Slashdot Mirror
Adobe To Port AIR To Linux
unityofsaints writes "Up until now, Adobe hasn't done much in terms of porting its applications to Linux, as its only product to have recieved any kind of Linux implementation is Flash. This may be about to change because the company has announced a Linux port of AIR, its web application development software. No definite release date is mentioned in the interview with Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch, just a vague 'later this year.'"
Port the Adobe suites to linux.
... a Linux port of AIR, its web application development software. AIR is the runtime, it is not web application development software. Flexbuilder build on top of Eclipse is the development software.Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Ok they didn't port their own PDF tools, but they made the specs available so others could.
I've never taken AIR seriously because of the lack of support for developers on Linux. Now, if they were going to enable running and developing AIR based applications on Linux then I might actually bother to take a look.
[signature]
where's our photoshop?
Adobe,
Please fix Flash uploads in Flash for *nix.
It's virtually impossible to port a closed-source app to "Linux" or any other reasonably successful open source OS. "Linux" is not "Linux i386" it's not even "Linux x86" or "32-bit Linux and 64-bit Linux". Nor is it "Linux on Intel and Linux on PowerPC". Nor is it "Linux from Linus's tree", nor "Linux with Debian patches", nor "The custom version of Linux that autobuilds on my machine every time there's a new release of a kernel or a patch". Nor is it "Linux with glibc x.x".
Open source OS's require open source software just as much as open source drivers. If companies aren't willing to provide that, then we should make our own. Preferably following a lot more standards than AIR.
Up until now, Adobe hasn't done much in terms of porting its applications to Linux, as its only product to have recieved any kind of Linux implementation is Flash.
Adobe FrameMaker has run on more than 10 Unixes over the years, including Linux. Consider this nit picked!
Cretin - a powerful and flexible CD reencoder
Question is this: is this a step towards (hopefully) Adobe going over their existing products and re-writing them so as to make porting easier? I know they're working with Codeweavers to get P-shop to work on a Linux platform (via WINE), but it would be cool to see some native implementations instead.
I figure once/if Adobe can get things like P-Shop and Illustrator to work on a Linux platform, other graphics companies would have that final impetus to follow. While the higher-end CG vendors usually have Linux ports or Linux-native apps (Shake, Maya, etc), the mid-range, amateur, and pro-am ones usually don't (Modo, Silo, DAZ|Studio and Poser, Vue d' Esprit, Carrara, Bryce, etc).
It'd be hella nice to see the CG/gfx companies take Linux seriously across the board, and not just as niche/custom items, or as "hey, that OS makes a great render farm node!" type of platform.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Flash for "Linux" isn't really flash for Linux, its still built for i386 architecture so it only works on i386 architecture, not on any of the other hardware Linux runs on...
Just from a quick perusal of The Google, I'm getting a distinct feeling AIR is something of a glorified web browser. So you can run offline and on your desktop? Hmmmm... Does anyone remember Push technology? Or Active Channels? It seems a little like that, but heavy on the Web 2.0 sauce. But like I said, this was just from a quick perusal of Google results. If anyone would care to point out what makes AIR, more than a glorfied Browser+AJAX, I'm all ears...
I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask where they're goin' and hook up with 'em later.
I've not given Adobe a single dime in a decade*. First it was their overpricing themselves out of all but the students-and-pirates market. Then it was about using their corporate power to influence our government against the valid rights of individuals who were speaking out about data security and the freedom to read.
I'm sure some cash went from Canon or Apple to these jackasses, when I bought hardware that bundled their teaser products (which I don't use). I regret even that level of support for Adobe.
[
...as Adobe has said all along that for Apollo/AIR 1.0 it would be Mac/Windows only. Once 1.0 was reached, then Linux would follow. I'm glad that Adobe's CTO came out and made the announcement, though. This continues to lead credence to Linux being a top-tier platform from desktop/productivity applications.
I think the REAL interesting part, though, is how AIR relates to an earlier statement made by Adobe's CEO. He mentioned that in the future, all Adobe apps would be on the web. I think that statement was a bit misleading, either through a mis-understanding or mis-interpretation. I think that Adobe is banking the future on AIR as the runtime for all of it's applications (Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.) This gives them the design capabilities of Flash and web graphics, and a common runtime on which to deploy them. Then, platform independence becomes a reality, as whatever platform has AIR, can run Adobe applications.
Will it actually run on Linux?
more power to you. Is it just me or is AIR basically just another browser with full file system access? Seems like a pretty big security risk to me.
recieved ???
