How to install acrobat reader on VL5.8 standard ?
First make sure you really need it. VL 5.8 Standard comes with xpdf, which loads much faster than Adobe Reader and may be enough for you. I use xpdf in my browsers and for quick and dirty reading of PDFs. I have run into some PDFs that don't display properly in xpdf, so if I'm dealing with one of them, I use Adobe Reader. Adobe Reader is also superior for printing PDFs.
To install it in VL, go to
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html and select .tar.gz under the "Select your version of Linux" dropdown. Click on Continue. In Step 2, make sure you meet the system requirements, which exceed many of the computers we see mentioned in this forum. VL 5.8 Standard provides the necessary OS, browser, and GTK+ libraries, but you do need 512 megs of RAM and 60 megs or more of free disk space.
Then click on Download Adobe Reader. Once the .tar.gz file is downloaded, switch to the directory it's in and untar it. I like to use Midnight Commander for this. Just highlight the file and hit the F2 key. Pick Unpack Selected File. Once the file is untarred into its own directory, switch to that and su to root. Then run the installation script (INSTALL.SH, I think). Answer the questions and Adobe Reader's script will do the rest. I always run ldconfig as root after I install anything just in case there are libraries that need to be made known to the system.
The command for the executable is acroread. If you type acroread as user at a terminal prompt and it doesn't start, create a symlink from /usr/local/Adobe/Acrobat7.0/bin/acroread to a directory on your path, such as /usr/bin. (Use whatever path is correct for your own /adobe/Acrobat 7.0/bin/acroread.) You have to do that as root. Once acroread or a symlink is in your path, you should be able to start it without difficulty. As you see, no compiling is necessary and you don't need a Slackware or Vector package.
If you don't have enough RAM for the latest version of Reader, you can download earlier versions here:
http://ftp://ftp.adobe.com/pub/adobe/acrobatreader/unix/ Get the most recent version your hardware supports, as older versions won't open files that require the latest Adobe Reader.
--GrannyGeek
