I figured it was time to update my previous posts on how to install Adobe Acrobat Reader for Ubuntu 8.04.  It has become much simpler to install than it has been in the past, meaning it can be installed via a proper .deb package.  It is not available in the main Ubuntu repositories, but it is available in Medibuntu.

Install Adobe Reader 8.1.2 on Ubuntu 8.04

All you’ll need to do in order to install Adobe Reader is add the Medibuntu repository.  This can be done via:

sudo wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/hardy.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list

Once that is done you’ll likely want to add the Medibuntu GPG key as well:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install medibuntu-keyring && sudo apt-get update

..and finally install Adobe Reader v8.1.2 (at the time of this writing) by using:

sudo apt-get install acroread

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Comments

43 Responses to “Install Adobe Acrobat Reader 8.1.2 on Ubuntu 8.04”

  1. james on June 23rd, 2008 5:21 pm

    james@james-desktop:~$ sudo apt-get install acroread
    [sudo] password for james:
    Hi, tried your tutorial out with the following response:
    Reading package lists… Done
    Building dependency tree
    Reading state information… Done
    Package acroread is not available, but is referred to by another package.
    This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
    is only available from another source
    E: Package acroread has no installation candidate

  2. Jack Sprat on June 24th, 2008 3:19 am

    Why don’t you just download the .deb from Adobe’s website? Then you wouldn’t have to post on the Planet about it when you can download it from Adobe’s site? They do offer a .deb file of the latest version of Adobe Reader, if you take the time on their download page to look for it, and it works great.

  3. AndrewYoungIsGreat on June 24th, 2008 5:58 am

    Did you do the first 2 steps?

    sudo wget http://www.medibu….

    sudo apt-get update …..

  4. bob keyes on June 24th, 2008 3:33 pm

    Hrm, both xpdf and this version of acroread crash when processing the pdf 1.7 standard, as downloaded from Adobe. So much for standards!

  5. Marius Gedminas on June 25th, 2008 6:14 pm

    What’s the point? I’m genuinely curious: is there anything that Acrobat Reader does better than Evince?

  6. Harry Jarocki on July 7th, 2008 2:41 pm

    Used your tutorial and install went flawlessly in Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron. Kudos for such an easy way to install Adobe PDF reader for Linux Novice. Thank you very much. Respectfully, Harry

  7. Bruno on July 8th, 2008 7:45 am

    Same here, used you tutorial and worked flawlessly in ubuntu 8.04 64 bits.
    Thank you

  8. Matt on July 8th, 2008 12:01 pm

    Doesn’t work for me… I’m getting Error 403: Forbidden on the first step.

  9. Michael on July 12th, 2008 12:23 am

    I get error 403 as well

  10. fvs on July 14th, 2008 8:40 am

    It worked just fine. Thanx

  11. BCG on July 15th, 2008 11:20 am

    thanks a million!!!!!!!

  12. MIkko Ohtamaa on July 16th, 2008 6:58 pm

    Thanks a lot!

  13. Mike on July 23rd, 2008 2:07 pm

    After installing acroread using the medibuntu repo, Adobe Acrobat does not appear as one of the applications listed when you right click a PDF, click Properties, click Open With.

    I’ve gotten around this by clicking the Add button and adding /usr/bin/acroread

    However, now it shows up in the list of PDF programs as “acroread” and not “Adobe Acrobat 8″.

    Does anyone know how to get it to show up under “Open With” using the user friendly name?

    Interestingly, installing this on a CentOS 5 system via RPM, the rpm automatically adds it to the list (doesn’t make it the default, however).

  14. drm protected content on August 1st, 2008 12:33 am

    My understanding is that Evince and kpdf and whatever will not open DRM protected PDF files like the ones University of Phoenix distributes to students of their online classes. I could be wrong though.

  15. alvaro on August 3rd, 2008 3:22 am

    really thanks a lot! it work so easy

  16. tuathan on August 4th, 2008 2:22 pm

    thanks, this installed the pdf software fine on my Compaq Presario C700 notebook running Ubuntu 8.04

  17. Yves on August 6th, 2008 3:49 am

    I agree with Jack Sprat.
    The .deb file is easy to find on the adobe website, and seamless to install with the Gdebi package installer.

  18. Paul Guenther on August 11th, 2008 5:40 pm

    worked great for me as well Ubuntu 8.04. Just copy and paste commands into Konsol. enter password and accept warnings

  19. Domaniczky Lajos on August 20th, 2008 3:46 pm

    works like a charm.

  20. Andrew on August 23rd, 2008 4:51 pm

    very nice!

  21. CyberMage on September 11th, 2008 11:24 am

    If it’s so easy to find the .deb on Adobe’s site, how about a link? All it gives me the option to download is an RPM.

