How to Make Foxit Reader Work in Ubuntu 12.04 & 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot?
by Gayan • February 22, 2012 • Ubuntu • 89 Comments
Foxit reader is a pretty good alternative PDF reader, if you’re a bit dissatisfied with the default one that comes with Ubuntu called “Evince”. Now few months ago, I wrote a post about how to install it in Ubuntu.
However, back then I used Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal (as it was the “hot release” those days 
) but thanks to a comment by “Nidhi” in that post I just realized that it doesn’t seem to work in Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot. I don’t know why, but for some reason, when you double click on the “.deb” file of Foxit in Ubuntu 11.10, Ubuntu Software Center, although the progress bar shows a 100% completion yet it doesn’t seem to get installed properly at all.
Now by default, after successfully installing a package, the “Install” button in Ubuntu Software Center should change into “Reinstall”, indicating that the app has successfully installed. But even after installing the Foxit (again, after the progress bar showing a 100% completion), that button still says “Install”, which is an indication that the installation was performed partially (if not installed at all).
So, after the installation, if you search in the Unity’s Dash for “foxit”, it’ll even display the program’s icon … however, when you click on it, noting happens, because the main Foxit executable file (more below) is missing due to the partial installation.
Well, you can click the heck out of it, nothing would happen though 
…
But the thing is, it can be easily fixed. So before going into further details, let’s do it.
Update (06/09/2012): These steps also works under Ubuntu 12.04 too.
1. First, download the official Foxit “.deb” file from this official download page (this issue is with the Foxit version “1.1.0″).
2. Once the download finishes, double click on the file. It should open Ubuntu Software Center and then click on the “Install” button to install it.
As said before, just don’t worry about the “Install” button not changing into “Reinstall”. After the installation, close the Ubuntu Software Center (but make sure to click on the “Install” button at least once and the progress bar shows a 100% completion, so it has installed it, even if it’s partial).
3. Now go to the downloaded Foxit “.deb” file’s location and right click on it.
From the menu choose, “Open with Archive Manager”, as shown below.
This should open-up the file in the Archive manager and should display the actual content of the file as shown below (this is because a “.deb” file is sort of a file archive format).
4. Now double click on the folder called “usr” which should open the content of that folder.
Then from the next window (shown below), again double click on the file called “bin”.
Once inside that “bin” folder, you’ll see a file called “FoxitReader”. This is the main execution file of Foxit reader itself, and is also the one that doesn’t get copied/installed into HDD for some reason. What we’re going to do is quite simple. We’re gonna manually copy this file to the default location (“/usr/bin”) in your HDD which should solve our problem.
5. Now, select that file, and right click on it. From the menu choose “Extract”.
You can extract this to anywhere, but to keep things simple, please extract the file into your “Home” folder.
6. Once that’s done, open your Terminal window and simply issue the below command.
sudo cp FoxitReader /usr/bin
After that’s done, simply search for “foxit” in Unity’s Dash (or in Nautilus context menu after selecting a PDF file), and click on its icon, and voila!, now it should open the Foxit reader as it’s supposed to (shown below). That’s it!.
A little proof to show you that Foxit is running under Ubuntu 11.10 
…
If you have extracted the “FoxitReader” file to somewhere else other than your “Home” folder, then please use the proper file path in the above command (“/your-folder-path/FoxitReader”).
*Update (05/11/2012), only for the Ubuntu 64-bit users:
If you use the 64-bit version of Ubuntu (12.04, 11.10 etc), then even after doing all this, “Foxit” still won’t work. That’s simply because, Foxit only has a 32-bit version and for an any application that’s created to run under 32-bit processor instructions should undergo few changes in order to support the 64-bit instructions.
But you can install a special software library that “fakes” (emulates) a 32-bit processor using your actual 64-bit CPU and the program should run without issues. In Ubuntu (plus, GNU/Linux in general), we need a library called “ia32-libs” for that.
It could be because this library has a shi* load of dependencies (needs a lot of individual packages, about 70-80MB to download), Ubuntu does not come with it pre-installed.
So, for all ya 64-bit users, after following all the above steps, there’s this one last step that you gotta do before you can enjoy our naughty little “Foxit”, and that is installing this software library. For that, open your Terminal window and enter the below command.
sudo apt-get install ia32-libs
That’s it, now it should work. A big thanks goes to “robert” (in the comment section), couldn’t have done it without you mate!, thank you .
But as this needs a lot of libraries (somewhat an “unnecessary burden”, if you won’t really be running 32-bit apps in 64-bit Ubuntu that is), unless you really can’t live without “Foxit”, I humbly suggest that you try something else, “qpdfview” for instance?. *
Oy Gyan!, BTW, why did the default Foxit “.deb” installation fail?
I honestly don’t know. But then again, that “.deb” file was last released more than two years ago!, so perhaps it’s some sort of an incompatibility issue.
Anyhow, if you’ve been having troubles properly installing or running Foxit PDF reader in Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot or 12.04 Precise Pangolin then that’s one way to fix it (hopefully ). Enjoy!.
It works, thanks1
You are welcome!
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Your article shows a great deal of care for clarity and making the process easy for those of us who know little about Ubuntu administration – thank you so much!
Hi Venus,
You are most welcome!
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Works a treat and so clearly explained, thanks!
Hi Sahil,
No problemo
Worked like a charm. Thanks
You are welcome Prashant
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Thank you it worked fine
Coooooool!
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I was having problem running foxit after installation in ubuntu, but ur article really helped me in fixing it .. good work ..
