Adobe Joins Linux Foundation, Develops AIR For Linux

2muchcoffeeman writes "Adobe announced Monday that it is joining the Linux Foundation and alpha-released a Linux version of its new Adobe Internet Runtime environment, which allows Internet-enabled applications to run on Windows and Mac OS desktops, for Linux. According to Adobe, the alpha version lacks some key features that will be available in the final product and only runs with Sun Java, not GNU Java. Adobe also released an alpha of Flex Builder for Linux Monday."

Adobe quoted as saying...

... "You think that's AIR you're breathing?"

How is AIR different from, say java?

Not meant as a troll, but it is hard to find an objective explanation of how AIR is going to fill a huge need or bake better bread.

also

Wow, something that is written in Java, runs on Linux. *CHEER*
Oh, well, it isn't compatible with GNU Java, but it runs on Linux *duh*

Shouldn't it be default that something written in Java runs on ALL platforms which got a JRE?

Re:also

The IcedTea (OpenJDK 7.0 + GnuClasspath) JRE/JDK is mostly complete, I've been running Eclipse on it for the past month without any issues.

Re:How is AIR different from, say java?

Not totally objective (see my sig), but I'll try. AIR makes it a lot easier for web developers to create apps on the desktop. You can write apps in either Flash, Flex (now open source [adobe.com]) or HTML and Javascript. While it's damn near impossible to create a UI in Java that doesn't look like a PoS (yeah, gross generalisation, but that's my experience), AIR makes it very easy. While stuff like Java Web Start never seemed to work smoothly, AIR integrates really well with web pages (you can do stuff like launch and install apps from the browser). I realise that much of these are benefits for the develop rather than the end user, but this obviously means that it will bring benefits to users in terms of the kind of apps developed.

Re:

That's more than a generalization, that's just incorrect. Java makes use of GUI Toolkits just like many other languages. Just this morning I was taking a look at Jambi [trolltech.com].

Re:

While it's damn near impossible to create a UI in Java that doesn't look like a PoS (yeah, gross generalisation, but that's my experience), AIR makes it very easy.

AIR is RAD for very easily making PoS interfaces? Or am I reading that wrong?

Re:How is AIR different from, say java?

Like Dashboard, Gadgets etc, it's easy to develop simple AIR apps. This obviously means that there are a lot of those sort of apps available. This doesn't mean they all are. I may humbly submit my app [clevr.com] as an example of a less basic one. It does panoramic image stitching, so has machine vision, image processing and that sort of stuff. Not the sort of thing you can do in Dashboard or Gadgets. Incidentally, I've released some of the image processing and maths stuff in our Actionscript library [riaforge.org]. It has support for bicubic and bilinear interpolation, histogram stretching, and a partial port of the JAMA matrix algebra library.

Flash! Ajax! Buzzword Central!

I once saw an elephant mother grieving over her dead calf. The calf had died due to thirst on the savannah and though the herd moved on to newer pastures, the mother elephant stayed with the dead calf until the mother too died of thirst, and I suppose sadness.

It was a terrible thing to watch. The emotional stress that the mother elephant went through was so tangible and human-like that I was really moved.

Kinda like I am with Adobe fans.

Re:Flash! Ajax! Buzzword Central!

There are Adobe fans?

Sure, but they turn into mud if they get wet.

First things first...

64-bit Flash!

Re:First things first...

And to every architecture, and to pretty much anything we want. That's why open standards exist -- or rather, why standards should be open.

What is AIR

For those of you who don't drink the Adobe kool-aid, a quick explanation.

AIR is a desktop runtime environment. You can run either Html/Javascript or Flash based applications inside it. AIR provides a few interesting features beyond HTML/Flash including:

1) File I/O
2) SQLLite Support
3) An integrated web browser (based on WebKit) that you can use inside applications.
4) A fairly good distribution mechanism
5) Desktop integration (OSX Dock icons, Win32 systray support, etc.)

It's a great technology if you're using Adobe products to make web applications and you want to branch into making desktop apps.

It's a great technology if you want to make a desktop app that may later become a web app and you want to share most of the code.

It's a horrible technology if you're a desktop developer who's looking for a different technology.

It's way more write-once run-anywhere than Java ever was.

It does not pick up the system's native UI widgets.

Re:

It's not a browser plugin. They are desktop apps, so it's not massively different from any other apps you download - i.e. only install them from sites that you trust. They all have to be signed by the developer (not by adobe, it's ok. you can use your own

Re:What is AIR

The notion of trust is nothing new. The basic question comes down to this, do you trust the code (or coders for the code that) you are about to run or not? If you don't, then don't run the code. If you do, then go ahead and run the code.

That question may be easy to ask but not so easy to answer. Maybe you trust the organization but there could be inadvertent security vulnerabilities in the code. Or maybe you don't know much about the organization who authored or published the application. How do you decide whether or not to trust the application?

In theory, open source mitigates this trust issue because you can study the code yourself. In practice, it's not so easy. First of all, access to the source code is immaterial to people who are not coders themselves. Second, it would take a lot of time and mind to study the code for a large project. Sure, any competent programmer could study and verify for his or herself that my open source project [sourceforge.net] can be trusted because it really isn't all that big. How can you be sure that Firefox [mozilla.com] doesn't have any malicious code in it?

