Way back in 1999 I predicted a significant market for desktop Linux by 2005. (I was targeting better than Mac OS type numbers, in the 10-15% range.) It was clear back then that Linux had found a substantial adoption as a server OS, and it seemed only time before the desktop adoption rivaled at least “the other desktop”.
Obviously I was wrong.
This is the current market share for Linux from Netmarketshare, who provide great insight into global market share of web technologies. While its never quite safe to read into statistics, I believe there is a correlation between shares of browser usage and desktop operating systems. It’s likely these days that desktop users are browsing the internet; it’s also likely that such activity is not reflective of server operating systems.
Now, let’s take a look at two other OS shares:
Obviously the trend line in both of these cases is climbing. Adobe has certainly noticed it, our customers and partners have noticed it, and I’d bet that if you write or sell software, you’ve noticed it. The market is shifting to a mobile client, increasingly focused on the delivery of rich experiences and applications that travel with us via phone or tablet.
So we, Adobe, also need to shift with the market. We need to focus our resources on the rapidly expanding markets like Android. we need to focus our resources on efforts around emerging web technologies as they become open standards. We are beginning to focus on delviering more open capabilities in technologies that will expand those markets, like jQuery (see jQuery blog and Adobe Edge newsletter) and CSS Regions (news on cnet and on Adobe Labs).
So, with Desktop Linux, we see a basically flat growth curve hovering around 1%. And since the release of AIR, we’ve seen only a 0.5% download share for desktop Linux.
For Android and IOS we see substantial growth in share, and see predictions that indicate that in the Mobile OS market, the Android share could be 46%, with iOS at 16% (IDC March 2011).
The official announcement can be found here: http://blogs.adobe.com/flashplayer/2011/06/adobe-air-and-linux-increasing-distribution-on-devices.html
So, with the 2.7 release of AIR, we made a decision to prioritize our resources towards a Linux porting kit for AIR, which our Open Screen Project partners can use to complete implementations of AIR for Linux-based platforms. As such, we will be focusing on supporting partner implementations and will no longer be releasing our own versions of Adobe AIR and the AIR SDK for desktop Linux.
But, to quote Jeffrey Hammond of Forrester, “There are already 100M Linux devices, it just so happens they’re running Android.”
This move will allow us to focus our platforms on the future of Linux clients – on mobile devices. Improving performance, expanding capabilities, cross-device compatibility, stability are things we think are necessary to drive the new Linux market.
And the new Linux client is where we and our customers and partners are focused.
So, basically, Adobe official stance on desktop Linux is “F*ck them”? Nice knowing that officially at least. Kind of figured that out already with the telling responses from the CS team*, the lack of a Reader X on Linux, and the continually second-class citizenship of the Flash player (especially the 64 bit one) for Linux, Adobe has all but said Linux isn’t worth their time.
Which is cool, a business has to do what a business has to do. Just don’t pretend you are doing us any favours.
* http://getsatisfaction.com/adobe/topics/produce_creative_suite_for_linux
And nothing of value was lost.
Godspeed, AIR, you won’t be missed.
Seconded. Surprised people really care.
well I do not care much about the Adobe Air Client on Linux.
But the decision not to release Adobe Reader X on Linux is really a big disappointment, because there are a lot of development & academic desktop hosts running Linux which needs a good pdf program.
The following is from the Acrobat team within Adobe. In short, not my words…
“Adobe currently offers more than 100 different versions of Adobe
Reader, including a range of new mobile platforms, such as Android, Windows
Mobile, Blackberry Tablet OS and more to come. We are extremely thorough
when it comes to testing how our product interacts within its environment,
both today, and in the future, especially when it comes to security. Our
goal is to protect the greatest number of end-users as expediently as
possible, which can mean tradeoffs when optimizing against less prevalent
architectures and platforms. Given our direction in supporting these new
platforms, we chose not to create a Reader X for Linux in our
latest version.”
It is Is below 1% because there is no 64-bit Adobe AIR.
You do not know how to even make 64-bit Adobe Flash, becouse last version is “Square” Preview Release from Nov 30, 2010.
Adobe still support 32 bit as a main architecture, this is prehistory!
I second this comment, getting air to work in a 64bit environment takes way too much time to even bother, in a fraction of the time I could run it in wine, or create a damn windows virtual desktop. All of which are a waste of time, and I’d rather spend that time finding a replacement app for that doesn’t require AIR. If they made a proper client for linux in the first place more people might consider using it.
I totally agree with you, most (99%) of the linux desktop I’ve installed for 3 years now ( about 1000 ! ) are 64 bits. the lack of support of adobe IS the problem, most users will refuse to install 40 to 100 packages for 1 application in 32 bits because Adobe don’t have foreseen the arrivals of 64 bits for 6 to 7 years from now in desktops.
Guy’s you’re using Linux in your offices – how I understand you use your own implementation, right !?
