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Adobe To Port AIR To Linux

Posted by kdawson on from the breath-of-fresh dept.

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.'"

29 of 218 comments (clear)

  1. People use Photoshop to Dev the Web too Adobe! by Jackie_Chan_Fan · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Port the Adobe suites to linux.

    1. Re:People use Photoshop to Dev the Web too Adobe! by JustinOpinion · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Port the Adobe suites to linux. The funny thing is that at this point it would probably take about an afternoon for Adobe to port Photoshop to Linux.

      Yes, I'm exaggerating... but only slightly. Currently Photoshop runs essentially flawlessly using up-to-date versions of Wine. Remember that Wine is intended both as a run-time compatibility layer, but also as a set of Windows API libraries that you can compile your Windows code against in order to make a native Linux application. (Well, some people might debate that the resulting app is actually native since it relies on Wine libraries being installed, rather than the more widespread Linux toolkits like GTK or QT.)

      Given that the Wine project has already done 99% of the work, I can't imagine it would be very difficult to port Photoshop to Linux... The same is probably true for the rest of the suite. So, one wonders why they haven't bothered yet.
    2. Re:People use Photoshop to Dev the Web too Adobe! by SCHecklerX · · Score: 3, Insightful

      No thanks.

      Google took that approach with picassa and the results are horrible.

      Native GTK please. If gimp, pidgin, sylpheed, gvim, etc. can be cross platform, then certainly it wouldn't be too large a task for a company the size of Adobe to do the port the other way around.

    3. Re:People use Photoshop to Dev the Web too Adobe! by Telvin_3d · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yeah, it couldn't possibly be a massive undertaking to port almost 15 years of built up code, working across an entire suite of interconnected programs, to a completely differnt set of APIs. They should get on that right away!

      Please note, of the programs you listed, combined they are a drop in the bucket in terms of code base and complexity compared to the full Adobe Suite. You may not agree with commercial software and that is fine, but don't try and pass it off as less than it is.

    4. Re:People use Photoshop to Dev the Web too Adobe! by jellomizer · · Score: 4, Interesting

      It is not technical it is financial. There have been versions of Photoshop that runs on Unix Systems, I rember seeing an add for Photoshop for Sun Work Stations. It is not a situation that they can't make a Linux Version it is more of an issue they Won't make a Linux version unless it takes 0 effort on their part. Linux is strong in the Server Market but in the Desktop Market and Workstation market they are not really there where at best guesses Linux is less then 1% of the market share. Then I would suspect about 25% of them are Open Source Zealots who will not use a BSA Backed Closed Source Tool on Linux no matter how good it was. Then you have by my estimate 50% people who are just to cheap/unable to afford to shell out a few hundred - a few thousand bucks for a software package. Now we are left 25% Now that leave the people who want or need photoshop so lets say less then 1/2 of the 25% that leave 12% Now we figure a 1/3 will pirate a copy so that is 8% of Linux Users Left... Then We can assume from that 8% left 3/4 of them would use an other platform to use photoshop anyways so that 2% out of 1% Market Share that would be new Customers so that means 0.02% change in new customers. Now if 1/4 of the World Population Uses Computers that can meet the system requirements. estimating 6 billion in population that will be 300,000 copies sold over a 4 year life cycle meaning an average of 75,000 copies sold a year. Creating 37.5 Million Gross estimating 25% margins on the copy making 9.4 Million Net. Which may be a lot for You or Me. For for a Company Adobe's size that may not be the best bang for the effort. Because effort towards Mac or Windows user for the same cost could Lead to much higher Sales perhaps 10 or 100 fold. Efforts in making Adobe Wine Compatible or close to it may yeald better results for less effort.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    5. Re:People use Photoshop to Dev the Web too Adobe! by salimma · · Score: 4, Informative

      The actual situation is most likely in-between the two extremes posited by parent and GP. Adobe has its own abstraction layer that they program against, so once they have a way to target GTK or Qt with that backend, compiling the applications should be quite straightforward.

      (This layer is likely to be rather complex -- witness how long it took them to bring Photoshop to MacIntel)

      --
      Michel
      Fedora Project Contribut
    6. Re:People use Photoshop to Dev the Web too Adobe! by pherthyl · · Score: 3, Insightful

      No GTK apps are what I would consider to be truly cross platform. GIMP on Windows looks like GIMP on linux with a theme applied. No GTK apps integrate properly with the native environments in Windows or OS X. Qt at least makes a decent attempt. So a port to GTK would make Photoshop only gnome-native anyway. Better to just use Wine, make the interface exactly familiar to all users of photoshop, and save thousands of man months of effort.

    7. Re:People use Photoshop to Dev the Web too Adobe! by Jhan · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Currently Photoshop runs essentially flawlessly using up-to-date versions of Wine

      Yes, but who wants Wine if you can get a native app? Photoshop was designed to be portable, and was released for SunOS and SGI IRIX.

      Amusing side note: In the nineties several popular programs were ported to Unix for reasons I didn't understand then, and don't now. In addition to Photoshop also MS Internet Explorer and Outlook. Imagine my disbelief and horror when I found that nasty couple installed on a production HPUX server...

      I wouldn't think Adobe has just thrown away the source portability. After all portable code is expensive to create in the first place, but once you're there it's pretty cheap to maintain portability. If this is the case then they have probably had a Linux version of Photoshop, and perhaps other products for years, they just don't feel like selling them at this point.

