I've been hearing about the much-hyped release of Adobe Reader 7.0 for Linux from everywhere and finally decided to take a look at it myself (I was reluctant to do it because my favorite Linux PDF reader was and still is CVS version of KDE's stock KPDF). Installing it is no rocket science, really, but closely integrating it with the system is a more difficult task. Here's how I accomplished it.

  1. Download latest tarball from ftp.adobe.com

  2. Untar it in a temporary directory:

    user@local:~$ cd /tmp; tar zxf /path/to/downloaded/AdbeRdr70_linux_enu.tar.gz

  3. as root, run the included INSTALL script:

    root@local:/tmp# cd AdobeReader; ./INSTALL

  4. read Software License Agreement or skip to next step by pressing Q. Type 'accept' and press Enter to proceed to installation.

  5. Enter the path to directory where you want Adobe Reader 7.0 to be installed. However, in this case, to make it play along with previously installed Acrobat Reader 5.0, we'll put it to /usr/lib/Acrobat7:

    Enter installation directory for Adobe Reader 7.0.0 [/usr/local/Adobe/Acrobat7.0] /usr/lib/Acrobat7

  6. Agree to create the required directory and installation will continue and (hopefully) exit without errors.

  7. Go to bin/ sub-folder:

    root@local:/tmp# cd /usr/lib/Acrobat7/bin/

  8. Open acroread script with your favorite editor, e.g. using vi:

    root@local:/usr/lib/Acrobat7/bin# vi acroread

  9. Go to line number 17 and comment it out by prefixing its contents with a hash symbol:

    #install_dir=`dirname "$ScriptDirectory"`/Reader

  10. insert the following new line underneath (in fact, anywhere in the beginning of this file):

    install_dir=/usr/lib/Acrobat7/Reader

  11. Copy the resulting acroread script to /usr/bin:

    root@local:/usr/lib/Acrobat7/bin# cp acroread /usr/bin

  12. Now browse to Browser/ sub-folder to perform Mozilla and/or Firefox plugin installation:

    root@local:/usr/lib/Acrobat7/bin# cd ../Browser; ./install_browser_plugin


This will install the browser plugin for acroread.


Enter the install directory for Adobe Reader 7.0.0 [/usr/lib/Acrobat7]


1. Perform global installation
2. Perform user-specific installation (Mozilla/Firefox/Netscape)
Enter your choice [1/2] 1


Enter the browser install directory - /usr/lib/mozilla
The plugin seems to be already installed. Are you sure you want to overwrite ? [y/n] y
Installation successful. Added the file /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/nppdf.so


Do you want to install another browser ? [y/n] y
The plugin seems to be already installed. Are you sure you want to overwrite ? [y/n] y
Enter the browser install directory - /usr/lib/mozilla-firefox
Installation successful. Added the file /usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/plugins/nppdf.so


Do you want to install another browser ? [y/n] n

  13. That's it! Go to about:plugins and see if there is an entry of 'Adobe Reader 7.0' in the list of installed plugins. Also try to launch stand-alone Adobe Reader by pressing Alt+F2 and typing acroread (Enter).

Enjoy!