I was a flash/flex developer for ~4,5 years, working on Linux, all this time. You ported flash platform to iOS even if their god was against you. In linux you are welcomed, but you’re leaving us, because of market share, also because of market share of FlexBuilder you left us, even if a lot of people said that they will by your products.
This article is a low quality explanation of a bad thing… Sad, now I’m listening A-HA – Foot of the mountain, sad song, sad times..
So how long until Flash goes the same way? The 64-bit version is dead is it not? I guess it’s time to start using those Open Source alternatives then. Goodbye, Adobe. I’d say I’d miss you, but I’d be lying.
I have a many Linux desktops but no android phones….
Me too
I find this to be a bad (not the Michael Jackson sense of the word) move. Sure, changing the strategy according to trends, is a must, but I feel that this is not what Adobe Air is all about. Adobe Air – in my sense – is all about cross-platform application development.
Adobe Air is the only framework that can compete with Mono on being spread out on a broad range of devices. You can make apps/software for nearly anything with Mono. So you could with Adobe Air. Adobe Air is a great alternative for Mono and I know since I have written a handful of apps in both.
I really love that Mono and Adobe Air wrappes away the hardware and the operative system for me, so that I can focus on writing the best software possible without worrying on the comparability. It simply makes me do my magic.
Not all share the same view with me on this, but as the world evolves, we will soon see a change. This change will come when old software dies – when those apps and large enterprise solutions needs to be rewritten.
I believe that Adobe needs to keep the Linux client alive. If they don’t – Adobe Air will not be considered as a cross-plattform solution.
Guess I’ll be canceling my Pandora and NYTimes accounts which used Air.
interesting Article. I’m not surprised that AIR is barely downloaded for the Linux desktop. while it may be interesting technology, when i tried it out (probably 15-16 applications for AIR) i was less than impressed. AIR is much more suitable for mobile than Desktop usage – so i think this is probably a smart move…. I don’t think too many people in the linux community are going to miss having AIR on their desktop (if they even used it at all).
..one thing i would be curious about is what are the Adobe Flash download statistics for Linux?? It’s interesting that your view is that the Linux Desktop is stagnant, and yet i seem to know more and more people using Linux – either Dual-boot or as their main OS.
Also, the W3schools statistics a much higher than these statistics, somewhere around 5%. furthermore Wikipedia’s statistics on the subject are also much higher. In both cases, they are basing their statistics on browser / user agents / etc. there are other websites that have similar statistics…
like you said you can’t always trust statistics, they often aren’t on the money. So, it is interesting that you guys are using 1 set of statistics, rather than looking at other statistics as well. Being as both Microsoft and Apple are this sites partners, i tend to think their is a conflict of interest, as other sites that provide statistical information who are not partnered in this kind of situation – seem to suggest higher numbers for Linux desktop / browser usage…
interesting nonetheless..
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. Agreed that the numbers vary wildly all over the place, depending on your chosen study. And I only get to try and influence the decision; they aren’t my engineering resources .
However, we do have hard numbers for the AIR downloads. If we accept the larger market share numbers then the adoption from the Linux community is even worse.
thanks, for the reply Dave, – i was hoping you weren’t going to take any of my comments as insult, as they weren’t meant to be
yes, the adoption of AIR on the linux platform isn’t likely, no matter how you boil it down. We have other cross-platform development tools, that are open-source and much more popular…Linux developers are unlikely to drop them and use AIR instead – which is logical, right?
But if you look at Adobe Flash adoption in Linux (not that you can easily, as distros/package manager’s handle this – not Adobe). I think you would probably find that 90% of all desktop linux users are using Flash – which is significant (Ubuntu itself has over 12 million users and they are only 1 distro, and also happen to be the distro noob’s start off with, but then often move to other distro’s like Fedora or Arch).
So, i expect the number of Flash users in Linux is actually a pretty big number.
I think many users are starting to feel that Adobe is Anti-Linux (which i don’t necessarily believe) but i hope in the future Adobe plans to give Gnu/Linux a little more love, as i suspect the user-base is higher than 1% – and will continue to grow.
The Linux Desktop is getting better all the time, and there will be a tipping point. Probably not until Wayland becomes standard, things like audio frameworks are fixed 100%, and the work is being done right now, for proper color management and other long standing issues that make it hard for companies to port, which out having ‘real’ standards. (as we all know, linux development can be a little fragmented).
I just hope Adobe realizes there is a lot of potential with Linux.
cheerz
Nope, nothing personal taken. The decision was an Adobe position and while I can influence, the resources and decision are not mine to make.
I can also state that should the market dynamics change, Adobe will re-examine this decision.
of course it’s not your decision to make – it’s the “higher ups” in the company.
I have thought of an interesting idea (that may not be original) that could help with tracking not only Adobe but all proprietary software usage in Linux distros.
