Patrick Micka

Adobe AIR, the runtime environment I’ve written about before, has moved out of Alpha and into Beta. Expect apps to run more consistently with Windows and Mac.

Be sure to uninstall any previous releases of Adobe AIR before moving forward. This can be done in a number of ways depending on how it was initially installed.

Enter these commands to get the newest version (currently 1.1):

cd ~/Desktop

wget http://download.macromedia.com/pub/labs/air/linux/adobeair_linux_b1_091508.bin

Give the .bin file execution rights:

sudo chmod +x adobeair_linux_b1_091508.bin

Run the bin file to install/upgrade AIR:

sudo ./adobeair_linux_b1_091508.bin

Instead of keeping your browser pointed towards the Facebook web page, Pidgin users should take advantage of an open-source plugin which enables Facebook chat via the XMPP/Jabber protocol. Users can then chat with friends, view the online status of their friends, and set their status through the third party chat program.

To install the plugin follow these steps:

cd ~/Desktop

Download the .deb and .zip to your Desktop (one line):

wget http://pidgin-facebookchat.googlecode.com/files/pidgin-facebookchat-1.37.deb http://pidgin-facebookchat.googlecode.com/files/facebook_icons.zip

Extract the .deb file containing the plugin:

dpkg -x pidgin-facebookchat-1.37.deb ~/Desktop

You should notice a folder named usr on your desktop now. It contains a few .so files, however, you only need one for the plugin to function. Depending on what your system is running determines which of the three you need:

32-bit Linux users enter the following command to install the plugin:

sudo cp ~/Desktop/usr/lib/purple-2/libfacebook.so /usr/lib/purple-2/libfacebook.so

64-bit Linux users:

sudo cp ~/Desktop/usr/lib64/purple-2/libfacebook64.so /usr/lib64/purple-2/libfacebook64.so

Now, before starting Pidgin, you’ll need to install a few icons. Enter the following two commands to place the icons in the correct location:

cd /usr/share/pixmaps/pidgin/protocols

sudo unzip ~/Desktop/facebook_icons.zip

Fire up Pidgin and head to the Accounts window to enable your Facebook account. Enjoy.

Twhirl is a popular desktop twitter client based on the Adobe AIR platform. Unfortunately, up until recently, Linux users have been unable to easily install the application because an official AIR release was not available and running it through Wine took away much of the platforms appeal. However, Adobe Labs recently released an alpha version of the AIR platform for Linux. Follow these simple instructions to install it.

Download the bin file to your Desktop:

cd ~/Desktop

wget http://download.macromedia.com/pub/labs/air/linux/adobeair_linux_a1_033108.bin

Give the bin file execution rights:

chmod +x adobeair_linux_a1_033108.bin

Run the bin file to install AIR:

sudo ./adobeair_linux_a1_033108.bin

Note: If you receive the error “sudo: unable to execute ./adobeair_linux” or “sudo: ./adobeair_linux_a1_033108.bin: command not found” the terminal is telling you that the file is not executable, you may have incorrectly performed the previous command.

Once that’s installed, it’s time to get twhirl. As of this posting the twhirl website wont allow Linux users to click the “Get twhirl” link, simply displaying the message “Adobe AIR is not available for your system”. You can get around this by entering the following command in the terminal to download the file directly:

wget http://www.twhirl.org/files/twhirl-0.8.1.air

Be sure to modify the file name to fit the most current release of twhirl.

Next, right click the file and select the Open with “Adobe AIR Application Installer” option to run the installer. That should get everything installed. The screenshot below illustrates how well it integrates with the system.

One thing I noticed after installing was that it only displayed a generic icon when running. If you run into the same problem feel free to download and use an icon I created, which can be found here.

UPDATE:

The folder containing the stock icons was /opt/twhirl/icons