Several blogs and news sites are reporting that Adobe has finally released an alpha of it’s AIR platform on to linux. It is available as an alpha download at their website. AIR is adobe’s vision for bridging the divide between web apps and desktop apps. Currently there are several AIR apps displayed at Adobe’s website.
The AIR platform allows developers to write web apps as they normally do, such has good integration with web services and by using JavaScript, but the AIR platform then adds desktop features such as drag and drop and package management. On linux, arstechnica reports that AIR programs could be uninstalled via the package manger.
Although AIR on Linux does not increase the amount of users significantly it shows Adobe’s commitment to the open source community. With features readily available available, it is possible that is will cause a growth in applications available for linux, since designers can create them once and have them run everywhere. Example applications such as the Google Analytics Reporting Suite are feature filled and bringing them to the linux desktop only increases the chance that people may move to linux, since it will be easy to use the same applications.
Tags: adobe, air, linux, opensource
