Patrick Micka

This is my blog. There are many like it, but this one is mine.

HowTo: Twhirl in Ubuntu

May 18th, 2008 | Category: How To, Ubuntu

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

adobeair.png

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.

adobeair_twhirl.png

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


4 Comments so far

  1. nicobbg August 29th, 2008 4:34 pm

    Thanks for this post! very useful. It works on my Ubuntu Hardy, unfortunatly there is a problem with the window, there is a black frame around but I think it’s because of the transparency function under Gnome, it is not activated on my old computer.

  2. Patrick Micka September 9th, 2008 8:21 pm

    Right, you have to have Compiz enabled to utilize the transparency. You could use one of the darker themes perhaps, to minimize the black frame.

  3. Patrick Micka » Adobe AIR Runtime For Linux Comes Out Of Alpha September 18th, 2008 10:08 pm

    [...] 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 [...]

  4. Khalid December 9th, 2008 11:32 pm

    Many thanks for the instructions. They worked perfectly. I downloaded the version shown and then after installation performed an update. The auto update doesn’t appear to work, but if you download the file and then open with Air, it installs perfectly.

    Many thanks again. You got me out of a bind.

    Regards,

    Khalid.

Leave a reply