Installing Adobe Air on Ubuntu Jaunty 64-bit

Posted by on April 5, 2009 in the Ubuntu category.

I just finished installing Adobe Air on my Ubuntu Linux desktop running a fresh install of the Jaunty 64-bit beta. It was a lot more straightforward than the instructions that Adobe provided here. I found that in my installation of Jaunty, all of the libs that that have you manually download and extract in that article were already present on my machine.

Before we go on, I should note that I had the ubuntu-restricted-extras package installed before I began installing Adobe Air. That package includes the Flash player, but I'm not 100% sure it is needed before installing Air.

UPDATE: According to Antitezo below, the lib32nss-mdns package is needed in order for Air apps to access the internet. I didn't experience this issue because I had unknowingly already picked up this package at some point before going through this process.

First, I went to the http://get.adobe.com/air/ site, and it automatically detected that I was running Linux. I downloaded the .bin file, and then from the terminal I added execution privelages to the file.

chmod +x AdobeAIRInstaller.bin

Since my installation of Jaunty included all the libraries that the Adobe knowledge base article was asking for, I was able to launch the installer as soon as I made it executable. I opted to launch it from the command line.

sudo ./AdobeAIRInstaller.bin

I clicked through the installation process and it finished successfully. I found that I had to take one more step before I could install Air applications, however. This was the final step on Adobe's knowledge base.

sudo cp /usr/lib/libadobecertstore.so /usr/lib32

After that, Air apps installed without issue.

I found that when some air applications are, they leave a .desktop file hanging around on your Desktop. After moving the file to your ~/.local/share/applications directory, the application's launcher should show up in your Gnome menus.

Thought I'm not convinced that a closed-source platform like Adobe's Air is the way to go for Web/Desktop integration, it's nice to at least be able to use Air apps that others have created. Enjoy!

26 comments so far:

Thanks for this! I just ran into the same issue on 64bit jaunty.

Posted by Brendan 11 months, 1 week ago.

And your adobe air apps can access the internet?

Posted by Batista 11 months ago.

@Batista: Yes, the Air apps I'm using can access the internet without any trouble. I'm using Destroy Twitter on a regular basis, and haven't had any trouble. Yahoo's Sideline app works just fine, also. I was surprised to find that Air apps integrate with Jaunty's notification system!

Posted by Brandon Konkle 11 months ago.

@Brandon my apps still don't get access... Don't understand why though :S But I see in the ubuntu forums that this is a common problem though...

Posted by Batista 11 months ago.

Hi,

Air apps can't access internet because there is one step miss on this tutorial, you need to install "lib32nss-mdns"... so just do:

apt-get install lib32nss-mdns

and enjoy all your apps that use ia32-libs on internet.

Posted by antitezo 11 months ago.

@antilezo: Thanks for the help! It's possible that lib32nss-mdns was already installed on my system and I didn't realize it. I'll add that to the post above.

Posted by Brandon Konkle 11 months ago.

You should not allow Adobe to install application with a mysterious binary installer onto your system. Proprietary Flash is bad enough, let alone this mysterious runtime. Now that we finally have an open-source Java, we can't go back to using proprietary runtimes! Also, Adobe needs to get a damn clue and release their packages as native deb and rpm instead of this mysterious installer. It generates deb packages on the fly and installs air applications to the directory of your choice, in total violation of the Debian policy. Basically, their developers are all completely clueless when it comes to open source. DO NOT USE ADOBE AIR.

Posted by Linux User 10 months, 4 weeks ago.

The ubuntu-restricted-extras package isn't required - at least not everything it installs. I've got air with twhirl running fine without it.

But I do have flash installed, so at least that may be necessary.

Posted by Chris 10 months, 3 weeks ago.

Thanks, AIR was working for me on a newly upgraded Jaunty until I ran the new computer Janitor tool, which broke AIR and my bespoke flash install. This fixed my AIR problem straight off - thanks!

Posted by Damien 10 months, 2 weeks ago.

Thanks for the helpful info. I had to use a mix of your instructions and those from the Adobe page, but finally managed to get it working. I did encounter another error that seems to have been mentioned here and there. Basically, when I started up Tweetdeck, it ran, but didn't really do anything. I noticed when I tried running it from the shell that I got this error:

Gtk-Message: Failed to load module "canberra-gtk-module": /usr/lib/gtk-2.0/modules/libcanberra-gtk-module.so: wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS64

However, after much digging, I was able to get it working by prefixing the shell command with 'GTK_PATH=/usr/lib32/gtk-2.0'. I then went into my menu editor and changed the command so that it would be prefixed by that bit. Thought I'd post that here just in case it helps anyone else. ;~)

Posted by Thomas 10 months, 2 weeks ago.