Ubuntu has a technology called “popcorn”, that can track software downloads. however, it is not a default and must be turned on (which essentially makes the software useless, and to enable it – the user must jump through a few hoops too).
my thinking is that Linux users DO want some proprietary software and are willing to pay for it. ie: i own VMware, i own Maya2011 (not cheap, by any standard) i own Adobe CS5 – which i run either in OSX or VMware, and i am mostly a Linux user….so that being said, clearly FOSS doesn’t mean cheap or free, right?
anyway, the idea would be to convince distributions to use a tracker and provide the data to parties like the company you work for, so that everyone has a clear understanding of the real numbers. Maybe Canonical can be convinced to make ‘popcorn’ a default. – I personally do not see a problem, it’s not as if the end-user will suffer or have additional over-head or anything…
I think it would be great for companies like adobe to know truly what their user-base is, rather than focusing on statistics that may or may not be true…
what do you think of this idea? (and what do you think Adobe would think of this kind of initative???)
i’m going to purpose the idea in the ArchLinux forums (my Distro of choice), plus, we have a good community – many of which contribute to other distro’s like ubuntu…so, if a few of the right people (in any distro) were inspired maybe something like this could be a reality…
i tend to think it would not only be good for the open-source community, but also any companies invloved…
One key thing to note for Linux downloads is that so far, the Flash player for Linux has always had some issues with all drivers but the NVidia proprietary. This is a major source of contention for Linux users, and if that is resolved (as Catalyst is getting better often and Radeon and Radeonhd are both acceptable-quality drivers) then AIR would get significant use. Also, if Adobe Reader usage seemed low, the primary reason for this was the lack of an option to not automatically open the file in the browser. A simple option whether or not to open in the browser would bring many users of OSS readers to jump over.
Okay. So… if I want to run an app developed in Air, I can’t. Nice. I feel bad for any of my fellow developers who fell for that.
Regretfully, I cannot trust Adobe’s tools to be cross platform from here on out. I am certain you are correct on desktop adoption; the problem is, you have also just pissed away any trust you might have.
It isn’t true that proprietary solutions cannot be trusted in the abstract; it’s true only that they cannot be trusted when from Adobe. I will keep this in mind across your range of products.
The reason Linux adoption is paltry is because of lack of vendor support. I would switch to Linux right now if it supported Photoshop.
I can believe that Adobe even considers those stats as real, anyway, if they focus more effort in linux that windows, that is twice the work, they’ll get better stats, SHAME ON YOU ADOBE, but as averything linux, we won’t miss you, why cause linux find it way, this makes no bad impact on linux as it does on adobe.
and just so you “KNOW” Android IS LINUX
In fact, that is the thrust of this, and also in an earlier blog posting. We could discuss the openness of Android, but it’s clearly the new Linux Distro.
Dave, Android isn’t a Gnu/Linux distribution. it’s a platform made for tablets and smartphones that uses the Linux kernel, with some open-source components..
you’re never going to see it on People’s Laptops or Desktop computing. nor, will it have some of the types of applications found in Desktop computing…
Android is awesome, but it’s not a distribution of Linux – Like Ubuntu, Arch, Fedora, gentoo, etc…that’s just silly!
While I tend to agree with you, desktops are not equal to tablets/phones, the direction we are hearing from customers and partners is to focus on those environments. I haven’t had a chance to see the new chromebook, but that might give us an indication of longevity and direction. After all, would we really have expected to see Linux a major force in servers 20 years ago?
true enough. but tablets and phones are the trend right now. People tend to be so impressed by things like multi-touch, that they don’t even see the down-sides (4 example, imagine trying to do professional graphic design in CS5 with your fingers?? ya, right – i say this because i have been using multi-touch for a few years, and while it is handy for some stuff, it is also very impractical for the majority of applications).
but i do agree the focus should be on these emerging technologies, as they need some TLC to develop properly, to have widespread adoption, and also profitable.
but desktops and laptops aren’t going anywhere – tablets and phones have a different application and are often used in conjunction with PC’s (PC’s will always be more powerful, by form factor alone).
..and no, i wouldn’t havew thought 20 years ago that linux would be as successful as it has become in the server market. but at the same time, i did see some potential in Linux’ early days of using linux in a server environment over using Microsoft
While phones are the trend, one up and coming platform is Intel’s MeeGo. If you’re going to claim you are supporting mobile Linux, that is as pure of mobile Linux as you can get. Therefore you should support QT, and by supporting Qt you might as well support desktop Linux.
Android is a Java platform. You’re running a runtime through a runtime on top of Linux. If you are creating the proper app for Android using native code instead of Dalvik, most of the tools available are cross-compatible with Linux.
While I personally agree, the issue round market penetration and widespread device availability is also important. Intel is a member of the Open Screen Project, so I have expectations that you’ll see something exciting soon.
Well, i never really wanted to use another adobe-product, adobe air won’t be missed IMHO, flash is also almost obsolete – thank you, html5
Only releasing 32bit implementations of Flash and AIR and then remarking on poor adoption can be compared to releasing only Sparc Linux implementations. Most Windows users are still on 32bit. Most Linux users are 64bit architectures.
This is pretty terrible market research/reasoning for what I’d expect from a company like Adobe.
