How do I create a PDF (Adobe Acrobat) file from a dvi or PostScript file?

To create a pdf from a PostScript document (ps), use ps2pdf

user@surrey[1015]: ps2pdf test.ps
user@surrey[1016]: file test.pdf
test.pdf: PDF document, version 1.2

To create a pdf from a TeX, use pdftex or pdflatex

user@surrey[1017]: pdflatex test
This is pdfTeX, Version 3.14159-1.10b (Web2C 7.4.5)
(./test.tex{/usr/share/texmf/pdftex/config/pdftex.cfg}
LaTeX2e <2001/06/01>
Babel  and hyphenation patterns for american, french, german, ngerman, n
ohyphenation, loaded.
(/usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/base/article.cls
Document Class: article 2001/04/21 v1.4e Standard LaTeX document class
(/usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/base/size10.clo)) (./test.aux) [1{/usr/ias/localtex
mf/dvips/config/pdftex.map}] (./test.aux) )
Output written on test.pdf (1 page, 10257 bytes).
Transcript written on test.log.