@Thomas: Thanks for the information! I tried TweetDeck also, and gave up because it wasn't working. I'll give it another shot with the GTK_PATH set.

Posted by Brandon Konkle 10 months, 2 weeks ago.

@ Thomas or Brandon Konkle

Hi, I'm a n00b in ubuntu and I am having that problem. How do I change the mentioned GTK_PATH settings?

Thanks a lot In Advance

Posted by Chris 10 months, 2 weeks ago.

Never mind, just figured how to do it. however, now I get a bus error

Posted by Chris 10 months, 2 weeks ago.

Thanks for this guide. Works perfectly!

Posted by Rutger Blom 10 months, 2 weeks ago.

@Chris: Sorry I wasn't able to help there. I haven't tried TweetDeck again with Thomas's instructions, so I'm not sure about the "bus error" you're mentioning. I'll try it out sometime soon, and I'll let you know how it goes.

@Rutger: Thank you, I'm glad it worked out for you!

Posted by Brandon Konkle 10 months, 2 weeks ago.

@Thomas This should fix it: http://br.bingorabbit.com/2009/05/ubuntu-jaunty-jackalope...>

Thanks in Advance! :)

Posted by bingorabbit 10 months, 2 weeks ago.

Solved, very useful cheers!

Posted by Tim 10 months, 1 week ago.

When I prefix the command with the GTK path I get this message:

Failed to execute child process "GTK_PATH=/usr/lib32/gtk-2.0 /usr/bin/Adobe AIR Application Installer" (No such file or directory

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks David

Posted by David 10 months ago.

To get me over the line I needed to install GetLibs and then in terminal run 'sudo getlibs -l libgnome-keyring.so.0.1.1' as described in this link http://beegod.org/tweetdeck-on-hardy-heron-64bit although I'm running 9.04 Jaunty all still worked fine.

cheers Denis

Posted by Denis 10 months ago.

It´s very very easy , to install in AMD-64bits . And no need of complication,

Starting How to :

  1. install lib of linux32 :

    user@computer-desktop $ Sudo apt-get install linux32

  2. Open the console, browse in to directory of AdobeAIRInstaller.bin, and you launch linux32

    user@computer-desktop $ linux32

  3. to installing :

    $ sudo ./AdobeAIRInstaller.bin

It were very fast. Enjoy Now ;-) You can paste in the blog , to the people see better!

Posted by Robson 9 months ago.

Thanks a lot! Now i've just installed air 1.5.1 with twhirl and Yammer. They are working well!

Posted by Taeyoung 8 months, 2 weeks ago.

I'm glad to hear that this has been helpful! Thanks for commenting, everyone!

Posted by Brandon Konkle 8 months, 2 weeks ago.

Quoted from user above: "You should not allow Adobe to install application with a mysterious binary installer onto your system. Proprietary Flash is bad enough, let alone this mysterious runtime. Now that we finally have an open-source Java, we can't go back to using proprietary runtimes! Also, Adobe needs to get a damn clue and release their packages as native deb and rpm instead of this mysterious installer. It generates deb packages on the fly and installs air applications to the directory of your choice, in total violation of the Debian policy." I was looking into Adobe Air as of late, after trying to listen to a radio broadcast via's BBC's iPlayer. It said due to my slow internet connection (dial up) that I should install iPlayer to download and play it back without the internet connection. I found I needed to install adbobe air as well. After reading the above user's comment, it brought me back to reality of why I use Linux. Thanks for the how-to, but I shall pass on this and wait for it to truly be open-source, installed via the repository. I can wait. I so appreciate the comment above!

Posted by Liza 6 months, 3 weeks ago.

Hi there, Amazing! Not clear for me, how offen you updating your brandonkonkle.com. Rufor

Posted by Rufor 6 months, 1 week ago.

Ok, so I went through everything and AIR appears to install fine. However, when I try to install an app, like Pandora One (really the only reason I've got several wasted hours into this so far), AIR just flashes and disappears. I've got an AWN dock running @ the bottom of the screen - the Adobe AIR icon appears for 3-5 seconds, then disappears.

From what I gather, there's an error 5 seconds into installation and it immediately aborts the operation.

Agreeing with Liza and Linux User, this is some bulls@%t... anyone have any luck with the Pandora Applet in AWN?

Posted by Jon Tresko 5 months, 2 weeks ago.

Yeah, the more I used Adobe Air, the less I liked it. I recently upgraded to the Karmic Koala, and I haven't bothered trying to install Air there. I think with new technologies like HTML5 and new ways of running web applications like Mozilla Prism, Adobe's proprietary solutions become less and less relevant.

Posted by Brandon Konkle 5 months, 2 weeks ago.

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