Thank you!.
Same process works fine in ubuntu 12.04
thanks
Hello Ron,
Thanks for the update
.
genial,
thanks, works on 12.04
You are welcome Shurkes
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Had some issues in 12.04 64bit. Foxit Reader wouldn't do anything at all when I tired to open it, no error or anything. So I tried to open it from the terminal and then it showed an error. Missing a 32 bit library. If this happens to you just run the following to fix it.
sudo apt-get install ia32-libs-gtk
Thank robert. I updated the post
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Thanks Robert.
I had same problem, but I installed missing library and it fix ti. thnks
Gayan too. It works
Excellent!
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genial.. It works lovely in 12.04 34 bits. Thks a lot
Nope, the pleasure is all mine
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For those, who are using the program "wine" to emulate windows programs, the ia32-libs are included.
Thanks!.
it worked like a charm … thx vry mch
You are welcome 'Joe'.
Brilliant.
Great work!!!
Keep it up
Thank you!
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It also works installing it with GDebi installer, instead of using the Software Center. It installs perfectly and no tweaks are needed.
Nice find!, lol.
Works like charm, thanks man!
No need to mention it mate, enjoy!:).
It's perfect step by step instruction. I am Linux virgin, but I did it! Better here, then at oficial sites and them support. God job body. Realy thank's. By my languague, "dakujem"
Thank you very much for the detailed instructions. It works like a charm.
No problem 'Alfred M'
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It works, but foxitReader for Ubuntu is not one tenth as good as FoxitReader for windows.
Yeah, I'd say so
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Спасибо!
Thank you very much & Grand Merci
Thank you for this nice explanation!
I actually installed Foxit and had problems to get it started, so I followed your instructions without recognizing that there was an Update for 64-bit users (I use 64 bit
). So, now I decided not to use Foxit as I don't want to have “ia32-libs”.
Now my question is: how can I remove the "half-installed" Foxit?
I would be glad if you could help me!
Cheers, Nina
Hello 'Nina,
That's easy. I've already explained how to do that in a comment in another post. Please refer to the below post and look for the last comment by me.
http://www.hecticgeek.com/2012/04/qpdfview-pdf-re…
That should do the trick.
Thanks a lot! That worked perfectly!
Okay!
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Its Great PIts great explanation and worked like charms
Thank you 'Pavitra'!.
THANK YOU SO MUCH(: i was getting irritated because i had just moved from windows and i figured why would i keep dealing with ubuntu but now im fine and happy lol
Hey ‘jesse’,
You are welcome!. Enjoy your Ubuntu
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Thanks a lot!!
You are welcome ‘Andrea’
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thanks Gayan
you “saved” my life ,I used to work with FoxitReader on windows and I like it
and now with your help I can enjoy it also on ubuntu 12.04
big love from Morocco
You are welcome ‘elkassmielec’!
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It worked fine here!
Thanks!
Glad to hear it
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Thank you so much… I love this program
No problem!
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Thank you!
No problem ‘Vic’
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Thanks a lot! From South Korea.
You are welcome friend!.
thanx for the info machan it really saved my time…. keep it up
Hey ‘Rumesh’,
Isthuthi!
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Thank you very much, great post, very clear and helpful.
Thanks ‘Juan’, appreciate it
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I am using 64-bit ubuntu, and I finally got foxit able to use. Thank you so much! I’m the one who cannot live without foxit xD
You are welcome!.
Great ! Gracious !
You are welcome ‘Mohammad’
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Thanks
You are welcome!.
Many Many Thanks. Great work.
Hi ‘veraaj’,
The pleasure is all mine mate
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thanks gayan… thanks for the detailed howto!
You are welcome ‘sreekar’
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but this version of foxit for gnu/linux does nt have options like underlining/highlighting text… do you know any GPL-friendly reader that has this options in addition to ones that foxit for windows has… thank you in advance
sreekar
Try ‘qpdfview’, it has this function that you mentioned, and a lot more.
Please refer to the below link for installing it on Ubuntu …
http://www.hecticgeek.com/2012/04/qpdfview-pdf-reader-ubuntu-linux/
It works like a charm. Thank you very much for a good post. I tried so much to get Foxit to work.. and this did it. Had to install the 32 libs also, (cos i run 64bit), but thats ok.. if I can’t live without foxit, then 132Mb extra is not that much..
take care..
LOL.. had to install QPDFView also, because I actually needed Foxit to be able to underline PDF’s.. I guess there is now not any easy way to get rid of all the 32 libs i got installed earlier, is it?
Hi Adrian C.,
Well, you could try the below commands, but they might not necessarily remove all the files it installed though.
Then try the below one as well.
Thanks.. I actually tried that also, but like u said, I dont think it removed everything. So.. i just ran a partition restore cos I saved it not much earlier with fsarchiver.
I’m gonna go install QPDFViewer now, thanks for very good and usefull posts! bye…
You are welcome!
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Thank you for your easy process dokumentation.The description saves a lot of time in the mistake search!
I like linux and the most of the applications works very good and offers many support functions.
But the PDF support in Linux is BAD! – really indistinct in a world full of electronic documents.
I will recommend with pleasure your side.
Thank you ‘Ralf’
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thanks. works fine.
Regards
How to put sticky notes !!!
Hi ‘Vikram’,
I don’t use ‘Foxit’ these days. Try ‘qpdfview’, it has this functionality.
Thanks a lot for such a post. I was searching this from a long time…
‘Vinkal’, the pleasure is all mine mate
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