Acrobat Reader on Mageia 7.1 (Success!)

[xi]

Hi,

Just opening this topic to help anyone who would like to install Adobe Acrobat Reader (acroread) on Mageia 7 64 bits.

I know there are plenty free PDF readers, however acroread is the one with best forms support, and for anyone reading datasheets, acroread has a powerful search tool (CTRL + SHIFT + F) that shows a list of all the results found in the document.

Step by step procedure to install Acrobat Reader on a fresh Mageia 7.1 install

• Enable 32bits packages sources
  Acrobat Reader for Linux only exists in 32 bits version, so we need 32 bits libraries to get it working (I am on a 64 bits system).
  Just launch drakconf and add "Core 32bit Release / Updates", "Nonfree 32bit Release / Updates", "Tainted 32bit Release / Updates" packages sources.
  
• Download the latest acrobat reader available for Linux
  ftp://ftp.adobe.com/pub/adobe/reader/un ... ux_enu.rpm
  
• Install the following 32 bits packages by running this command (as root) in a terminal:
  urpmi --ignorearch libidn12 libatk1.0 libfontconfig libgdk_pixbuf2.0 libglib2.0 libgtk+-x11-2.0 libpangox1.0_0 libpango1.0 libx11 libxext libxml2 libxt6 libmesaglu1
  (note the --ignorearch parameters which allows urpmi to install 32 bits packages even if the system is running in 64 bits mode)
  
• Try to install Acrobat Reader:
  rpm -ivh AdbeRdr9.5.5-1_i486linux_enu.rpm
  erreur : Dépendances requises:
  libidn.so.11 est nécessaire pour AdobeReader_enu-9.5.5-1.i486
  There should be only one missing dependency: libidn.so.11 (Mageia 7.1 provides libidn.so.12). If more dependencies are missing, you have to install them manually (always in 32 bits / i586 version) using urpmi or rpmdrake.
  As for libidn, it seems not really useful (acroread works fine without, and "ldd /opt/Adobe/Reader9/Reader/intellinux/bin/* | grep -i idn" doesn't show anything, meaning it's most likely not even used)
  
• So, let's install acroread for real:
  rpm -ivh --nodeps AdbeRdr9.5.5-1_i486linux_enu.rpm

Done, you can now launch Acrobat Reader, eg from command line: "acroread" command.

Note: if you want to uninstall, the package name is not the same as the installed one! Uninstall command: rpm -e AdobeReader_enu-9.5.5-1

[doktor5000]

I'd suggest not to use Acrobat Reader anymore at all, it has not received any security updates since over 7 years,
and PDFs also carry a lot of attack surface due to possibly embedded javascript which is pretty common these days.

E.g. okular also provides form support. And e.g. evince also provides a list of search results, if you really need that.

If you really need Adobe Acrobat I'd probably suggest to install a current windows version via wine/winetricks: https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager. ... &iId=32266

[wgunruh]

The problem is that some places (especially governments) have forms that are ONLY readable by Acroread. Okular does not work. Thus if you use it ONLY for such situations, you may reduce the attack surface. I certainly would not advocat the general use of acroread for reading random pdf files.
The above procedure seems to also work on Mageia 8, but at least for me it asked for each of the pre-installed packages whether I wanted the 64 or 32 bit package.