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Adobe Reader 7.0 Coming to Linux

Posted by Hemos on from the get-er-done dept.

Sometimes_Rational writes "There is now one less thing for Windows and Mac users to point to when claiming desktop usability superiority. While not officially listed in Adobe's download page, you can get Adobe Reader 7.0 for Linux from the company's FTP server according to this article at The Inquirer , which also has a review. The upshot is that Reader 7.0 for Linux is as bloated as its Windows and Mac siblings, but it loads much faster and is more useable than version 5. I imagine that this will get loads of comments about how Reader for Linux headed downhill after version 4. Or was it 3?"

20 of 454 comments (clear)

  1. I'll get it now by jlrowe · · Score: 4, Informative
    Bloat or not, it is still the best reader for Adobe Acrobat files. And I need to do some of those added features like 'fill in forms', password protected forms, etc.

    For instance, my Bank Statements have been coming in password protected files for years now. So I very much welcome this new product.

    1. Re:I'll get it now by El+Cubano · · Score: 5, Informative

      Bloat or not, it is still the best reader for Adobe Acrobat files.

      It's only bloated if you have a problem with sacrificing ~100 MB of hard drive space. Seriously who worries about that on a reasonably modern desktop? I just bought to 160 GB drives the other day for US$ 80 each. Drive space is not a problem.

      I have been using the new version for a week and much more impressed with it than I was with version 5.

      Here are the things I like:

      • Uses GTK. I am not GTK fanboy (I prefer GNUStep), but at least it is better than that awful interface the previous versions had.
      • Mozilla plugin that works just like it does on the popular legacy operating system still floating around out there.
      • It is basically a tar file, no hidden toolbars to install for you.
      • Way snappier than the previous version.
      • No more having to mess with numlock to get pgup/pgdn working.
      • Has preference settings for a MUA a web browser and several other apps you can launch for various functions (e.g., I open a PDF in Firefox and click the email button to see it open a new compose window in Thunderbird with the PDF I am viewing in Firefox already attached. Sweet!)

      Things I don't like:

      • The went to that blasted MDI. I want every flipping document to open in its own window. Is that so hard? Is it too much to ask?
      • The OK button in all the dialogs is squished, quite annoying.
      • You must manually include it in your menu. It should at least hit the majors (GNOME, KDE).
    2. Re:I'll get it now by Waffle+Iron · · Score: 5, Informative
      It's only bloated if you have a problem with sacrificing ~100 MB of hard drive space.

      That's not the only issue. Bloated programs use more system memory. Loading a huge program will often knock good chunks of your other running tasks into swap memory, or at the very least flush out part of your cached I/O buffers. This can cause a significant hit to your overall system responsiveness, especially on machines without boatloads of physical RAM.

  2. I'd rather use xpdf by PissingInTheWind · · Score: 4, Informative

    I prefer xpdf because it loads much faster, and you can hit the 'r'eload button when you update your document. It's quite useful when you're working with LaTeX.

    The "only" drawback I see is that sometimes when reading certain articles I get some really ugly, pixelated fonts.

    I suppose there might be a fix around for that? Anyone?

    --

    A message from the system administrator: 'I've upped my priority. Now up yours.'
    1. Re:I'd rather use xpdf by mz001b · · Score: 4, Informative
      The "only" drawback I see is that sometimes when reading certain articles I get some really ugly, pixelated fonts.

      when doing dvips using -Ppdf or -Pcmz (if you are using the Computer Modern fonts, to embed outlines in the ps file instead of low resolution bitmaps -- it makes the resulting PDF (from ps2pdf) much better.

    2. Re:I'd rather use xpdf by klevin · · Score: 4, Informative

      I've found that using pdflatex produces more compact pdf files and gets rid of the jaggies. I don't actually write in latex, just use Lyx and it has three options for creating pdf files. One of them being pdflatex.

      On a side note, Lyx has saved me more time than I can count over the last three or four years. I hate having to run a word processor anymore. You end up having to micro-manage all the little details. If want that much fine tuning, I'll use a desktop publishing app. For writing talks and most anything, Lyx's document processing approach seems far superior. I've even got my resume in Lyx. Export it to plain text, pdf or ps and send it on it's way. Only hassel is when a recruiter insists on Word format, then I have to drag out OpenOffice and export it from there.

