Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

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.'"

18 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 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.

    3. 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.
    4. 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
    5. 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 :)

    6. 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.
    --
    Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
    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. 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.

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

    Acrobat Reader works fine on our Linux and Solaris machines.

  5. 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.
  6. 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

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

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

  8. 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.

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

    Yes, sorry, that's what I meant.

  10. 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.