I’ve been using Alpha 1 of Flex Builder for Linux since it shipped back in October and it’s been working great! It’s great to see Alpha 2 out the door! More info here:
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flex/flexbuilder_linux/
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flex/flexbuilder_linux/releasenotes.html
Just a quick note to say how excited I am that Evolution will be getting a MAPI Connector! I’ve been using Evolution with Exchange since 2003. Thankfully it works - but for me it crashes quite often. So I’m really excited about the prospect of a better Exchange connector. Screen scraping is just too brittle and too slow. This should also improve offline support. Currently before I get on a plane I sync Outlook in VMWare. That works but I don’t care much for Outlook and VMWare is a killer on my battery life. With this improvement to Evolution and the improvements that are happening with the video drivers on Linux, things are shaping up for Linux on the Desktop. Could 2008 really be the year of Linux on the Desktop? Just kidding. I’ve been happily using Linux as my primary Desktop since like 1996. It isn’t without some annoyances and required maintenance. But neither is any other OS. And at least with Linux it’s easier to fix stuff myself.
I love vi. I’ve been doing Flex development on Linux for about three years - mostly with vi. But to be honest when building complex applications it is nice to have things like code hinting and integrated debugging. I’m sure you *could* make vi do that with Flex but I am not brave enough to attempt to figure that out. So I’m extremely excited that Adobe is releasing a version of Flex Builder for Linux! You can download Flex Builder for Linux from the labs.adobe.com site right now!
*\* WARNING - THIS IS TOTALLY UNSUPPORTED, UNENDORSED, AND A COMPLETE HACK **
I tried for a while to get the actual Adobe AIR runtime installed via wine on Linux. But I wasn’t able to get it to work. Then I realized that I don’t really need the whole runtime to just test my AIR applications. All I need is ADL - the testing tool for AIR applications. So I gave it a try on a Salesforce.com project I’m working on:
I am usually on Linux when I develop Flex applications and I recently discovered a cool trick that makes development even easier. Use Epiphany as the browser you run / test your applications in instead of Firefox. Here’s a few reasons:
If Epiphany crashes because your app goes crazy it doesn’t take your normal browser and all its sessions down with it.
Epiphany uses inotify or a file watch and automatically refreshes when your application changes. It saves quite a bit of time to have the application already loaded before I can even switch to my browser.
On Sunday I was in Portland for UbuntuLive. I had two sessions, one focused on what I call “The Irrelevant Operating System” and the other was about building cross-platform applications on Linux with Flex. This was the second Linux conference I’ve spoken at. I hope to speak at more because Linux has been an important part of my computing life. I was trying to remember when I first started using Linux. I think it was in 1993 around the Slackware 1.0 release. I’ve used Linux as my primary desktop pretty consistently since then. Today I use Gentoo and Ubuntu. It’s pretty exciting to see what Ubuntu is doing with Linux. They will continue to lead the way and bring Desktop Linux to many more people. It was a great conference and hanging out with some great people Sunday night at Kell’s Irish Pub in Portland was delightful.
There is a ton of great Flex and AIR events going on over the next few months. Here’s the run down of events I’ll be at:
The FREE Flex Camp is July 27th in San Francisco. This is going to be a great way to learn more about Flex. Spots are going fast so go register today! I’ll be at this event so hopefully I will get to meet some of you in person.
Long ago I remember the first Flash site I ever saw-spinning gears replaced typically boring site navigation and sound illuminated a previously silent web. My jaw dropped and I said to myself, “I want to build these kinds of websites!” After playing with Flash Professional for days, I realized that my mathematically inclined brain just could not output the kind of beauty that I began to see all over the Flash powered web. I gave up and resorted to building very ugly HTML interfaces. Not because I didn’t want them to look better but rather, it was just too much work and I lacked the skill.
I’m sitting in Caribou Coffee in Ann Arbor Michigan looking out at beautiful ice covered trees glistening in the sunlight. It’s Jan 17th 2007 and this day is going down in history! Today is the day Flash Player 9 was officially released for Linux! This is HUGE! The web allows anyone with a PC to engage with information and others. Flash has always pushed the limits of how that engagement happens, most recently with video. Even though many Desktop Linux users prefer free software, Adobe has still committed to making Flash work on Linux. I think this is noble. Do you see MS or Apple doing this with their platforms? By having Flash 9 for Linux, Desktop Linux is made all that much better. I have been using Linux as a desktop since ‘96 and without Flash I would be missing out on some pretty amazing stuff. Some will say “But Flash isn’t Open Source”. You are right. But if you don’t want to run proprietary software, rather than complain, go help Gnash. Ok, now that I’ve espoused my religious views, lets move on to the cool stuff!
I’ve heard it so many times… “Flash 9 doesn’t work on 64bit Linux” So when I loaded 64bit Gentoo Linux my new Merom based Intel Core 2 Duo, I really was expecting an adventure. Turns out that it was actually pretty uneventful. It worked first try without any problems and in only 2 commands. Here’s what I did..
First I added the net-www/netscape-flash package to /etc/portage/package.unmask
sudo vi /etc/portage/package.unmask
Then I emerged Flash 9 & the Netscape Plugin Wrapper