directly in the browser. Firefox also remembers this choice.

Vaughn Grisham said...

Hi Again Leo,

So how do I go about making Adobe Reader the default application for PDF files then? In Firefox, I went to the content tab under preferences and clicked Manage under File Types. The default application for PDFs is listed as Document Viewer (Evince, and no other is listed). If I choose Open With This Application, I can't find Acrobat's executable to select.

Thanks again for your time and help.

Vaughn

leo said...

If you installed acroread using the medibuntu repository, the executable should be located at /usr/bin/acroread. On the console you can find the location using which acroread. Hope this works for you!

Vaughn Grisham said...

Thanks Leo! That did it. I can now open PDF files from the Internet (and print them).

maphew said...

thank you for taking the time to write this up. It was giving me quite a headache. The link to the FAQ is broken, I think it should be http://blogs.adobe.com/acroread/2007/09/adobe_reader_811_faqs.html

leo said...

Thank you, Matt! I've fixed the link.