You say that, and yet there are plenty of proprietary binaries available for Linux. Many distros have huge repositories of "non-free" stuff. Plenty of proprietary vendors make Linux binaries available (e.g. nVidia binary driver, Opera, Skype, etc. See also this list, much of which is distributed in binary-only form).
Yes, the vendor will probably only pre-compile binaries for the most popular architectures (32-bit x86 being the main one), and only for the most popular packaging formats (deb and rpm). But really that covers the vast majority of Linux users anyway.
Yes, it's a pain for the vendor to compile/package 2-8 versions instead of just one, but it's hardly the insurmountable obstacle you make it out to be.
I guess Slashdot's trend toward suckage continues. Yes, I love that Slashdot is becoming a political site more than a tech site and the bias' run deep.
So Slashdot rejected the story submission about Adobe's release of AIR, and announcement that they were open-sourcing the Flex 3 SDK. And had released a new open-source project site for Flex, Tamarin and a few other products. Nope...that stuff isn't noteworthy to Slashdot's editors.
Bah!...rest assured if there is any political BS topic it'll be posted (even if it's been posted 2-3 times and is a year old).
So yes...
> Adobe AIR launches
> AIR being ported to Linux
> Flex Builder 3 being ported to Linux
> Flex 3 SDK being open sourced
AIR is a desktop runtime. When you install an AIR based app, it actually installs an application on your desktop. It just gives the developer the ability to write a desktop app using web technologies (i.e. Flex, HTML & Ajax, Javascript, Flash) rather than using C, C++, etc..
Congratulations on completely missing my point.
Oh, I see. It's not that you missed the point. It's just that you don't care about the rest of the community that's worked their butts off for years to give you freedom. As long as YOU have an executable, it's OK. Great solidarity there.
So when did Oracle become open source?
Nice. But how about getting Flash to work natively on FreeBSD also? Petition here. There are over 5,600 signatures. FreeBSD currently uses the linux emulation layer to run flash, but it's not perfect.
Vivin Suresh Paliath
http://vivin.net
I like
Just to give some background on this. AIR is an equivalent to the Java Runtime Environment. Now unfortunately (or fortunately) Adobe also released Flex 3 Builder (application development for Flash 9) at the same time and made it the easiest way to deliver AIR apps. You could easily build air apps using Flash 9, javascript or even plain html but I can't see the point to this. There are certain things Air does provide that will be interesting to see how they are used: SQLLite engine and system resource (disk drive etc) access. The latter screams security risk however this the same risk as installing any app on your computer. To be honest there are a couple of big companies (e.g. Ebay) that are writing AIR apps, but I don't really see there being much need in that arena (searching for auctions). I think it's is going to shine when hooking up to business applications (which is also indicative of the number of financial institutions looking for Flex developers). As an example, I've written an air app that hooks into our servers and provides an easy way to managing our error log entries, and various data characteristics. Previously this would be a case of logging into the back end through a browser and finding this out from various reports. There may be a case that a better dashboard design would have made this simpler, however I can have an AIR app sitting in the background feeding this information to me, and most importantly, it took very little time, as it hooked into existing web services. Personally it has a lot going for it, but it really is going to shine in big business. Oh and please don't compare it to MS Silverlight. Compare Flash to Silverlight, but not AIR.
They could also make Flash actually work before moving on to traditional development tools. Supporting the half dozen Alsa derivatives & video scaling R the main issues. However, moving to development tools instead of focusing on Flash makes sense since Linux is mainly a development platform.
That's not really a change then, is it? Flash was a webdev platform and it got ported. Same with AIR. Shockwave never made it because it was never adopted that fully by anyone.
The community is not a monolith.
Some of them work at Oracle or EA or Blizzard.
Where have you been? This extreme political purity went out of fashion at least 10 years ago.
That said. The Sauron gets to benefit from Free Software the same as
anyone else. That's a part of the "free as in liberty" aspect of it.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
No, it's "Linux with statically compiled binary blobs", architecture notwithstanding.
I agree that having the code makes stuff easier, but there is no reason why companies wouldn't be able to run closed source software on an open source OS. And even if you don't want to compile _everything_ into a single binary, there's always the option of LD_PRELOAD together with your own shared libraries.
Capitalism or Freedom. At least we're in the position to choose.
This sig is intentionally left blank
Up until now, Adobe hasn't done much in terms of porting its applications to Linux, ...only .... Flash. ... the company has announced a Linux port of AIR, its web application development software...
:)... Few corrections:
Wow
1) Flex Builder has had a public alpha for Linux for some time now.
2) There's Adobe Acrobat for Linux/Solaris/Unix
3) Most of the servers Adobe offers, like ColdFusion and Flash Media Streaming servers are available for Linux/Unix.
