Adobe Air is a technology that allows certain web applications to be run on the desktop, as if they were normal desktop applications.

According to the Adobe Air website, Adobe Air “lets developers use proven web technologies to build rich Internet applications that deploy to the desktop and run across operating systems.” Essentially what that means is that developers can use tools and techniques that are already familiar to them and create web 2.0 applications that will not only run inside a web browser, but also on the desktop, regardless of the operating system that desktop is running.

At the time of writing, however, Adobe Air for Linux is not feature complete, so not all applications will work perfectly.

One of the main barriers people face when moving from one operating system to another is applications that don’t run on their new operating system. This creates an uneven playing ground where the operating systems on top have a huge advantage over other operating systems, regardless of technical merit. Web applications started to solve this problem, because most web applications can be run on any operating system, but web applications have one major disadvantage: they require an internet connection. Air lets developers create web applications that will also run on the desktop, removing that one major disadvantage and allowing web applications to finally level the operating system playing field.

For Linux, if Adobe Air catches on, many new applications will become available for it, not because they were developed specifically for Linux, but because they were developed for any operating system. This means switching to Linux is likely to become very easy in the future.

For a guide on installing Air on Linux, see my tutorial “Adobe Air on Linux: What, Why, and How“.

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