Adobe Drops Linux Desktop Support For AIR

[kraftman]

They probably meant that 0.5% of their downloads were for Linux.

If that's the case, it's hard to justify continuing support from a financial perspective.

I hope they won't judge about the flash using the same way. Thankfully, Linux is not a windows, so there are repositories. Btw. I didn't ever heard about crap like air before.

[allquixotic]

it's too bad we can't track Adobe downloads from package managers , etc. It would be nice to shove that down their throats. I bet the numbers are much higher than they think.

The closest we have is Ubuntu's popcon statistics on flash, but since popcon is only enabled voluntarily by people who either (a) know about popcon specifically or (b) click on the very last tab of the Software Sources application, it's a very small, non-representative sample set. But, considering that in 11.04 you can install Flash with a single mouse click during the installation process, I wouldn't be at all surprised if the statistic is something like 90% of Ubuntu Desktop installations (and less than 5% of Ubuntu Server).

Still, getting hard statistics in a decentralized, opt-in scenario like this is nigh impossible.

I wish they would enable popcon by default, with a checkbox in the installer to opt-out of the popcon. That'd give us a lot more data to work with. Especially if the other Flash-shipping distros (Arch? Gentoo?) would do the same with a popcon-equivalent for their package manager.

PS: what is the game? (a link??) I'd be interested in having a look., I'm not much of a gamer, but am still interested nonetheless, being as we're having this conversation... (nor, would i hold it against you, being as you inherited MS only Software!)

I'll PM it to you, since a Windows game is completely off-topic for Phoronix (even if it does run fairly well in Wine after my recent code changes...).

[urfe]

A few things:

• It doesn't really matter what you want; Adobe only cares if you and at least a few hundred million other people running the same platform want the same thing.
• Adobe doesn't read Phoronix forums.
• Even if they did, they wouldn't take our comments as representative of all Linux users; even they aren't that naive.
• Yes, humble comments are not normally used on a forum. Welcome to the Internet. I'm completely unapologetic for speaking on behalf of an unqualified "we". For all you know, I could be referring to myself and my immediate family, who could very well agree with me. You made the assumption that the "we" I referred to was the entire Linux community, which isn't necessarily the case. And even if it were, so what? It's not like Adobe does what I say, anyway. I was just letting off steam.

That's all fine, but it excludes a lucid dialogue. And that's what a forum is suppose to be.

[allquixotic]

Since when are anonymous posters on this forum speaking for the entire community? Flash is one of those essential binary blobs for desktop users - you don't need it? OK But the I write e-mails, documents, watch movies and surf the web crowd, does. And I want it, too.

How did you get to be so dictatorial and vehement to force your believes on all the Linux base? Or are truthful and calm statements like I personally do not need X too humble to be used on a forum?

A few things:

• It doesn't really matter what you want; Adobe only cares if you and at least a few hundred million other people running the same platform want the same thing.
• Adobe doesn't read Phoronix forums.
• Even if they did, they wouldn't take our comments as representative of all Linux users; even they aren't that naive.
• Yes, humble comments are not normally used on a forum. Welcome to the Internet. I'm completely unapologetic for speaking on behalf of an unqualified "we". For all you know, I could be referring to myself and my immediate family, who could very well agree with me. You made the assumption that the "we" I referred to was the entire Linux community, which isn't necessarily the case. And even if it were, so what? It's not like Adobe does what I say, anyway. I was just letting off steam.

For companies that actually browse our forums (hello AMD, PathScale, Frozenbyte, Unigine, Red Hat), sharing our opinions here on Phoronix really counts. And in those cases, trying to misrepresent one's own opinion as representing the entire community is, at least, misleading to the company folks (though I suspect even employees of these companies are smart enough not to take one person's reply as representative of the whole). But when the company folks aren't even a part of our community, who cares? All messages in this thread are going to /dev/null anyway -- or at least, they're certainly not going to Adobe.

I'm a bit more careful in my wording when I am writing a post that I suspect a company rep might read, but Adobe is a company that every Linux user should enjoy bashing once in a while. It's not like they'll hear you complaining, so it's just harmless fun. :P

[ninez]

The problem is that Adobe can't properly gauge Flash installations on Linux. There are tons of distros that support installing Flash through their own package manager, because they have a license to freely redistribute Flash (or they don't have a license and they don't care).

Adobe will continue to foolishly judge user adoption by who downloads stuff off of their central website, when in fact many downloads happen from other servers on the web (e.g. softpedia) and from package managers.

To be fair, I don't think any package managers (legally) distribute Adobe AIR, but unless Adobe are completely blind, I think the numbers for Flash use on Linux are much much higher -- some 90 - 95% of desktop Linux users probably use Adobe Flash. Even if that entire market segment is conservatively marked up as 1%, that's still 1 in every 100 users suddenly hating the guts of your company -- hopefully Adobe is wise enough to avoid that situation.



