Due to Adobe’s AIR, a technology that lets web applications be run on the desktop on Linux, Mac, or Windows, it seemed like Adobe was headed in the direction of platform independence. Now, Adobe has made those plans official with their Open Screen Project.

I view the project, which is intended to bring Flash and Air to everything from TVs to PCs to handheld devices and UMPCs, as an official statement from Adobe (and a number of other prominent companies that are also involved) that they believe, as I do, that cross-platform internet-connected applications are the future. Because Adobe is seeing this so early, they will likely become a great supporter of Linux, even if they don’t try to.

As cross-platform applications start to take off, thanks to AIR and other similar projects, the barrier to adopting Linux is going to shrink and quickly disappear. At that point, I think we will begin to see more and more switchers to Linux and other smaller operating systems.

Because of this, Adobe is going to play an essential part in destroying a key barrier to the adoption of Linux.

Yesterday Register Hardware reported that a company called BT was offering a bundle that combined an Eee PC running Linux with a copy of Microsoft Office Home and Student Edition. (This appears to have now been corrected.) While this is quite amusing (especially since you only save £1.76), there is another side to mistakes like this: they damage Linux’s reputation unfairly.

Without the bundle, most non-techie users would probably not even wonder if they needed Office. By seeing that bundle, though, potential Eee PC buyers are misled into assuming that they need Office and that it will run on the Eee PC. If those users were tech-savvy, when they realized that Office would not install, they would blame it on BT — but, of course, if those users really were tech-savvy, they would not have bought the bundle in the first place. The point is that the kind of user who might fall for this bundle is likely to blame Asus or Linux for the mistake, not BT, who is truly at fault.

I am glad BT has fixed the problem and I hope it does not happen again. I am tired of Linux FUD being spread due to mistakes like this.

If you have not already heard of it, EyeOS is an open-source online operating system. With the release of EyeOS 1.6, a new feature called eyeSync has been introduced.

Essentially what eyeSync does is sync your files between your regular computer (Linux, Mac, Windows) and EyeOS. Since eyeOS is open-source there is a huge possibility for Linux distributions to begin integrating EyeOS with the desktop.

If done correctly, distributions could be made so that it is very easy to set up your “online desktop” which you can use to access and work on your files from any web browser. Not only would this be relatively easy to implement, but it would also be an incredible selling point for the Linux desktop.