Adobe Systems announces the release of Adobe AIR 1.5 for Linux. The new release supports Fedora Core 8, Ubuntu 7.10 or higher, and openSUSE 10.3. The company says existing AIR applications running on Windows and the Mac "will just work" on Linux.
Just a month after releasing the same technology for Windows and the Mac,
Adobe Systems has announced the general availability of Adobe AIR
1.5 for Linux operating systems.
In an interview with eWEEK, Adrian Ludwig, group product manager for Adobe's
Platform Business Unit, said Adobe AIR 1.5
for Linux supports Fedora Core 8, Ubuntu 7.10 or higher, and openSUSE 10.3.
"Applications can be built using Flash, ActionScript, HTML and
JavaScript," Ludwig said. "And because AIR
works on Linux now as well as Windows and the Mac, we'll see a lot of
applications already working on Linux" if they work on the other supported
operating systems.
"Outside of the browser, developers have traditionally had to choose
one or maybe two operating systems when building an application to keep
development time down and costs low," said Mark Shuttleworth, founder of
the Ubuntu project, in a statement. "With Adobe AIR
1.5, companies and developers can easily target all three major operating
systems with a single code base, transforming the application development
paradigm and elevating Linux to the same level as Mac and Windows."
"Why Linux is so important is because Linux has not been adopted on the
client," Ludwig said. "We see Linux adoption of about 1.8 percent at
the upper bound on the client. And one of the key reasons for its slow adoption
has been that it's too difficult. Now you get AIR
applications that work on Linux. AIR
applications that people have built will just start to work on Linux."
Ludwig said up to 97 percent of existing AIR
applications written for other operating systems "will just work" on
Linux "because AIR gives you a
consistent run-time across all the operating systems."
Moreover, "Linux is becoming the platform of choice in the mobile
space," Ludwig said. And this move is a "stepping stone" into
that world for Adobe, he said.
Adobe officials said AIR 1.5 is a key
component of the Adobe Flash Platform and enables Web developers to use HTML,
JavaScript, ActionScript and the free, open-source Flex framework to deliver
Web applications outside the browser. Now, with no additional efforts,
developers can use Adobe AIR 1.5 technology
to create software applications that are available on Linux, in addition to the
Windows and Mac operating systems.
Darryl K. Taft covers the development tools and developer-related issues beat from his office in Baltimore. He has more than 10 years of experience in the business and is always looking for the next scoop. Taft is a member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and was named 'one of the most active middleware reporters in the world' by The Middleware Co. He also has his own card in the 'Who's Who in Enterprise Java' deck.
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