How to Install Adobe Acrobat Reader on Ubuntu 20.04 Focal Fossa Linux

Since Ubuntu does not have a native way to open PDF documents by default, users will need to install Adobe Acrobat Reader for Linux, or some other program capable of opening the documents. The objective of this tutorial is to install Adobe Acrobat Reader on Ubuntu 20.04 Focal Fossa Linux.

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 20.04.

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

Software Requirements and Conventions Used

Software Requirements and Linux Command Line Conventions

Category	Requirements, Conventions or Software Version Used
System	Installed or upgraded Ubuntu 20.04 Focal Fossa
Software	Adobe Acrobat Reader
Other	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 on Ubuntu 20.04 step by step instructions

---

---

Follow along with the step by step instructions below to get Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on Ubuntu 20.04. Note again that this is an old release and Adobe no longer develops an Acrobat Reader version for Linux systems.

1. To download Adobe Acrobat Reader open the terminal and enter the following wget command:

   $ wget -O ~/adobe.deb ftp://ftp.adobe.com/pub/adobe/reader/unix/9.x/9.5.5/enu/AdbeRdr9.5.5-1_i386linux_enu.deb
   

2. Next, enable i386 architecture:

   $ sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386
   $ sudo apt update
   

3. Install all prerequisites by executing:

   $ sudo apt install libxml2:i386 libcanberra-gtk-module:i386 gtk2-engines-murrine:i386 libatk-adaptor:i386
   

4. Now, we are ready to install the actual Adobe Acrobat Reader package downloaded previously:

   $ sudo dpkg -i ~/adobe.deb
   

5. 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.

   

   Launch Adobe Acrobat Reader on Ubuntu 20.04

   

   Accept terms and conditions

   Alternatively, you can start the Adobe Acrobat Reader on Ubuntu 20.04 form a command line:

   $ acroread
   

---

---

Closing Thoughts

In this tutorial, we saw how to install Adobe Acrobat Reader on Ubuntu Linux 20.04 Focal Fossa. 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.