And I’ll keep pushing internally for the solid release of Flash Player 64b Linux.
that would make you a personal hero of mine(still dislike Adobe in general, though).
I know I won’t get an answer, but is there anything you can say as to why 64-bit flash (on all platforms, really) doesn’t get as much love? Is it technical, or is Adobe in the mindset that this “64bit thing” will never take off? Even Win 64 is booming compared to just 2 years ago. I just can’t grasp why it is so difficult.
(of course, this is the same company with flash built into a document reader(!), so it isn’t that hard to understand)
Adobe has committed to getting a 64-bit version of Flash out with Flash Player 11. My understanding is that it is a technical issue, as Flash uses licensed code and codex that have not been available in 64-bit. Also while there has been a surge in 64-bit computers, the majority still use 32-bit browsers. Even on 64-bit Windows, the default browser is the 32-bit version of Internet Explorer and uses have to dig to find the 64-bit version and specifically pick it for it to work.
What browser vendors should really be doing is bridging the gap so that users can use 32-bit plugins in 64-bit browsers. Because even when Adobe moves Flash over to 64-bit, there are still a lot of plugins that haven’t and likely will never make the jump.
While I dig into this, please go add your voice on the “Square” forums at http://forums.adobe.com/community/labs/flashplatformruntimes/square64bit
Still the basic x86 flashplayer ( and myriads of derived “enhanced” derivatives
that every websited has a dire need to foist on visitors)
is the single piece of software that seems incapable of playing nice
with other apps and user input on Linux/X11.
The same actually goes for Adobe’s own pdf-viewer. Every other available
pdf-viewer is preferable.
Only difference : non linux platforms have less or no choice.
Android goes in that (lack of choice) direction too as most users expect
an appliance and thus tend to live with the provided framework.
Yes, i have yet to come across an Adobe AIR developer. I am sure you won’t be missed. Sounds pretty harsh but, its true. HTML5 is here and we are glad for it.
I’ve made Adobe AIR apps, so now you know of one.
Yes, HTML5 is here and some use HTML5 apps using Adobe AIR. It’s not all about making Flash based apps. Sometimes it’s about mixing the two technologies.
Although I’ve more seen AIR being used for mobile, it’s always been great to be able to make a desktop version of that same app. Even if there were few Linux users, having that option there made AIR more appealing business case.
Have you guys even seen Unity?
With the release of Ubuntu 11.04, the future for Linux desktop has never been brighter. And I say that after having just switched from a decade + of Windows to full time Ubuntu TODAY.
You guys are horrible at evaluating trends.
And you have failed to adapt your platform strategy to fit today’s business environment. Virtual platforms like AIR and Flash are doomed when they are subject to the iron fist of Microsoft, Apple, and Google.
Adobe should have been embracing true open source Linux (not fake open source Google-Linux) with all of it’s might… because it was the only viable hardware destination for its dissipating developer base.
I tried AdobeAIR on a 64-bit Linux desktop. It was slow and heavy so I removed it. As CIO, I’ve specified that AIR not be installed on any of our machines regardless of OS and we advise our clients of the issues with AIR. The same applies to Silverslight. We won’t install it here and recommend that our clients do not too. I would remove Flash if there weren’t a revolt and I’ve already removed Adobe Acrobat from all our systems. We use alternatives with better security (or just fewer attackers). Adobe management doesn’t seem to understand how to build software that can be secure. They certainly haven’t shown a desire to do this.
Going forward, we and many other companies will be deploying solutions that support open standards, not proprietary, walled-off, gardens. Adobe needs to embrace these standards to survive. Sorry Adobe, you created/bought many great tools, but you are becoming more and more irrelevant.
I’m using Ubuntu, Win7 and OSX. I’ve got exactly one Air application installed (on Ubuntu) and that is Balsamiq Mockup. What can I say – the Air user experience really sucks. The user-experience would be much better if that app had be done in something like Qt or WxWidgets.
I do miss Photoshop and Illustrator though.
It’s worth factoring into your numbers (which I think show desktop Linux is much the same as the up and coming mobile platforms which may or may not all be around in two years) that a Linux AIR developer could be supporting any number of other users of your product on any of the many supported platforms. I know I’d much rather work on Linux than Windows given a fair choice. I may even force that choice by only using technology that does run on Linux :-}
I am in the same position. I have been developing software in Flex/AIR on Linux for 2 years now, and I have established a very nice workflow. The thought of having to develop on Windows now is rather frustrating. Especially since I have an app for the BlackBerry PlayBook that I was hoping to update to AIR 2.7. That’s going to be a challenge now in Windows, since I have already setup my system with all of the signing keys, etc.
I really enjoyed the process of creating software using AIR in Linux. Looks like Adobe is going to lose my support. And to think just a few days ago I was evangelizing how great it is to use AIR, because you can develop on any system and deploy to practically anything. Now I feel embarrassed.
>”As such, we will be focusing on supporting partner implementations and will no longer be releasing our own versions of Adobe AIR and the AIR SDK for desktop Linux.”