4) Adobe AIR isn't a web application development environment of any sort... that's completley messed up. It's the runtime component of a connected desktop app platform that supports HTML/CSS/JS/PDF/Flash content.
5) Macromedia (now part of Adobe) has made attempts to commercialize Dreamweaver/Flash/Freehand on Linux before utilizing Wine-compatible releases, but there was no enough demand to pay the bills, so the project was canned. I have the feeling they'll be trying this with selected Adobe CS applications again within 24 months, but it'll be expensive, so the market should show enough demand, and put their money where their mouth is, this time.
Well, the vast majority of the people who can't use installs in the form of .rpm and .deb would tend to be the very same people who would rather compile everything from source no matter what. And while being able to see the source is always a good thing, there is still a place for proprietary software. As long as there is proprietary software, there will always be a few people who can't use it, but that's just the way of the world. And on a side note, snide comments about solidarity is a great way to destroy it.
I would like to point out that Adobe does have other products that run Linux and they include: - ColdFusion - Jrun Both ColdFusion and Jrun have worked under linux for years. ColdFusion and Jrun (formerly from Allaire and then Macromedia) are now Adobe products that they inherited from Macromedia that they bought a while ago.
That is why they established the Linux Standard Base (LSB) and freedesktop.org. You say "My software runs on LSB 3.2 IA32 and IA64" and provide a .deb and .rpm for each and be done with it. It's no more difficult that supporting Win32 and Win64 and providing a .exe and .msi for each.
http://www.mhall119.com
Yes, AIR is a desktop runtime...for a Web-based application. There's a lot of risk in letting Web apps loose outside of the browser security sandbox. It seems like a better choice would be to use Flash or Silverlight which run withint the browser security sandbox or run a "real" desktop application using .NET/WPF which uses the .NET security model.
It should be noted that the Linux version of Acrobat Reader seems fairly antiquated compared with its Windows counterpart. The last time I used acroread I was unable to fill PDF forms with it.
This is similar to Skype for Linux vs Skype for Windows. Skype for windows has supported video calls for ages and has generally been ahead by a full version number.
Things are getting better for the Linux world though, eg there's a Skype beta version that offers video streaming in Linux. And one can argue that the Linux versions of these programs are definitely not bloated.
One thing I'd personally like to see is a 64-bit Flash player for Linux, it's about time.
Adobe has always said there'll be a Linux version of AIR. I've got several Adobe evangelists on record stating that going back to the original AIR announcement a year ago - and as it's built on Tamarind and WebKit no one should be surprised.
With a number of originally-for-Linux apps having been ported to OS X, without apparently calling for any overwhelming expense, why should Adobe's stuff, all of which runs on OS X, take much effort to port to Linux?
I'm sure it's not something done for free, but expensive? On the scale of what Adobe pays for office coffee each day?
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
A port of Flash for PPC Linux would be nice, too.
AIR apps are desktop apps, period. They can access all your files, listen on sockets, draw non-rectangular windows, etc. As long as you treat them like desktop apps (by thinking before installing), there's no problem.
... Now we can breathe easy. ... I was holding my breath for that one to be ported. ... Well that has knocked the wind out of the "No good software is available" crowd.
it is only after a long journey that you know the strength of the horse.
I don't think my acrobat reader runs under wine, so that would make at least 2 apps. I hope many will follow before they stop supporting Vista :-)
You don't think Adobe concerns itself with security? Your statements assumes that .NET/WPF has a better security model than whatever AIR does? Better for whom - Microsoft, perchance? Perhaps you have an good idea there. Maybe if every computer ran .Net, and the internet was powered by SliverLight, this would be a better, safer world? Interesting that you repeat the same FUD that Steve Bummer said when he was referring to AIR in one of his interviews.
#DeleteChrome
Maybe not Linux, but I am running Photoshop and Illustrator under IRIX 6.5 on an SGI O2 (IP32 MIPS R10K Proc, 256MB RAM, 6GB HDD)
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
Adobe on IRIX. I personally am running Photoshop, Illustrator, and Acrobat Reader on IRIX 6.5 (on an SGI O2)
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
Adobe Sucks AIR
I think Adobe concerns itself with security. I just think that AIR does not have a well developed security model. Check it out yourself and see whtat you find. There's no question that .NET has a better security model than AIR. AIR will probably improve over time. What Ballmer FUD? Show me a link. No, every computer doesn't run .NET. Most do but not all. The full .NET framework doesn't run on Mac or Linux. Silverlight uses/will use the same basic programming model and does run on Mac and will run on Linux.
By the way, yes, I am a .NET guy. I'm not trying to hide that.