      Lyx took a bit of getting used to, after years of fiddling every detail in various word processors. Once I figured out the HFill feature and the paragraph layout panels, though, I never looked back. I spend a lot of time writing outlines and it works awesome for that.

  3. Direct Link by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    For the impatent:

    ftp://ftp.adobe.com/pub/adobe/reader/unix/7x/7.0/e nu/

  4. Re:xpdf by yanestra · · Score: 4, Informative
    What's wrong with xpdf? I am sure it loads a heck of a lot faster.
    You still can't read each and every PDF document with xpdf, especially DRM protected files are impossible to view...
  5. Nice by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    Nice to see that Adobe is putting some effort into Linux and I'm sure the Adobe reader provides things open source readers don't yet support. Namely I think there is currently no OS reader that supports filling out forms.

    That said, for all my needs, the new OS pdf readers are good enough. They used to suck (kpdf and gpdf were a joke and xpdf was simply ugly), but the new kpdf is simply awesome and the same goes for evince.

  6. Finally! by mfago · · Score: 4, Informative

    Acroread renders better than xpdf, and has much better document navigation features to boot.

    Yes, xpdf is somewhat faster (although acroread7 feels faster to me than crappy old 5.x).

    Good thing everyone can have both!

    Anyone had it crash yet? Acroread 5.0.1 thru 5.0.6 (or so) crashed regularly for me...

  7. Re:xpdf by Compholio · · Score: 4, Informative

    What's wrong with xpdf? I am sure it loads a heck of a lot faster.

    Adobe's reader is more compatible and (at least for me) loads just as fast as xpdf. I was actually surprised it loaded so fast, though it's not compatible with SELinux - you need to change the context on the *.api plugin files and the ADMPlugin.apl file using "chcon -t shlib_t file_to_change_context" before you can run the reader.

  8. works well by darthpenguin · · Score: 4, Informative

    I've been using this for several days under slackware, and I must say I'm impressed. It loads quickly enough (though not as fast as xpdf), but it fits right into my desktop as far as widgets go, and the rendering looks great! The printing support also work fine with the KDE system (you just tell it to print to "kprinter"), and so far I haven't experienced the weird orientation issues I sometimes get with landscape-oriented documents printing improperly.

    As far as installation goes, I just used rpm2tgz to convert the downloaded rpm into a slackpack then used installpkg. I had to create a symlink to the executable, which was /usr/local/Adobe/Acrobat7.0/bin/acroread.

    My biggest gripe so far is the annoying, but thankfully small, banner add in the top right corner advertising random Adobe services, but it's not *too* intrusive. Here is a screenshot.

  9. Evince+Poppler - free / usable rendering. by snickell · · Score: 5, Informative

    Or you could use a PDF/PS viewer that's nicely integrated with your desktop, and has a sane feature-set and good usability. On GNOME we've got Evince, and on KDE there's KPDF. Evince (and now KPDF, I believe) is backed by the Freedesktop.org Poppler library (which is in turn backed by Cairo which can use hardware acceleration for faster PDF rendering). Kristian (as referenced earlier today on slashdot re: wobbly windows) is hard at work on adding nice features needed for desktop apps. Poppler is a fork from the Xpdf rendering code (with the maintainer's blessing, since he was using his own rendering infrastructure and didn't want to mix two backends into Xpdf).

    We've been doing a lot of experimenting with making the "core features" of Evince better for on-screen reading, rather than working on the sort of extra packed in features in Acrobat. For example, when you press page down, evince will slightly darken the area on the screen where your page was as it smooth scrolls. That lets your eye track its position much easier, so once the scroll is over you just keep reading without a visual "seek". KPDF is cool too, so either way you swing you've got a good choice.

    Acroread 7.0 is using GTK+ for its widgets, but this hardly makes it have a native "feel". Use it for a minute and its pretty clear its a cross-platform app port.

