Unlike Flash, I like Adobe AIR. It looks promising. I especially like that there’s a Linux and Mac version.The BBC iPlayer is all the better for moving to the AIR platform, and I’m able to use the same version of Twhirl on any of my Windows/Mac/Linux machines.

However, I dont like Adobe’s lack of support in this area. For example, when downloading the Mac or Windows version, its quite obvious how you install the application. Its how you would normally install an application on those OS’s. On Linux though, it’s not so intuitive. As most Linux users have likely experienced, the usual way of installing applications can differ between distributions. Then there’s compilation from source, etc. For a major software company like Adobe, you’d think they would offer the AIR installer with at the very least, some installation instructions. No?

For those who are wondering, here is how I installed Adobe AIR on my Ubuntu 8.10 system:

Firstly, download the AIR installer from the Adobe site at http://get.adobe.com/air/

This will download a 12.9MB file named AdobeAIRInstaller.bin

Open a Terminal, and change your working directory to wherever you just saved the installer file. For example:

   cd Desktop

Issue the following commands in your Terminal window to first make the installer executable, and then execute (run) the installer:

   chmod +x AdobeAIRInstaller.bin
   ./AdobeAIRInstaller.bin

Simple? Absolutely. However, I remember being incredibly frustrated when I was relatively new to Linux, when simple tasks like this weren’t so obvious. How hard would it have been for Adobe to include that on their download page?