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I have had a dual boot Vista/Ubuntu system for a while now. I never spend much time in Ubuntu since I am familiar with the programs in Vista and it has seemed to be more of a chore to install some of the Linux applications even though they are normally free and open source.

With the recent talk of Windows 7 and knowing that I don’t want to be paying for a new OS every few years, I thought that it was time to start putting more effort into using Ubuntu and installing programs to make it more useful. I started by using the Synaptic Software manager to install Kblogger, if you are reading this post the blogging software is working.

The next application I decided to install was TweetDeck which requires the Adobe AIR software. I searched for help on the Adobe site when the software did not directly install from Firefox.

After downloading the AIR software from the site at http://get.adobe.com/air/, I learned that there are additional requirements since I have a 64 bit system and the software is designed for 32 bit systems.

First you need to download the 32 bit files which are available here: Install the 32-bit binary files using the getlibs utility, which is available here: http://frozenfox.freehostia.com/cappy/getlibs-all.deb. If the link doesn’t download directly, go to http://frozenfox.freehostia.com/cappy/ , and click on getlibs-all.deb.

Next you need to go to the console and enter the following commands:

sudo apt-get install lib32asound2 lib32gcc1 lib32ncurses5 lib32stdc++6 lib32z1 libc6 libc6-i386 lib32nss-mdns
sudo apt-get install ia32-libs
sudo getlibs -l libgnome-keyring.so
sudo getlibs -l libgnome-keyring.so.0
sudo getlibs -l libgnome-keyring.so.0.1.1

Next you need to find where you downloaded the Adobe AIR.bin file, mine was in the desktop or you can find it by opening the downloaded file in Firefox.

Right click on the file and choose properties, go to the permissions tab, and select allow executing the file as a program.

Next go to the folder where the file is saved, in my case I did:

sudo cd /desktop

From here you need to enter:

chmod +x AdobeAIRInstaller.bin

sudo ./AdobeAIRInstaller.bin

The GUI should pop up indicating that the application is being installed and then completed.

The last thing you need to do at the command prompt is enter:

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

At this point you should be able to go to www.tweetdeck.com and click on download and the software where it will be installed automatically through the GUI.

Overall, the process to install TweetDeck took me close to two hours which is one of the reasons why it is easy to give up on Linux as my main OS. <Update, I did this again after a clean install to Ubuntu 9.10 and it only took about 15 minutes to do everything>

I also don’t feel that Kblogger is as easy to use and format as LiveWriter is to use for writing blog posts, I actually had to make changes on the with LiveWriter before posting, which was a real pain.

I should add that TweetDeck is working well after the install, so there may be hope if I can continue to find more programs that work well after being installed. I will continue to post updates as I continue to learn new ways to use Linux and the various applications.

Feel free to comment with any of your experiences and suggestions for using Linux.