WTF? Really? I think REAL cross-platform compatibility is one of the great things about AIR. Actually, AIR + Aptana support on Linux is what made me learn AIR.
Really shooting yourself (and your developers) in the foot with this move, guys. Yeah, sure, linux doesn’t have the USER base that mobile has, but mobile doesn’t have ANY developer base…think about that one for a bit.
I just bought Balsamiq Mockups, a commercial app that requires Air. All of my workstations are Linux.
This makes me very unhappy.
I just want to emphasize two points others have made:
1. 64-bit 64-bit 64-bit. Linux users need 64-bit software. Otherwise they’re not as likely to download it, since Linux distributions tend not to support 32-on-64 very cleanly.
2. Developers. Face it, most Linux desktop users are developers. And conversely, a disproportionate share of developers do their development on Linux. Which means that if a development platform is unavailable on Linux, you’re cutting out a lot of potential developers for that platform, in turn hindering the popularity of that platform.
I’m not familiar with this Open Screen Project; I can only hope (well, for the sake of Adobe and AIR) it means that Linux distributions will be able to provide AIR in a way that fits in with the Linux system much better than Adobe has ever been able to do.
Also: What’s with the lack of Y-axis labels on the Android graph?
Jump to the web site. The image does not include the Y axis. (not sure why). This was not deliberate, at least on my part.
I switched from Win to Mac to Ubuntu. Not good. Cross platform talk goes flying out of the window.
Too bad. Adobe AIR is one of the things which allow cross-platform development across mac, windows and linux platforms. We were in the process of developing a desktop application for a project that should have run on all platforms, now you’re just dropping us.
It’s a shame that Adobe have made a short sighted bean counter decision on the support for AIR on Linux. Looking at the numbers it’s quite a simple and obvious decision, but looking deeper than then numbers then it’s not.
- a high percentage of Linux users are technology influencers (eg developers/power users)
– Supporting Linux officially put AIR a notch higher than Silverlight which has only unofficial support for Linux.
- AIR on Linux was not as polished as AIR on Win/Mac so to have gotten 2.25 million (0.5% of 450 million) installs is good.
- It’s all about the apps. People don’t install AIR for the sake of it. They install it to use Balsamiq Mockups, Tweetdeck, Yammer.
- AIR provides a simple way for companies to support Win/Mac/Linux with a single codebase, and by closing off the simple support of Linux for these companies it makes the AIR platform less attractive.
I hope that Adobe reconsider this, or actively support development of the Open Screen Project – and get some Linux distributions involved.
As disingenuous as it is to extrapolate netmarketshare data to desktop GNU/Linux use (sites like w3schools and Wikipedia show around a 5% share), your statistics still reveal a significant truth about existing use of AIR on that platform.
If only 0.5% of AIR downloads are of the GNU/Linux client, it doesn’t (as you imply) suggest that Linux is somehow an even smaller market — your (dubious) “1%” is not affected by the 0.5% figure at all — it suggests that you have disproportionately failed to convince GNU/Linux users of the benefits of your platform. As (up until this point, at least) AIR applications were cross-platform, and integrated equally poorly with all operating systems, the only differentiator between AIR on Windows, Mac and Linux is the method of delivery.
An astute analysis would identify Adobe’s below-industry-standard packaging as the real issue in those numbers, and this would come as no surprise to anyone familiar with your company’s history of providing software for OSS platforms. AIR is, in part, marketed as a solution to complicated installation procedures facing users of traditional desktop software, but installing the framework on GNU/Linux in the first place is appreciably harder than installing normal programmes. GNU/Linux package management was first conceived in 1993 (in pms, nearly two decades ago), and is now an inescapable and desirable part of software installation on that platform, but Adobe continues to believe that “Linux support” can be achieved by dumping a tarball online. Similarly, 64-bit CPUs were invented in the 1970s, but Adobe has yet to make a serious effort (apart from, bizarrely, with their Creative Suite on Windows) to maintain the small modifications and minor infrastructure to provide native 64-bit versions of its software.
Desktop GNU/Linux may not be growing as fast as you’d predicted (at least by your flawed metrics), but it’s not going away. Whilst this blog post clearly signifies your decision regarding GNU/Linux support for AIR 2.7 being past the point of no return, I would urge you to take careful note of the lessons of your failed experiment, and make a less perfunctory effort towards open platform development in future.
@Dave McAllister
Hi Dave, while am not too happy, i can understand this decision.
But, anyway, I wonder if we will still be able to use AIR with WINE?
Am a paying customer of various services that use AIR (pandora, dofus 2.0, etc) and am sure those companies (and the customers) will not be happy with adobe in the short term.
so if you place some resources for AIR apps to work well in WINE at least, will surely help avoid some headaches for us all (even you guys) and make the transition not so traumatic.
Thanks.
Protip: uptake might have been better if it worked.
Way back in 2009 I predicted a significant market for Adobe Air by 2011. (I was targeting better than Mozilla type numbers, in the 10-15% range.) It was clear back then that Adobe Flash had found a substantial adoption as a browser plugin, and it seemed only time before the Adobe Air adoption rivaled at least “the other plugin”.
