While Ubuntu and Debian come with native applications to open PDF documents by default, some users may prefer to install Adobe Acrobat Reader for its additional features and compatibility. This tutorial will guide you through the process of installing Adobe Acrobat Reader on Ubuntu and Debian. This application will provide enhanced capabilities for opening and managing PDF documents on these Linux distributions.
The advantage of Acrobat Reader, of course, is that it’s the official program and recommended for reading PDF documents in the way they are intended. However, many other free applications exist for reading PDF documents. You may also be interested in our list of PDF viewers available for Ubuntu and Debian. PDF documents are a standard created and maintained by Adobe, but it has become a widespread document type that many applications can now open or even edit.
In this tutorial you will learn:
How to install Adobe Acrobat Reader prerequisites
How to download Adobe Acrobat Reader
How to install Adobe Acrobat Reader
How to start Adobe Acrobat Reader
Alternative method to install Adobe Acrobat Reader using Snap
Privileged access to your Linux system as root or via the sudo command.
Conventions
# – requires given linux commands to be executed with root privileges either directly as a root user or by use of sudo command $ – requires given linux commands to be executed as a regular non-privileged user
Install Adobe Acrobat Reader using Snap
Open the terminal and enter the following snap command to install Adobe Acrobat Reader:
$ sudo snap install acrordrdc
Once installed, you can run Adobe Acrobat Reader by entering:
Install Adobe Acrobat Reader on Ubuntu and Debian step by step instructions from package
Follow along with the step by step instructions below to get Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on Ubuntu or Debian. Note again that this is an old release and Adobe no longer develops an Acrobat Reader version for Linux systems.
To download Adobe Acrobat Reader open the terminal and enter the following wget command:
Now, we are ready to install the actual Adobe Acrobat Reader package downloaded previously:
$ sudo dpkg -i ~/adobe.deb
To start the Adobe Acrobat Reader use the activities menu to search for adobe and click on the relevant icon. Or you can find your PDF document in the file browser, right click, press “Open with other application” and find Adobe Acrobat Reader in the list of options.
In this tutorial, we saw how to install Adobe Acrobat Reader on Ubuntu and Debian Linux. The program can now be used to open PDF documents on your system. You may eventually wish to migrate to a new reader, or use the Windows version with WINE, as Acrobat has become out of date and unsupported on Linux.
