Adobe releases beta of AIR for Linux

Adobe has released a beta version of AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) for Linux. Previously, Linux users have had to make do with a rudimentary alpha version of Adobe's runtime environment. According to Adobe, the beta release should have approximately the same range of functionality as the Windows and Mac OS X versions that have already been released. The beta AIR includes support for full-screen mode, encrypted data storage, file type registration, keyboard shortcuts, and support for V4L2 webcams and printers. In contrast to its Mac and Windows counterparts, however, the Linux runtime still can't handle applications involving DRM. Installation on 64 bit Linux systems is also not supported.

AIR enables locally executed applications to be created using web techniques, by incorporating a Flash Player and an HTML/CSS/JavaScript renderer based on the WebKit engine. The beta version is officially supported on Ubuntu 7.10, Fedora Core 8 and OpenSuSE 10.3 and requires either Gnome (with the Metacity window manager) or KDE (with KWin) as a desktop environment. Support for transparency in AIR needs the composite, render and shape X server extensions, as well as a compositing manager such as Beryl, Compiz or Compiz-fusion. AIR uses the Firefox certificate store to store SSL certificates, and as such requires Firefox to have been installed and run at least once if AIR. More details of the requirements and differences are in the release notes.

(djwm)