the new version of Adobe Reader (AdobeReader_deu-7.0.9-1.i386.rpm) seems to install correctly, but when actually trying to run by typing "acroread <file>.pdf" I got nothing but innumerous messages of this type:
expr: syntax error
Guessing the source of the error was something similar like the one found here, I inspected the file /usr/bin/acroread a little closer. This shell script may be suitable for other rpm based distributions, but not for Mandriva, which seems to be due to a slightly different naming scheme for library packages - at least as far as gtk-libs are concerned. The script tries to find "libgtk-x11" libraries, which simply does not exist for Mandriva. We have "libgtk+-x11" packages instead.
So it is sufficient to replace the "libgtk-x11" strings found in the original script by "libgtk+-x11". That's what I did and afterwards the application started perfectly without complaining.
This method feels like a more adequate solution to the problem itself than simply adding a "0" character into a single sed command line like before; so the method depicted may apply well to earlier Mandriva versions, too.
Any field reports welcome!