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Adobe Releases Acrobat Client for Linux
DanMan writes "Adobe has released a reader client (Adobe Acrobat Reader 7.0) for the linux operating system. No news on open sourcing the client, but they're making a start. You can download the client from their site."
Adobe Reader 7.0 Coming to Linux - Described how to download it.
How is this making a start? Acrobat reader 6 didn't count?
37Mb RPM?! I think i'll just stick with gpdf...
For the impatent:
e nu/
ftp://ftp.adobe.com/pub/adobe/reader/unix/7x/7.0/
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
app-text/acroread-7.0
I hope they actually bother paying attention to my mouse preferences. Version 5 ignores my scroll wheel and it uses clunky Motif widgets (bleagh). More likely they'll only use the opportunity include some of the more unpleasant misfeatures like spying. Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
See http://lwn.net/Articles/129729/ why you
should handle it with care, if privacy is important to you.
It has a button in the upper right corner which opens a browser where you can buy books, it also has some form of Yahoo search in it. I try to keep my computer as clean as possible from commercial interests and this program is borderline. 99% of the time gpdf works fine anyway.
emerge -C for you acrobat.
There's been recent talk about new document "tracking" features that require a call home to read, and other stupid "smart data" junk which require a blackbox client. If Adobe expects me to run their spyware on my Linux machine, they have another think coming.
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I have used kpdf, gpdf, and xpdf as well - they work OK, but in my experience Acrobat Reader is still the goto client if you have a pdf the others can't read or for advanced features. The others are steadily improving, and I think will get there in time, but basically until kpdf/gpdf/xpdf start opening pdf documents as well as or better than Acrobat for all available features, I fear Acrobat Reader will still be around.
Incidently, 7.0 seems to be a huge leap from version 5. Works much better with modern Linux software, despite a few lingering quirks. I had not heard of any pressure or consideration on the part of Adobe to release the code to Reader, but that would seriously rock if they did.
I note with some amusement that the Linux version of Acrobat Reader still has the purchase Adobe Acrobat link in the menus, despite a version not being available on Linux.
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
Christian Marillat has made available unofficial Debian packages of Acrobat 7 since a few weeks now. On sarge or sid, add the following to /etc/apt/sources.list:
Then it's as easy as apt-get update; apt-get install acroread mozilla-acroread. This gives you the core functionality and Web browser plugin. (Incidentally, there are a bunch of other useful unofficial debs there, including mplayer and lame.)
You can also install the Javascript plugin and a whole bunch of other Acrobat plugins with apt-get install acroread-plugins. However, be aware that some plugins may report back to the mother ship: LWN article. Also, they will eat another 43 MB of disk space.
- Kevin B. McCarty
Be sure to read this article before you install the reader.
The software contains functionality that could cause serious privacy concerns - it is possible to include a tracking mechanism in PDF's, readers that this great 'feature' will then contact some website and keep track of how many people read that document.
Every expression is true, for a given value of 'true'
The PDF format is open. You can print to PDF off every platform and office suite except Office on Windows.
Mother is the best bet and don't let Satan draw you too fast.
Nice try, you miserable cut&paste clod.
For the record, your post is basically a complete rip of this post by El Cubano with a couple of lines stacked in front of it. Moderators, please act accordingly.
I do not think behavior such as yours should be encouraged. Actually, I hope you'll reincarnate into some exotic frog, SCO techie, or worse.
Karma cannot be described by words alone.
READ this before installing it: http://lwn.net/Articles/129729/
Remote Approach's reporting did not work when we viewed the document with Kpdf, Xpdf and Adobe Reader 5.0.10. It also failed using Apple's "Preview" application on Mac OS X. The document was still viewable with no apparent glitch in other PDF readers, but the reporting function did not work. However, when we opened the file using Adobe Acrobat Reader 7, Remote Approach started logging views from our IP address. After doing a little research, we found that Adobe's Reader was connecting to http://www.remoteapproach.com/remoteapproach/loggi ng.asp each time we opened the document
(Easy fix: Assign a IP which doesn't work ie: 0.0.0.1 to www.remoteapproach.com in your /etc/hosts)
Also, (minor), the background color of the button bar doesn't adhere to the theme your desktop is set to. It's a darkish grey, not the lightgrey that's default on RedHat or Debian.
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
Quote from wikipedia page:
I think, therefore I am. I think?
For those that can't be bothered to read it, in short, PDF's are designed for printing documents whilst preserving the original formatting as the author intended. Jacob therefore asserts that they're "unfit for human consumption" if you try and use them for something different to their intended purpose, in this case, online reading.
Next week Jacob will be telling us how washing machines are great for keeping your clothes clean but not very good for making cups of tea.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
Not being able to protect your documents against tampering (encrypting/signing) and the lack of form-filling function are show stoppers at least in a corporate environment.
For those like me who just cannot stand that brightly colored distraction at the top of the app:
Drag any toolbar button on the line with the flashy advertisement down about half its height. This will make a new bar with only that button on it.
Next, drag the rest of the buttons down to the new bar.
Once the last button is moved to the new bar, the old one (and the flashy ad with it!) will disappear and your new ad-less toolbar will move up to replace it.
Locking the toolbars here will prevent it from returning the next time you start the app.
Acrobat 7 includes spyware right out of the box. When you open certain tagged pdfs, it reports this to a remote server. It appears to just be logging your IP address and reader info -- for now -- but it's javascript based, so any information that Adobe chooses to present to their scripting API is available to it. You can disable javascript, but it will suggest that you re-enable it every time you launch the program, which doesn't constitute disabling as far as any system administrator with lots of users is concerned. There are a variety of hacks that will make this go away. One is listed in the comments of this article:
http://lwn.net/Articles/129729/
There's no failure quite as dissatisfying as a complete and total solution to the wrong problem.
They didn't release it for Linux - they did release for Linux x86 _only_. Only this one architecture is supported which is sad since I use ppc (fortunately there is great kpdf from kde 3.4) :-)
p opulation.pdf
Anyway please be accurate next time.
Next thing is when I last checked adobe acrobat reader 7 for Linux wasn't able to deal with pdfs that acrobat reader 7 for windows was dealing without any problems - example http://www.carto.net/papers/svg/us_population/us_
If all you're doing is viewing simple PDF documents, xpdf and its relatives are fine. But there are a few things the Adobe reader does that xpdf doesn't which I use all the time:
Our intelligent designer has never created an animal that we couldn't improve by strapping a bomb to it.
Well, actually, in this case, yes. Acrobat Reader is just that: a READER. It's doesn't hurt them to release it.
Actually, it does. I don't expect them to release source to reader any time soon. The reason is that Reader is a actually a crippleware, even though it's done in rather subtle way: Reader has one amazing feature: it lets you add comments and annotations to a pdf file. But not to every pdf file! You can only annotate pdf file that has annotation "user right" enabled. And the only way to enable that is using Acrobat Professional version! It seems that the api is hidden, and Adobe will not share it with authors of other pdf software.
What it really means is that pdf is not really open format. Most of it is open, but it has some secret parts in it. If they opened reader, they would loose the secret. It would be good thing in my opinion, but they obviously don't share this opinion.
AccountKiller
or simply go to Edit>Preferences>StartUp, and disable "show messages and automatically update.