At the on AIR event here in Madrid just hours after the AIR Linux alpha hit Adobe Labs, Enrique demoed it to the crowd. He had Ubuntu set up as a VM and dragged an AIR file (Twhirl) from his OS X desktop onto the Ubuntu image and installed it. Same code, same AIR file, same experience, two different operating systems. With the alpha release we finally have public versions of AIR for the three major platforms.
I am really, really stoked about what this means for RIAs and specifically, what it means for me. I love Ubuntu. The Linux experience has come a long way from a few years ago. Ubuntu is easy to use, it’s good looking, and it gives me just the right blend of terminal and GUI. I like feeling a little bit hard core because I miss the days of the DOS command prompt. Ubuntu gives me that feeling with the right blend of usability and geek cred. It’s the first time in a very long time that I’ve actually had fun using an operating system. But you can’t fully make the switch to Linux because there aren’t a lot of applications that run on it. And those that do tend not to be as good as some of the more polished applications for Mac and Windows. The customer base of Mac/Win means more people are going to build apps for those platforms and not for Linux. So it’s hard to jump right in.
But now, with Adobe AIR? You can write those applications and still target Mac/Win but you get Linux for free. I hope over the next 6-12 months most of the applications I use are AIR based. If that’s the case, it will mean I can spend more and more of my time in Linux. Between AIR applications and browser applications it will be pretty easy to start giving Linux a big shot. And I can’t wait.
[tags]AIR, Adobe AIR, Linux, Ubuntu, Twhirl[/tags]
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