Acrobat Reader for Linux compatibility libraries for CentOS 7 and Fedora 32+

The Acrobat Reader for Linux (AcroRead) is one of the few PDF readers for Linux that fully support XFA forms and therefore is still widely used, even though Adobe stopped supporting it somewhere in 2013.

On CentOS 5 and 6, the AdobeReader_enu package can be installed and used without many problems.

On CentOS 7 and Fedora 32+ however, life is not that easy.

Problems with AcroRead on CentOS 7

First of all, some libraries are missing, most notably libpangox-1.0.so.0. Unfortunately, even a rebuild of that package from the Fedora repositories does not make acroread usable.

Second, with the proper libraries built and installed, the acroread application might start, but as soon as the user selects the File menu and chooses Open to open a file, acroread coredumps.

Solution

In order to overcome these problems, I have put together a compatibility library RPM, based on 32bit libraries from CentOS 6. By installing this RPM, the missing requirements when trying to install the AcroRead_enu RPM are fulfilled.
By repackaging the right libraries from CentOS 6, the coredumps are also fixed and acroread becomes a usable application again.

Installation

The missing libraries files are installed in the proper place for acroread by installing AdobeReader-libs-1.0.0-1.el7.centos.i686.rpm

If you want get rid of the following annoying warning when starting acroread

  (acroread:9420): Gtk-WARNING **: Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "clearlooks",

then make sure to also install the 32bit version of the GTK2 engines

In one go:

  yum install https://github.com/jjkeijser/acroread-libs/releases/download/RHEL7/AdobeReader-libs-1.0.0-1.el7.centos.i686.rpm
              https://github.com/jjkeijser/acroread-libs/releases/download/RHEL7/gtk2-engines-2.20.2-7.el7.i686.rpm

Note: The distribution used in the version of the gtk2-engines rpm is 'el7' instead of the CentOS 7 "default" of 'el7.centos'. This is done to avoid installation issues when installing both the 32bit and 64bit versions of the gtk2-engines package.

Problems with AcroRead on Fedora 32+

As Acroread is getting older and older, compatibility with the libraries provided by the OS is deteriorating. Starting with Fedora 33, it is no longer possible to install Acroread without having to (re)compile some compatibility libraries.

Solution

In order to overcome these problems, I have put together a compatibility library RPM, based on the 32bit libraries from Fedora 32. By installing this RPM, the missing requirements when trying to install the AcroRead_enu RPM are fulfilled.

Also, with this library there is no longer a need to install a large set of 32bit libraries, as they are now included in this RPM. The downside is that if you have a different 32bit application that also relies on these libraries then you will need to install that one first before installing this RPM do avoid any dependency issues.

Installation

The missing libraries files are installed in the proper place for acroread by installing AdobeReader-libs-2.0.0-2.fc32.i686.rpm

If you want get rid of the following annoying warning when starting acroread

  (acroread:9420): Gtk-WARNING **: Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "clearlooks",

then make sure to also install the 32bit version of the GTK2 engines, which unlike CentOS 7, is still available for the (64bit) Fedora 32+.

In one go:

  dnf install https://github.com/jjkeijser/acroread-libs/releases/download/FC32/AdobeReader-libs-2.0.0-2.fc32.i686.rpm
              gtk2-engines.i686

This library has the following provides:

• libGL.so.1
• libGLU.so.1
• libcairo.so.2
• libgdk-x11-2.0.so.0
• libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0
• libharfbuzz.so.0
• libidn.so.11
• libpango-1.0.so.0
• libpangocairo-1.0.so.0
• libpangoft2-1.0.so.0
• libpangox-1.0.so.0
• libpangoxft-1.0.so.0

but more libraries are included in the RPM, as the libraries above themselves depend on them.