  22. linezfanatix on September 13th, 2008 9:22 am

    Nice tutorial, installation works like charm, great post, Thanks a ton

  23. eduardo on September 16th, 2008 12:21 pm

    thanks, this works fine…

  24. mel roch on September 20th, 2008 6:32 am

    AFAIK Evince’s and Kpdf’s search functions are
    inferior to Acroread’s. I can’t live without the latter’s grep search…

  25. Vivien on September 23rd, 2008 7:35 pm

    Thank you very much for this. Downloading the Adobe Reader for Linux from the Adobe site was a complete waste of time for a novice, seeing as there were no installation instructions.

    This was perfect.

  26. Michael on September 25th, 2008 2:25 pm

    Thanks for the instruction.

    For everyone asking “What’s the point?”, Acrobat is the only pdf viewer that handles gouraud patches correctly.

  27. cool on September 26th, 2008 12:39 am

    yup, this is great, though the last time i used acrobat it didnt work properly , for large pdf, lets see how this works, i always rely on xpdf or evince.

  28. Alex on September 26th, 2008 8:07 pm

    As always, thanks, works great!, and easier than adobe page.

  29. James Flockton on September 27th, 2008 1:16 pm

    Thanks very much, I needed acrobat as Royalmail had some labels to print from PDF that had some sort of watermark. XPDF printed this HUGE “SAMPLE” across the label. Adobe acrobat fix this, thanks for the guide.

    James

  30. Niraj on October 2nd, 2008 9:22 am

    Thanks! Works perfectly.

  31. sagat20005 on October 3rd, 2008 1:47 pm

    work perfctely ,thank’s

  32. parth on October 6th, 2008 12:35 pm

    thanks a lot for the instructions!

  33. gergio77 on October 7th, 2008 3:54 am

    Very good, thanks a lot. Evince was an unbelievable mountain of shit…

  34. bbrain on October 11th, 2008 2:25 pm

    Only Acroread validates digital signatures in
    documents that are digitally signed.

  35. Moh on October 20th, 2008 2:46 am

    Hi,
    It works great!
    only one question, how can i install the Asian language pack for Acrobat reader?
    i downloaded the package from Adobe website but i can not manage to install it. i need to read some chinese pdf files,

    Thanks

  36. Michael on October 31st, 2008 1:09 am

    > What’s the point? I’m genuinely curious: is
    > there anything that Acrobat Reader does
    > better than Evince?

    I have at least a dozen PDFs that Evince can’t display at all. I have about two dozen more that Evince goes all cockeyed over when graphics are displayed. Evince also can’t fill out e-forms and run scripts.

    So yes. There are things Acrobat Reader can do that Evince can’t. F/OSS is not a panacea, no matter how many mantras you chant.

  37. Xanimedes on November 7th, 2008 7:33 am

    Same instructions except change hardy for intrepid and it installs acrobat on 8.10.

    Remember:
    sudo wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/intrepid.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list

  38. Erik on November 23rd, 2008 11:10 pm

    I´m having problems installing adobe and keep getting this error…please help I am a complete newbie
    The following NEW packages will be installed:
    acroread
    0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
    Need to get 0B/29.5MB of archives.
    After this operation, 73.9MB of additional disk space will be used.
    (Reading database … 127026 files and directories currently installed.)
    Unpacking acroread (from …/acroread_8.1.3-0medibuntu0.8.04.1_i386.deb) …
    dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/acroread_8.1.3-0medibuntu0.8.04.1_i386.deb (–unpack):
    trying to overwrite `/usr/bin/acroread’, which is also in package adobereader-enu
    Errors were encountered while processing:
    /var/cache/apt/archives/acroread_8.1.3-0medibuntu0.8.04.1_i386.deb
    E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

  39. Christer Edwards on November 24th, 2008 6:50 am

    @Erik - sounds like its conflicting with a currently installed package, acroread-enu. You could try to remove that one first and then try your installation again.

    sudo apt-get remove acroreader-enu

  40. Erik on November 24th, 2008 9:53 am

    thank you so much Christer for responding so quickly. unfortunately, I still receive the same error.

  41. baba khatri on November 24th, 2008 10:58 pm

    your said acrobat version is 7.0 can you please update me regarding it

    Thanks

  42. baba khatri on November 27th, 2008 11:42 pm

    this wall in installing acrobat version 7 can you people please update regarding it

    Thanks
    baba

  43. Phil Smith on November 30th, 2008 5:31 am

    Nice, but parts of Adobe reader do not work. Specifically,

    view > read out loud

    does not work. I edit alot of manuscripts, and having this feature is essential to “hear” what is actually written. Adobe really needs to have this feature enabled! How do I enable it?

    Thanks,
    Phil Smith
    Duluth, GA

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