Great news for Linux users, Adobe AIR has gotten its first sharp release, as opposed to the previous beta. With AIR, you can run popular apps like Twhirl and TweetDeck, as well as a bunch of other stuff that lets you get internet stuff on your desktop. Yes, it’s that wide… Seriously, this is a good thing for especially microbloggers running Linux systems. Hopefully it works better than Flash under Linux, that one still sucks.
Hat tip: VentureBeat.
Author: Thord Daniel Hedengren
Thord Daniel Hedengren is a designer, writer, and blogger, and also the former editor of The Blog Herald. He used to be a hotshot in the gaming industry in Sweden, but sold everything and went International. Most recently he wrote a book called Smashing WordPress: Beyond the Blog, and does loads of kickass design.
I’ve been keeping an eye on eir for a while but never got around to trying to beta. I’m off to try out the new release now though, looking forward to seeing what it can do.
Some assert that Linux’s CLI is required to install Adobe AIR. Wrong!
Using (GNOME’s) Nautilus file manager GUI, right-click on the Adobe BIN file and check under the Properties’ Permissions tab, to allow executing the file as a program. Next, right-click and Rename the file to remove its .bin extension, so the file name is just AdobeAIRInstaller. Finally, double-click the file to run the Adobe installer, which pops open a new window, requests your authorization (password), and prompts you through the install. That’s it.
You’ll then find AIR maintenance items in the Ubuntu “Accessories” menu (or in the “Tools” menu of Mandriva Linux 2009). The .air file extension is associated with Adobe’s run-time. An AIR application can be removed via the distro RPM or DEB package manager GUI, or by double-clicking its original .air installation file.
:-)