While open source PDF readers have significantly improved, many people still use Adobe Reader. While Adobe has had a mixed history of supporting their software in Linux/Unix, recently they have significantly improved. There is a well written post about installer formats on the Acroread Unix blog. I recommend just reading over the post, even if you do not use Adobe software. They have a simple list of the most popular formats (BIN, RPM, DEB, PKG, TAR.

Newer versions of Adobe Acrobat Reader have provided the feature for users to edit the contents of form fields in a PDF file. Depending on the permissions set by the author of the PDF file, Acrobat Reader will allow or deny the ability to save the file with the form edits in place. The United States IRS has allowed for this functionality in recent years in its official tax forms, which is great for people who might otherwise need to fill out forms with pen.

A great deal of the following is all old news. Adobe has has Flash Plugin for x86_64 Linux architecture in Beta since Oct 2008. The only thing, is that since it is provided in a tarball (.tar.gz), you are better off builing an RPM (spec file). Note that the 32bit i386 version still works perfectly with nspluginwrapper. Similarily Sun has released the Java JRE web plugin for x86_64 archictecture. Installation is the very identical to 32bit.

If you are using Xine from RPMFusion and experiencing crashing immediately after loading in Fedora 10, it is probably due to this bug. Quick work-around is to use Alsa instead of PulseAudio. Open a shell and launch Xine as follows: [mirandam@phoebe ~]$ xine -A alsa To make this setting stick, do the following: Right-Click in the Xine window > Settings > Setup…. In the gui tab, change the Configuration experience level to Advanced, then hit Apply at the bottom of the window.

The availability of RPMFusion for Fedora was previously announced a few days ago. However I never got a chance to actually perform the update. For those who are not familiar with Fedora’s third-party software repositories (repo’s), the two most popular repo’s: Freshrpm and Livna were typically the place to find software not permitted in Fedora. While I used Freshrpms in FC3 and earlier, I did eventually write most of my newer guides using Livna.