*cough* Flex *cough*
And when the fuck did they buy SUN so that they could have bought MySQL? Stupid ass.
there are some others, acrobat reader, Distiller and LiveCycle document management
I agree with you, it would be great if Adobe would start supporting Linux natively. I was even thinking that once Photshop is better supported under WINE, they may have a better picture of how many people use their products in Linux. Unfortunatly, Photoshop would not be able to accurately report back what systems people are using. This brings me to the OT rant. Some apps report back what system the user is running, essentially a survey so the company knows their market better. I encountered this with Steam. I have Steam running under WINE on Fedora 7 right now. When it asked to report my hardware, i obliged, hoping that it would detect a Linux system and someone at Valve would give a double-take. The hope being that if they keep seeing Linux in their stats, they might start developing for it. Unfortunately, WINE reports the system as Windows XP. Well that was dissapointing. I think it would be in the Linux communities interest if WINE had a way of reporting it more like "GNU/Linux with Windows XP compatibility layer" or something like that. No biggie, but maybe it would help get the word out to some of the game developers that Linux gamers do exist.
"It's not whether you win or lose, it's how drunk you get." -- H. J. Simpson
AIR is a cross-platform development environment that also allows easy porting between desktop and web-based applications. Adobe is planning on creating webapp versions of their major desktop software, including photoshop, within the next 5-10 years. How are they going to do this and keep a manageable code base? You guessed it, they are porting them all to AIR. So Linux should get a native port of Photoshop when that effort is completed, whose "nativeness" is roughly equivalent to the "nativeness" of XUL-Runner applications like Thunderbird.
Here is one article on arstechnica that has a little more detail. I'm sure you can google for more.
Well, I wasn't right of me to take the tone I did. Between the lines I was accusing you of being a Micro$oft shill. Even hiding behind the cloak of anonymity, I still can't hide from myself, so I'd better change my tone and be more polite.
In the first place, I read an interview somewhere, don't remember where, but it was recent, that gave me the understanding that that is Micro$oft's party line - spreading FUD about the security model of AIR. I think you can take that from me on faith.
In the second place, I apologize for accusing you of being a Micro$oft shill. Just because you are a .Net developer doesn't have to mean anything like that. It is just that though I develop on the Window's platform too, I could never become comfortable with the whole idea behind .Net, and avoid it. Used to be that we could write our code on Windows in C/C++ and easily port it to any other platform, by just replacing the system dependent calls. Once .Net came along, that was all over. .Net was/is Micro$oft's strategy to enhance lock-in. Sure, it is tremendously useful, with all the libraries that come with it, but now we have thousands of developers all over North America just like you that develop for .Net, furthering Micro$oft's insidious, evil goals, whereas if there was no .Net, we may have a broad range of solutions to the problems that .Net addresses itself, and also more mobility across different platforms for developers. I don't know how many others feel as I do, but I do know that .Net development isn't near as high in the UK/Europe as it is in the USA.
In my day job as a tech writer, the only thing that keeps me tied to my Windows box is FrameMaker. Of which, at one time, there was a Linux version, later canceled for (apparent) lack of interest. Unfortunately, the project didn't live very long, and I wasn't able to get a copy while it was alive... something that I regret morning when I fire up Windows.
I can get email (the company uses Outlook) through the Web-based Outlook tool, I use vi to write man pages and do HTML, and I can read various Word/Excel files sent to me in OO, but I NEED FrameMaker--there's no adequate replacement available. So I have an unwanted Windows box.
Sigh
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
as in "neighbor" or "weigh"...
Bow-ties are cool.
Thanks and well said. I agree with most of your points but one person's "lock-in" is another person's benefit from having a consistent programming model, good libraries (and good security model) for writing Web apps, Windows apps, mobile apps etc. My hope is that Silverlight will extend the same programming model onto other platforms so I can, if I choose, use the same model and skills to build apps that run on Mac and Linux. To me the benefit of a rational/consistent programming model and all of the benefits that brings vastly outweights the alternatives.
I wouldn't go so far as to say "there is a place for proprietary software" so much as "don't pick on the kid who has most of the equipment or he might just take his ball and go home." Someday all companies might move to open source, but until then, we don't want to drive them away from even considering it.
I'm pretty tired of waiting for AIR support on Linux. As previous posters have mentioned, it really shouldn't be that hard. It's webkit + Flash + SQLite, all of which run just fine today.
A few weeks ago I got wind of an email stating that the Linux builds would be available to Adobe Prerelease members. It's not feature complete, and they're basically looking for Linux alpha/beta testers. I was ready to beta test AIR a year ago when the Windows and Mac betas were released.