Yeah. I work on an indie game that only runs on Windows (we inherited a huge codebase from another developer and it uses DirectDraw, and we only have 2 developers, so give us a break), and even within our tiny community of about 100 people, 5 of them are itching to get us to make a Linux client and/or improve the game's functionality under wine.

it's too bad we can't track Adobe downloads from package managers , etc. It would be nice to shove that down their throats. I bet the numbers are much higher than they think.

5 out of 100 people (5%) - is on the money, according to W3schools statistics.

cheerz

PS: what is the game? (a link??) I'd be interested in having a look., I'm not much of a gamer, but am still interested nonetheless, being as we're having this conversation... (nor, would i hold it against you, being as you inherited MS only Software!)

[urfe]

Keep away your stupid binary blobs from linux.

If this is the beginning of the end of Linux support for Adobe's other products, such as Flash and Adobe Reader, I say good riddance. We didn't need your 32-bit buggy shit either, Adobe!

Since when are anonymous posters on this forum speaking for the entire community? Flash is one of those essential binary blobs for desktop users - you don't need it? OK But the I write e-mails, documents, watch movies and surf the web crowd, does. And I want it, too.

How did you get to be so dictatorial and vehement to force your believes on all the Linux base? Or are truthful and calm statements like I personally do not need X too humble to be used on a forum?

[allquixotic]

I wouldn't get too worked up over this. Adobe AIR wasn't downloaded much because it sucks - i tried it with well over a dozen applications, all of which sucked. Why would anyone want this app on their desktop UNLESS they are developing apps for mobile???

Another interesting thing is - Adobe is basing their statistics around 1 entities statistics (NetMarketShare) to whom Microsoft is probably their biggest partner, as well as apple and many other proprietary companies.... I think these statistics might be a bit stacked.

especially when you visit other sites like W3Schools, or even wikipedia pages to do with web / OS statistics that have no vested interest, seem to suggest higher numbers than NetMarketShare seems too, for Linux usage (based around the exact same kind of statistical information).

I wonder how many times Adobe Flash has been downloaded by Linux users??

The problem is that Adobe can't properly gauge Flash installations on Linux. There are tons of distros that support installing Flash through their own package manager, because they have a license to freely redistribute Flash (or they don't have a license and they don't care).

Adobe will continue to foolishly judge user adoption by who downloads stuff off of their central website, when in fact many downloads happen from other servers on the web (e.g. softpedia) and from package managers.

To be fair, I don't think any package managers (legally) distribute Adobe AIR, but unless Adobe are completely blind, I think the numbers for Flash use on Linux are much much higher -- some 90 - 95% of desktop Linux users probably use Adobe Flash. Even if that entire market segment is conservatively marked up as 1%, that's still 1 in every 100 users suddenly hating the guts of your company -- hopefully Adobe is wise enough to avoid that situation.

I tend to think Linux Desktop is in wider use, being as a few years ago, i knew almost no one (personally) who was running a Linux Desktop - and very few who had heard of Ubuntu or Linux in general (aside from my IT / geeky friends) and now i know a slew of people running a Linux desktop. (mostly ubuntu).

Yeah. I work on an indie game that only runs on Windows (we inherited a huge codebase from another developer and it uses DirectDraw, and we only have 2 developers, so give us a break), and even within our tiny community of about 100 people, 5 of them are itching to get us to make a Linux client and/or improve the game's functionality under wine.

[ninez]

I wouldn't get too worked up over this. Adobe AIR wasn't downloaded much because it sucks - i tried it with well over a dozen applications, all of which sucked. Why would anyone want this app on their desktop UNLESS they are developing apps for mobile???

Another interesting thing is - Adobe is basing their statistics around 1 entities statistics (NetMarketShare) to whom Microsoft is probably their biggest partner, as well as apple and many other proprietary companies.... I think these statistics might be a bit stacked.

especially when you visit other sites like W3Schools, or even wikipedia pages to do with web / OS statistics that have no vested interest, seem to suggest higher numbers than NetMarketShare seems too, for Linux usage (based around the exact same kind of statistical information).

I wonder how many times Adobe Flash has been downloaded by Linux users??

I tend to think Linux Desktop is in wider use, being as a few years ago, i knew almost no one (personally) who was running a Linux Desktop - and very few who had heard of Ubuntu or Linux in general (aside from my IT / geeky friends) and now i know a slew of people running a Linux desktop. (mostly ubuntu).

[johnc]

I have a hard time believing that one Linux desktop in every two has Adobe AIR installed.

They probably meant that 0.5% of their downloads were for Linux.

If that's the case, it's hard to justify continuing support from a financial perspective.

[Garp]

Well, that's slightly annoying. I use TweetDeck for twitter and Facebook which is an Adobe Air program. It's still head and shoulders above any of the other clients I've used. I guess that means switching to TweetDeck in Chrome instead. Beyond that it's never seemed like there was a killer app for it, though Air itself has always seemed to run well. Apps install all self contained in /opt, and the update procedure was always straight forward and simple. Air's support for linux has been pretty reasonable provided you're running only a deb or rpm based distribution. You could get it to work on others but it was a pain in the neck. Oh well. Annoying but not the end of the world.