Obviously I was wrong.
The market is shifting to HTML5, increasingly focused on the delivery of rich experiences and applications via standards-compatible technology.
So you, Adobe, also need to shift with the market. You need to cancel the failed Adobe Air product. You need to invest in a business that’s growing, not one that’s a failed relic of the pre-HTML5 days.
I didn’t really understand what you meant by a Linux porting kit.
I have an existing application developed in AIR. How long will Linux users be able to run it for? Or is there some additional steps I should be taking to keep it working on Linux?
It’s better to ask this directly of the Flash and AIR teams in the official announcement at http://blogs.adobe.com/flashplayer/2011/06/adobe-air-and-linux-increasing-distribution-on-devices.html
actually, the official announcement was yesterday as well. And this blog came out yesterday.
Check the official message on http://blogs.adobe.com/flashplayer/2011/06/adobe-air-and-linux-increasing-distribution-on-devices.html
so what? how long did you (adobe) know this? i doubt the decision was made yesterday.
thrust in adobe is below zero now.
While I understand the reasoning, it just confirms my decision to stop any Flex/Flash/Air development at our company. We liked the features Air provided, but not at any price. Being cross-platform was and still is essential (for us).
Android, while being an interesting platform in its own right, isn’t a substitute for Linux on the desktop.
Either way, I think it’s good you come out and make things clear – because a half-hearted badly supported version of Air would in a sense be worse.
I am a developer, and I use Linux for most of my development work. More reliable than Windows, more customizable than a Mac. Makes me more productive… Obviously, I am not the only one who feels that way.
I am more likely to dabble with a technology if it’s available on my platform. And yes, I did fuss with AIR for a bit to see what it was all about, and recommended to people that they consider it for their projects, Another case in point–Java FX 2 is a big yawn right now because the beta is Windows only. I am not going to recommend it to anyone until it is actually cross-platform.
Yes, I realize it is a hassle to develop for Linux, but really, how many developers did you have for the port? Three? Five? Consider it a marketing cost, to reach the hearts and minds of people who often have some credibility and influence in the developer community.
Rinse and repeat:
64-bit is the priority.
Was 64-bit flash, aka Square already abandoned?
Running 32-bit version via ia32libs is a bad kludge, but the only option now that you don’t provide a native version without all the bugs and vulns.
Actually, do we even need flash anymore?
I’m very disappointed in this news. For me, Actionscript and AIR epitomises the cross-platform spirit. I felt secure in knowing that my applications will find audience anywhere.
Losing the Linux crowd was definitely not acceptable. I have to re-evaluate my options for Python and Java.
Its a shame that this decision has been taken.
And in the right moment that Adobe AIR is the next universal vm, i mean you have a vm that works on windows, mac, linux, ios and android.
That’s appealing!! I was exploring it to use for a desktop app, i know it’s hard to build an application, but we are talking that the effort would deserve it because we could develop on any platform.
What would happen to the AIR for Meego that intel was promoting?
Adobe Air is an incredible pain to install, at least on Fedora 13 64bit. But I braved through it because I want the Pandora client. So going forward I guess I need to choose between using Pandora (because using it in the browser is simply not workable long term) and using my desktop. I only have one desktop computer and it only has one OS on it.
Why does Adobe insist on alienating Linux users? Do they think that Linux users exist in a bubble?
Goodbye FLASH. Hello HTML5!
This is a BLACK day.
I had faith in Adobe, as THE ONE company who understood the wish of THEIR developers, and fully understood the benefits to create CROSS PLATFORM applications. I loved Adobe for that. Developing cross-platform, including Linux, was my motivation to specialize in Flex.
Now THIS?
so…
decisions. Should I drop Adobe too, and convince others with this loud & clear motive provided by Adobe self?
Or put faith in companies like MultidMedia.com, who understood what Adobe was missing in the first place?
Bad move, Adobe
Flash needs a JIT for the ActionScript VM to have reasonable performance. If originally built with 32bit only in mind, a JIT can be hard to port to 64bit. It’d be easier to port it from x86 to ARM than from x86 to x86_64 if bad decisions were taken during its development.
Of course, Adobe have had plenty of time to fix this, and they could’ve used some of Mozilla’s work on their JS JIT (since it’s a derivative). I suspect they haven’t bothered because Windows 64bit adoption has been extremely low, and even now most software run on Win64 is still 32bit.
While I dig into this, please go add your voice on the “Square” forums at http://forums.adobe.com/community/labs/flashplatformruntimes/square64bit
extremely bad decision. i had just decided to switch to adobe air (and flex) for desktop UI. God saved me that i had not ported all my code to air yet.
now, air is not a cross platform desktop technology to begin with, why should i target it for any unique advantage when compared with any other ui framework, its just one in the crowd of other non-cross platform desktop ui frameworks.
back to Eclipse RCP.
goodbye adobe AIR, we will not miss you.
