Adobe AIR, Tweetdeck and Twhirl on Linux

Google Fodder: If you want to run some of the latest, best and coolest Twitter clients, then you want to install Adobe AIR on your Linux system. AIR is Adobe's cross-platform application environment and in v1.5.1 it seems to work very well.

On top of AIR, you can install and run both Tweetdeck and Twhirl. Each has their advantages and I'm not going to address them in detail here. I just want you to know you can get them, you can install them easily (just allow Adobe AIR Installer to open the download, rather than save the file) and you can run them on Linux - 32-bit or 64-bit. 

The one caveat I have found so far is that running an AIR app (Tweetdeck or Twhirl) on 64-bit Ubuntu, will cause the Adobe Flash player for 64-bit Linux to crash. The Flash player is only available for 64-bit linux as an alpha version, so bugs are to be expected. YouTube mostly works OK for a while, but if you go to a site like Metacafe, your browser (Firefox, SeaMonkey - whatever) will crash instantly as it tries to load the Flash content on the home page.  This problem does not occur on 32-bit Linux. I've opened bug FP-1670 with bugs.adobe.com. 

The cropped screen capture in this post is of Twhirl 0.9 running on my 64-bit "Intrepid Ibex" Ubuntu 8.10 desktop.

Tweetdeck crashes Flash player

Google Fodder: On my 64-bit Ubuntu Linux 8.10, the latest (February 3rd file date) alpha 64-bit Adobe Flash Player for Linux will crash any browser (Firefox or SeaMonkey) if you access some embedded flash content while Tweetdeck is running. Tweetdeck (v0.22b) is an Adobe AIR app running on the 64-bit version of Adobe AIR for linux.

If Tweetdeck is NOT running, the Flash Player is stable....or at least a LOT more stable.

An example of content that crashes the Flash every time is: http://www.thedailyshow.com/index.jhtml

Plus simply opening www.metacafe.com will crash the Flash. The more Flash content there is on the page, the better the chance the Flash will crash.....and take the browser with it.

I've logged bug FP-1670 on the Adobe bug site.

Tweetdeck on 64bit Ubuntu linux

Google Fodder: Though Tweetdeck installs and runs fine on 32-bit Ubuntu Linux, on 64-bit Ubuntu Linux a few more steps are required to get 32-bit Tweetdeck to install and be a happy chappy.

The (easy) steps to follow are here: Easy TweetDeck in Ubuntu 64 bit

It took me about 5 minutes to execute these instructions and get Tweetdeck up and running.

Proof! :-) See the screenshot of Tweetdeck on my 64-bit Ubuntu Linux desktop. Click the image to see a 1024x819 version.