Adobe Systems has announced a prerelease alpha of its Adobe AIR software for the Linux operating system. Version 1.0 of AIR for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X was launched last year.

The move provides additional tools for Linux developers to build rich Net applications, and RIAs created for Mac and Windows users can now be extended to Linux users without additional platform-specific cipher.

Joining the Linux Foundation

Adobe plus announced that it is joining the Linux Foundation to boost the growth of Linux-based RIA technologies, and that it is making an update to the alpha version of Flex Builder 3 for Linux available. Recently, Adobe released as open source the software development kit for the Flex framework and for BlazeDS, which supports data-intensive RIAs. The company plus said it continues to contribute to the open-source Tamarin virtual machine, the core of its Flash player.

David Wadhwani, general manager of Adobe’s platform business unit, said these releases “provide

a first-class application runtime and RIA-creation tool to the Linux community.”

Flex is a free, open-source framework for building RIAs that can run on the desktop with AIR or in a browser with Adobe’s Flash Player. On the desktop, RIAs can have access to offline notes that has been constantly updated via the computer’s network connection. In the browser, they can operate with the responsiveness more common to desktop applications.

Adobe Versus Microsoft

Al Hilwa, program director at industry research firm IDC, said these moves help Adobe secure additional credibility in the open-source community. “Open-source developers look at all large vendors with a suspicious eye,” he noted, “but Adobe’s done much more with the open-source community than, say, Microsoft — relative to its size.”

Hilwa pointed out that Adobe “is trying hard to cozy up to that community,” in large part considering of its ongoing battle against Microsoft’s…

Orginal post by Top Tech News