I think this is big mistake, we do ship quite a few air products to a lot of customers based on the premisses of portability, (linux, win, etc) a lot of times due to corporate policies we dont “download” air directly from the website but instead we use the installer.
Do this means that i have to say my customers that no innovation on their existing installed products on linux machines will be done?
how much does it cost to continue to develop air for linux? we can help to doit, open source it, whatever.
No other platform give us as much freedom than linux, (android doesnt cut it) so this means we have to start shipping embbeded devices using windows? this sucks, you lunched a product based on the cross-plattform premmise, you should honored it, even if it means to have a subset of features, it shoud not be that difficult when you alredy are producing flash player for linux, or is it going to be droped too?
i had created few Adobe AIR apps on my ONE LINUX machine as development machine (in the role of developer) and later MANY of my friends were using it on their WINDOWS machines(as a desktop user) .
if i could not have capability to create and run adobe air on “one” linux machine, then other would not have used it for “many” windows machines. linux desktop is a developer platform also, and you are just annoying the developers who have/would have used your platform on small number of linux desktops in a big way to produce apps for lots and lots of windows machines.
So your counting of linux usage of AIR app is itself buggy.
you are now out of lots of developer mindshare/futuristic developer base.
you have lost all of us as potential cross platform AIR developers .
again, good bye Adobe AIR, we will now never miss you .
now what is the advantage of air/flex over silverlight, now that you have married windows only.
atleast sliverlight will not ditch its own loyal developer base (with clear Windows only mindshare for silverlight) suddenly and unilaterly.
again, good bye Adobe AIR, we will now never miss you .
we feel ditched.
To be perfectly honest, I never used Air. Perhaps if it was actually *good* then more of the Gnu/Linux market would use it.
Anyway, for the other people that use it (probably for cross-platform things) then this is kinda a huge loss. Sure, theres less than 1%, but lets think how many people that is. I think i read somewhere the number of people with a computer is around 2,100,000,000. Yeah. What’s 1%? Thats 21,000,000 people you are cutting off. A “Linux porting kit?” I’m sure everyone knows how to use one of those. Besides, Linux is the kernel, not the operating system. I’d like to see someone run Adobe Air on nothing but the kernel.
Has adobe done any *other* research? All the time, new computers are coming out with different Gnu/Linux operating systems on them. 3 came out the other week. A year ago, you really had to look hard. Is that not improvement? Yes, its slow, but having applications like Adobe Air will help the newbies get their feet when switching to Gnu/Linux. Which, in tern, increases the number of people who potentially will download Adobe Air.
If you want to do something useful, make Adobe Air open-source, and leave it to the public (like Google did to Google Wave).
As was pointed out to me, the 0.5% number for downloads fo AIR for Linux is over the entire lifetime… Not sure how many repeat downloads. And as always, I do work to release technology as open source, just not always with success. (But I will continue pushing it).
Adobe should not be in our landscape in a near future because Adobe wants to kill itself.
I hope it will be soon, then saving our money.
Bonjour, les sources de air pour linux seront ‘elle disponible en open-sources ?
De plus adobe prévoie t’il une alternative pour les développeur qui on investi du temps sur Air linux ? Une solution efficace pour porter les applis air en java par exemple ?
Pour ceux qui sont veules, il existe un projet open source qui pourrait prendre la suite : http://code.google.com/p/redtamarin/
AIR is not completely dead on Linux as AIR 2.6 SDK and runtime are still available
ok they will not be updated, but technically nothing prevent a developer to still target Linux with AIR
Also for Linux development with the Flash Player VM, you can reuse the open source project Tamarin
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/tamarin/
I work on a small open source project called RedTamarin which extends Tamarin with FileSystem, Socket, etc. API
http://code.google.com/p/redtamarin/
ok, there is no GUI like you could have with AIR, but it still allow you to do a lot on Linux, especially if you target the server side (running AS3 as CGI, as bash script etc.)
just sayin’ that if you look a bit beyond the default Adobe SDK and tools you can find other stuff running perfectly well on Linux, but who is really interested in that ? very few imho.
I started learning flex in the past 9 months to create cross platform desktop application in linux .
I also started to create a plan for my works to move to flex development .
I can understand why there is no Flash builder in linux because we have alternative .
But how now we suppose to run our product in the system we use !!
Now it feel like a slap in the face .
Why do not focus on increasing Linux user instead off screwing them all !!
How i should now use or develop the flex project in Linux ?
Do not you see that more flex and air developer in linux mean more air user in linux ?
you put a bullet in my face !
AFAIK, the 64 bit version of Flash is going to become mainstream from Flash Player 11 onwards.
So seeing some of the comments here, why not keeping AIR for Linux until Flash Player 11 is released and see if the new support brings better numbers with it?
This is a pretty big blow to me as developer who primarily works on Linux. We often develop internal applications and utilities as part of larger projects & we choose AIR specifically for its compatibility across operating systems. Team members use all 3 major OS’s, and its been the best way to make accessible apps. Developers are often tied to Linux due to other technologies, so its not just a simple choice as going where AIR is. Very disappointing.
