[Ubuntu Jaunty 9.04] Removing the Adobe Reader Firefox plugin

Yesterday I was forced to install Adobe’s Acrobat Reader (acroread) onto my Ubuntu laptop as I needed to read a PDF which included some features not supported by Document Viewer.

Unfortunately it goes ahead and installs its browser plugin as well, which is annoying if you’re anything like me and don’t like PDFs being opened inside your browser window. Unfortunately again, removing the damned thing is easier said than done, as it seems to copy its plugin file (nppdf.so) into several different locations, and it seems you have to remove every one of them to actually disable the plugin.

So to cut a long story short, copy & paste the following into your terminal and you should be rid of it:

sudo rm /usr/lib/firefox/plugins/nppdf.so \
/usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/plugins/nppdf.so \
/usr/lib/firefox-3.*/plugins/nppdf.so \
/usr/lib/firefox-addons/plugins/nppdf.so \
/usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/nppdf.so

 

Note that this worked for Ubuntu Jaunty. YMMV.