      The point I want to make is that yes, indeed, Adobe could probably release Photoshop for Linux tomorrow. Wine wouldn't be necessary. It would be the real deal, a fully native Unix/X11 application. Unless of course Adobe hasn't done criminally stupid things to the code base in the past decade...

      --

      I choose to remain celibate, like my father and his father before him.

    8. Re:People use Photoshop to Dev the Web too Adobe! by Albert+Sandberg · · Score: 5, Insightful

      (This layer is likely to be rather complex -- witness how long it took them to bring Photoshop to MacIntel)

      Speaking as a programmer myself, I know the step from linux code running on macintel or vice versa is not an extreme step to take. I release demos on all three major platforms and by using libraries that helps us with input/output (such as glfw and audiere, but there are plenty of others for each use) it's not a huge task to take on.

      And this day of age your code (or 99% of it) shouldn't been done in assembly either, so no problem porting to other platforms really. And they don't utilize sound :)

    9. Re:People use Photoshop to Dev the Web too Adobe! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Except that you're wrong. Adobe is actively trying to eliminate the vast majority of their GUI-library dependent code with the EVE2 and Adam libraries. I know these things because I am one of the researchers developing the data-limiting constraint language to be used. It is part of their core internal road-map to move all Adobe projects off of specific GUI dependence. Before any of you start talking "cross-platform", what Adobe wants out of cross-platform is not wxWidgets or the Mozilla-stuff; what they want is very similar to the AbiWord notion of cross-platform.

  2. Bzzt by nacturation · · Score: 5, Informative

    ... 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.
    --
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    1. Re:Bzzt by Samus · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The AIR stack is essentially composed of two parallel environments. One being an embedded web browser (webkit) with javascript (ECMAScript3) bindings into the runtime. The other side is an embedded Flash 9 player with access to all that Flash offers as well as the additional AIR libraries such as sqlite. I believe FlexBuilder allows you to develop either one though I have only used it to do a Flash based AIR app.

      --
      In Republican America phones tap you.
  3. I think we deserve an answer by feld · · Score: 3, Interesting

    where's our photoshop?

    1. Re:I think we deserve an answer by Lord+Ender · · Score: 4, Funny

      It will be released as soon as they release 64-bit flash for Linux.

      --
      A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
    2. Re:I think we deserve an answer by chubs730 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Congratulations! It's been only 23 minutes since an article mentioning Adobe and Linux has been posted, and already you've mentioned the gimp. In doing so you've made one or several incorrect assumptions:
      1. Adobe ported Photoshop to Linux and renamed it to the gimp. (We're all hoping it's not this one).
      OR
      2. The gimp is a viable replacement for Photoshop for Adobe's target group (professionals).
      OR
      3. Slashdot users don't already know about the gimp. If this was an article discussing Photoshop alternatives for Linux, maybe it would be nice to mention the gimp; it's not. These comments wouldn't be so annoying if they didn't show up every single time there is an article about Adobe. The "use Linux!" comments on every Windows article can be funny (sometimes) because at least everyone knows they're more or less joking.

      The gimp is not Photoshop, and is still missing some features that professionals really need, it isn't a viable replacement yet.

  4. Adobe: FIX FLASH UPLOADS! by DigitalisAkujin · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Adobe,
    Please fix Flash uploads in Flash for *nix.

  5. Not quite by krog · · Score: 5, Informative

    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
    1. Re:Not quite by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF · · Score: 4, Informative

      Adobe FrameMaker has run on more than 10 Unixes over the years, including Linux. Consider this nit picked!

      Actually Frame Technology Corp. wrote Framemaker and ported it to many Linux/UNIX based OS's, Windows, and Mac OS. Once Adobe acquired Frame Technology Corp. they slowly dropped all the other versions until 2004 when they finally dropped Mac OS (who at the time comprised about half of their user base), making this product a Windows only. They basically put the whole program in the deep freeze with minimal updates to keep things working and no new features while they tried to migrate users to their home grown InDesign which was written originally for making magazines and was very unsuited to technical books (which was Framemaker's main target). In fact, they only recently started up development again (outsourced to India) when MadCap Software announced a new program called Blaze, which was billed as having every feature of Framemaker, but implemented from scratch with many new features and an order of magnitude better performance. As of 2007, they claimed to have no plans to support anything but Windows going forward.

  6. Re:PDF? by lexarius · · Score: 4, Informative

    Acrobat Reader works fine on our Linux and Solaris machines.

  7. While they're at it... by Penguinisto · · Score: 3, Interesting
    I realize that Adobe's code can be... err, messy, to be charitable about it (at least judging by Acrobat Reader and FrameMaker).

    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.

    /P

    --
    Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
  8. No thanks. by Speare · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

    --
    [ .sig file not found ]
  9. Re:No such thing as a closed source port to open O by JustinOpinion · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

  10. More Info... by PortHaven · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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

  11. Re:PDF? by mweather · · Score: 5, Funny

    Really? My copy works just as crappy as it does on Windows.

  12. Lets talk about what it actually is. by awjr · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

  13. Bad information by Stan+Vassilev · · Score: 4, Informative

    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...

    Wow :)... Few corrections:

    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.

  14. Re:No such thing as a closed source port to open O by mhall119 · · Score: 3, Informative

    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
  15. Re:PDF? by lexarius · · Score: 4, Funny

    Yes, sorry, that's what I meant.

  16. Comming after AIR by pavon · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.