    1. Re:Evince+Poppler - free / usable rendering. by snickell · · Score: 4, Informative

      For those complaining about the sluggishness of Xpdf at rendering pages, we're working on that. We consider that the largest usability problem with Poppler based viewers right now (Evince & XPDF). We've already made the thumbnailer code on the left substantially faster and are looking at doing things like pre-emptively rendering pages as you scroll toward them so there's no lag (in addition to improving the raw pages/sec rendering speed).

  10. kpdf rocks by nileshbansal · · Score: 5, Informative

    Try kpdf 0.4 (one that comes with KDE 3.4)? This is what a pdf viewer should look like. 1. Type ahead search. 2. Easy copy-paste. With acrobat reader it is not possible to select/copy a paragraph in 2 column format document, but with kpdf one can easily do that. 3. Can watch for changes in the viewed file and update the view accordingly. 4. Presentation mode. 5. KDE app. Native look and feel. Can use kio_slaves. 6. No bloat. Open source.

    1. Re:kpdf rocks by ashayh · · Score: 5, Informative

      You cannot fill forms with Kpdf. Thats its only problem.(And possibly encrypted Pdfs)

      Apart from that, I'd like to give kongrats and big thanks to the Kpdf and Kde devs for making a GREAT pdf viewer with KDE 3.4 ! Its got the best combination of features and speed. And a big jump from the earlier version. I think they now collaborate with the xpdf guys. I hope they can find a solution for the forms problem.

      I'd like to remind people that apart from Open Office, ALL apps(that I've tried) in Gnome and KDE, that have the Print command on a menu can create Pdf files.

      Acrobat 7 is somehow slower for me than 5. (Like the WinXP version 7 was slower than 6) Acro 7 takes forever to startup as Adobe insists on loading plugins I would never use. You could remove the plugin files that can be a hassle sometimes.

  11. you can get acrobat reader 7 to load fast by MarcoAtWork · · Score: 5, Informative

    on windows as well, you just need to go in the installation directory, then in the Plugins subdirectory and remove EVERYTHING BUT these 3 files (just move them somewhere else so you can put them back if you have a problem)

    EWH32.api
    Search5.api
    Search.api

    after I did that and disabled the splash screen Acrobat reader 7 loads up nearly instantaneously on XP. I'm not taking credit for this, I found this tip somewhere I can't quite remember right now and it surely works!

    --
    -- the cake is a lie
    1. Re:you can get acrobat reader 7 to load fast by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Put them in a directory called "Optional" and the program loads them when they are required. No clue why this isn't default behavior for some of the more obscure plugins.

  12. Re:xpdf by molnarcs · · Score: 5, Informative
    Have you tried it? Adobe7 loads as fast as xpdf (approximately), but it renders documents a lot faster :) btw I was surprised at the "news", for portupgrade (freebsd) replaced my acrobat5 to 7 a week or so ago. I was thinking the same way you did, but my expectations were based on my experience with 5. When I tried it actually, I replaced kghostview as the default pdf viewer to acrobat in firefox (and elsewhere) - because it is fast, it displays pdf correctly - not that xpdf doesn't, I just like the fact that I don't have to zoom all the time (and wait) because acro fits the image/document to (full)screen automatically. It also has niceties like settings for LCD displays (I own one, so this is a godsend).

    Try it first, compare it with xpdf, and choose what suits your need - just dont' discard it offhand, because it is a Good Thing >)

  13. flpsed by Kludge · · Score: 4, Informative

    You can fill out pdfs with flpsed. flpsed allows you add text to pdfs.

    On another note xpdf is many times faster for small pdfs than acroread. However, if you zoom in on a big pdf (like a map) w/ xpdf it renders the whole thing to X as an image. If that image is bigger than your memory (regardless of the screen size), X swaps out and your machine is reduced to a crawl. Acroread, on the other hand, doesn't do that. It just renders the part of the screen that is visible, which is slower than keeping your image in memory, but much faster than reading swapped contents from disk.

    And what's the problem w/ all of you? I just downloaded Reader 7 at 200kKB/s from adobe. Where's the slashdot effect?