After a few months of beta testing, Adobe Reader 7.0 for Linux is finally available for download.

AdbeRdr70_linux_enu.tar.gz (39165K)
AdobeReader_enu-7.0.0-1.i386.rpm (38933K)

In my opinion, it is the first stable not-so-bloated release since version 4. It also works flawlessly within Firefox 1.0, and any other gecko-based browser. I have also tested it in Opera and Konqueror and I can report that it works perfectly in both browsers as well.

Here is a screenshot of Acrobat Reader 7.0 operating within Firefox 1.0.2 on Slackware 10.1:

It starts in a couple of seconds on my 1.7GHz system (more than can be said of 6.0 on Windows) and unlike many linux ‘ports’ has not crashed yet. My only criticism? The dodgy dark grey GTK style. For some reason Adobe saw fit to enforce a ‘Windows Classic’ look to Acrobat 7.0 no matter what GTK theme is selected. Sub-menus seem to adopt the current theme in use, but the main window does not. This may be a conscious decision on the part of the Acrobat Linux developers, as a way of maintaining continuity with regards to fonts, menu sizing and style, but damn does it look ugly. It looks more like Photoshop under WINE as opposed to a true linux version of Acrobat.

A few questions remain to be answered though.

• Is it better than Xpdf/Ghostview?
• Why is it a ~40MB download?
• If you can make a Linux version of Acrobat, where is Photoshop?

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 27th, 2005 at 4:17 pm and is filed under Linux. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.