As Linux user I do not care, Adobe AIR did not add any thing to Linux .
I’m surprised it took you this long to realize no one takes desktop Linux seriously. The Linux platform is a joke, and the sooner this delusion that Linux is bound to conquer the desktop someday dies, the better.
I’m not sure why you were pretending in the first place that there was “Air for Linux” as it was unusable on any 64bit distribution. It’s like saying that you are supporting Windows even though the installer fails on any Windows Vista or Windows 7 system.
I’m looking forward to see Windows and OSX versions of Air to be dropped soon as well. Hopefully in the upcoming years we can turn into more open technologies such as Mozilla Chromeless.
You have predicted no significant market for Apple Mac OS before. Then stopped developing for them. Focused on Windows. But they kicked you out. You are repeating the history again with Linux.
good call from adobe
“cross-device compatibility” – didn’t take long did it?
I’ve been Flex developer for over 5 years now [before it was of the shelf product]. I use Linux on daily basis. FlexBuilder is using Open Source Eclipse which is Java based. Am I thick here or can someone explain to me how extraordinary is the effort that is so unbearable for Adobe to handle to run Java based application on Linux? This is a book example how big corporations support open source, take all the goodness and screw everybody after they drink all the cream. If they don’t want my licence money (which is not peanuts), I go somewhere where I will feel appreciated.
Has anybody who ever used Mac looked under the hood? It’s Unix based, so it is closer to Linux then to Window$. How do the justify that? They don’t support Linux but produce code for Mac? On top of that Java makes the whole SDK system agnostic any way.
[Language removed] You will not see my money any more. I am very sorry that our relationship was platonic.
really i don’t know why adobe did it ..
no Photoshop , No All Adobe Collection CS5 .. and then No Adobe Air ..
we are a client for Adobe and hope to port her Programs to Linux not the [language removed] Windows Or Mac OS ..
we are an IT Company make a lot Of Project With Adobe Air For Linux and Windows And Android .. but now i will ask my Developers to Stop Using It .. and look for new Cross-Platform
i hope you will kill this decision .. and will take a new good step to support linux more and more ..
Regards
Please note that this is not the formal announcement nor the direct connect to the decision team. Please make sure to state your concerns to the http://blogs.adobe.com/flashplayer posting.
This was a last drop. I do not know why Adobe hate Linux so much (no Creative Suite, outdated Adobe Flash Player, no Flash/Flex IDE and now dropping what left). Sad story of interesting close-to-cross-platform. This finally forced me (and our company) to move more to more open technology. RIP Cross-Platform AIR
Linux is an irrelevant desktop platform. It has nothing to do with hate, and it has nothing to do with Adobe.
Someone else is just going to end up doing what you do not Adobe. Way to miss the boat with your shortsightedness.
this is very sad news indeed.. I had just started learning flex to develop an AIR application because of its cross-platform capabilities…
I do hope Adobe will reconsider
I hate to ask, but isn’t Adobe becoming ill-relevant itself these days. I think the world is ready to move onto a non-proprietary web experience where browser plugins and runtime environments controlled by short sighted companies who attempt to lock users into specific platforms (hence Windows and sometimes Mac) become a non-issue. I for one am looking forward to a day where I never have to install another browser plugin ever (yes, I’m talking about you Flash Player)!
When all becomes standard, designers and developers tends to seek new ways to stand out. By that fact, there will always be room for proprietary plug-ins. I don’t see Flash gone in a foreseeable future.
I am sure Adobe will reconsider when the year of the Linux Desktop happens.
Of course Windows has more downloads of AIR, because Adobe bundled it with Acrobat
Reader Installs, much to many peoples chagrin. So most Windows install are from people who probably don’t even know they have AIR installed and aren’t using AIR.
Considering how hard it is to get AIR for linux, anyone who installed it is probably using it.
What’s funny, is that Linux must have way more than 1% of desktop market, if they actually account for .5% of your downloads, which should be obvious to anyone with a brain. Air is hard to find and difficult to install on linux, whereas on Windows, Adobe forces you to install it with Reader, yet somehow you still get .5% from linux. I would say probably only a tiny percentage of linux desktop users use AIR, as there aren’t really any worthwhile apps, it has poor performance and is hard to install. I would guess that this is clear evidence that Linux probably makes up at least 5% of the desktop market.
just a clarification. The 0.5% is over the lifetime of all downloads, from v1 to v2.6. So while the argument on the windows side has some validity, the fact that the Linux space (as hard as it is; I’m not in charge here) is 0.5 over the lifetime is still an issue
So bad, FlashBuilder, then AIR…. really hard for us, we are developpers, and we build flex4 and air product under linux.
The reason the market never grows for Linux is because its so impossible to install Adobe AIR and get it to work on AMD64! There’s a huge amount of people (including myself) running 64 bit distros and Adobe Air is a pain to install natively. Really disappointed.