If Adobe wants to treat linux users as second-class citizens, that's fine. It's really too bad though since we're the ones who are usually keen on cross-platform development, and would likely have been the champions of a truly cross-platform runtime for desktop development.*
Of course, AIR's lack of support for two key features is a dealbreaker for me anyway. That is, launching of shell commands and listening to TCP ports. But I digress.
* Talking about non-Java here. RCP be damned! :P
I usually use xpdf or evince, but on occasion I fire up acroread mainly to fill out PDF forms. If you install the EScript plugin (also available for Linux), it even will do auto-form-population correctly (e.g. keeping a "total" field up to date), or at least the same as it does on Windows.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
And yet it has bone done many times for over a decade.
You can find details on how to sign-up for the beta program on my blog:
http://www.jamesward.org/wordpress/2008/02/20/adobe-air-on-linux-pre-beta-testers-needed/
-James
It looks like this is an engineering release; a pre-beta. Which may be buggy, I'm sure the beta release will be better. However, it looks like is not yet for general release and a production release should be ready for the 1.1 release of AIR.
...
A friend forwarded me the release announcement which I posted on my blog a few weeks ago http://timony.com/mickzblog/2008/02/16/adobe-air-for-linux/, full announcement below, except for any e-mail addresses which I removed.
From: Prerelease Program Coordinator
Sent: Friday, February 15, 2008
Subject: First engineering drop of AIR for Linux now available on prerelease website
Attention Linux Prerelease Users and Developers,
Today we are very excited to announce that we are making available our first engineering drops of AIR running on Linux on our prerelease website. From the very beginning, it's been our goal to bring AIR to Linux. Today marks the first in a series of upcoming milestones that will support attaining that goal.
To help set expectations around this announcement, please note the following:
* AIR Linux will target our 1.1 release later this year and not the upcoming 1.0 release. Whereas our Mac and Windows 1.0 builds are about to ship, the Linux release is targeted for the second half of this year.
* The AIR Linux builds are not yet feature complete (think alpha stage). It's very important that you read the release notes to understand what features are currently unavailable. If you have an existing application, there's a reasonable chance that certain parts of your application may not run. We will continue to post new builds on our prerelease website going forward.
* The AIR Linux builds are not as stable as Mac and Windows (again, think alpha stage). Since these are the first builds we're posting to our prerelease website, there are many issues that we still need to address. The issues we know about are described in our release notes posted on the new Linux prerelease forum. If you encounter other issues, we'd appreciate it if you could please search our bug database and submit a bug if the issue has not yet been reported.
* Our current plan is to support the following distributions of AIR: RedHat Desktop Linux 4, RedHat Enterprise Linux v5, Novell Desktop Linux 9, SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10, and Ubuntu 6.06. This list will change between now and when we ship.
* We have created a new forum dedicated to Linux topics. If you are experiencing issues or have questions, please post on the Linux forum. You can subscribe to this new forum by logging into prerelease, selecting the "Linux" forum, and then selecting "Subscribe."
* Bugs can be logged through our prerelease website. Under the "Resources" section, click on the "Report Bugs/Feature Requests" link. Next, click the link "Report AIR Bugs/Feature Requests - Linux"
We are particularly interested in feedback from developers running multiple distributions of Linux that might be able to compare install experiences or differences in performance.
If you have any questions related to AIR Linux, please post them to the new Linux prerelease forum which is now live. Below is a FAQ that provides additional information.
Be sure to view the release notes for this engineering drop by logging into the Linux forum on the prerelease website.
I have a very small mind and must live with it.
-- E. Dijkstra
Sticking to principles, not fashions
Are you trying to claim that Oracle release binaries for every conceivable linux variant, including PS3s, new supercomputers, etc.? Or do you just not understand what you're arguing about?
http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Talk:AIR
http://llvm.org/ProjectsWithLLVM/#adobe-hydra
Hydra is a new programming language based on LLVM: a BSD-like licensed open-source compiler framework for many platforms.
...could make lots of money by porting to Linux because of one simple reason.
If the OS doesn't cost any money, users can put that money into buying licensed applications, like Photoshop.
I am not sure how things really are, but according to my experience, most Photoshop users use it in a pretty small scale environment.
Now I am not talking about only the paying users, that might be different, but those who run cracked versions.
I think most of those would actually prefer to run legit applications, having support and updates.
And now they are closer than ever to be able to do this, since there are acceptable free alternatives(like openoffice, thunderbird) to almost all the other applications that are used by the normal business.
The last big hurdle left is Photoshop(and Illustrator, perhaps). Yes, there are other applications left, but none as widely needed.
Baboons are cute.