One approach to this problem is to run programs in what is called a sandbox [wikipedia.org]. What that means is that the program isn't written in what is called the native "machine" code. Rather, it is written in a code for a virtual machine [wikipedia.org]. Every time that code makes an API call, the virtual machine checks to see if it is permitted from a security perspective. Applications that run in a sandbox don't get a lot of permissions. It is OK to run an application that you don't completely trust within the sandbox because the virtual machine is going to deny any requests that could compromise or take advantage of your system anyway.

That is why the complaint about ActiveX. Both ActiveX controls and Java applets run in a web browser. The Java applet has to run in the sandbox (unless it is signed but it is beyond the scope of this post to introduce PKI and X.509 certificates) but the ActiveX control never runs in a sandbox.

Later iterations of this sandbox concept allow the user more control over what the program can and cannot do. In .NET, this is called Code Access Security and in J2SE, this is called Java Security Policy. Before running an application, the user can specify what API calls that the application can and cannot call. The problem here is that this specification is not easy to tweak for mere mortals. When you just double click the application icon, you are running the application with whatever policy that the publishing company specified. So, you are back to trusting that company since there is nothing that keeps them from specifying a policy that is wide open.

I have no experience in AIR so I could not tell you whether or not that virtual machine implements any kind of policy control. Perhaps someone that is knowledgeable about AIR would care to clarify here?

Excellent news.

This is excellent news. We've never had the resources to port our panoramic image stitcher [clevr.com] to Linux, but as it's now an AIR app, this means we get it for free. I can finally use my own app on Ubuntu! Anyone who hasn't taken a look at AIR yet should seriously check it out, especially now that Flex is open source [adobe.com].

Adobe Loses to SWF

AIR doesn't come preinstalled, so it's just another piece of software people can choose to use, not an existing platform to target with content.

Meanwhile, the GNU implementation of SWF is GNASH [gnashdev.org], which just released a new version. GNASH is also not preinstalled, but it's in some ways superior to Adobe's Flash, while remaining compatible (with practically all features found in the wild, and adding the rest) - and free, including not adding DRM you don't want. And GNASH was announced to be part of the new KDE, so it will in fact be preinstalled on lots of Linux machines.

Re:Adobe Loses to SWF

If you install an AIR app, it can install the runtime at the same time. It's pretty transparent, and certainly better than stuff like the Java installer with Web Start. Also, if any company can build an install base it's Adobe. Look at the penetration of Flash.

And an Open "FLEX" Server

GNASH also includes a FOSS version of Adobe's proprietary FLEX media streaming server, that's compatible with Adobe's Flash players. Now that is a FOSS product that doesn't suffer from the "not preinstalled" problem, because it uses the preinstalled Adobe

Just don't plan on trying to hack AIR

Here's the final paragraph of the PC World version of the story [yahoo.com]. It points out something else I found interesting ...

Although the Linux Foundation hailed Adobe's arrival as "a natural extension of its commitment to open standards and open source," that commitment stops short of publishing source code for the Linux version of Air. Adobe's end-user license for the code explicitly forbids any attempt to "reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble or otherwise attempt to discover the source code of the software."

In other words, "We'll let you play in our sandbox, but don't try to figure out how we built our sandbox so you can build your own sandbox that looks just like our sandbox."

dont get too excited..

As someone who in the last 6 weeks has been currently developing a flex app for both AIR and the web... dont get too excited.
I am finding the Flex3 framework to be buggy as hell.

* I have been having constant crashes from Flex Builder (It is built on eclipse)
* The ui components are coded like dogshit. (i ended up coding custom elements in flash which are the tenth of the size, and work as intended)
* Some documented features dont work.
* I have spent alot of time figuring out work arounds/undocumented features.

sorry for the rant.. but the claim that it is easy to develop flex apps is bullshit.
I have been using flash since it was called FutureSplash, so after over 10 years of day in day out
developing and making bread with this tech, I think I can speak with some authority.

It seems to me that Adobe is glorifying their steps into open source.
I just have a funny feeling that it is not as good willed, as intended,
but just as a way to get their shit coded/fixed for free,then reimplemented
in their closed source upscale/addon technologies.

Which I might add, allows adobe to compete directly against the very developers
that buy into their software.

The flash format is a trap, careful

From the SWF and FLV File Format Specification and License [adobe.com]
-- This license does not permit the usage of the specification to create software which supports SWF file playback.

That's pathetic. Adobe is explicitly trying to control the _format_, while trying to convince (and confuse) people by releasing the runtime and SDK as open source. Which means they still retail all the control of closed-source software, without many people even being aware of it. Once (hopefully not) AIR or Flash becomes a widely accepted platform for applications, Adobe can easily ask people to pay up or do whatever.

These days, I get frustrated by the number of people who mention that Adobe is a major supported of open source, and get excited about it. Java may suck, but it sure is not a lock in.

Photoshop for Linux?

It may actually be possible to create a PDF viewer using AIR. It has some native support for the format, which means you may be able to create a lighter-weight app which uses this. Significantly, Adobe have said that they plan to move their apps gradually over to AIR, so this could mean that Photoshop and others may finally be available for Linux.

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"Adobe have said that they plan to move their apps gradually over to AIR"

Where did you hear that statement???

Re:

PDF is ISO standard now. Maybe you were living on another planet. I haven't use Adobe Reader is YEARS and I still read PDF files without any glitches on Linux.

Wrong battle dude.