TechnologyCrowd

It seems like most of the news related to Twitter clients and social networking applications ends up coming down to TweetDeck and Seesmic.  Although, I typically use Digsby when logged into my Windows PC because it also offers e-mail notifications, the Linux version is not available yet.  I have previously blogged about how to install TweetDeck on Ubuntu Karmic 64 bit, I have been seeing a lot of updates about Seesmic offering new features and enhancement so I thought I should give it a try.  Since I already installed Adobe AIR when I installed Tweetdeck, the installation for Seesmic which also uses Adobe AIR was quick and easy.  All I had to do was go to the site and download it and it installed right away through Air.  I will post the steps for installing Air from my previous post, Install TweetDeck on 64 bit Ubuntu Linux Desktop, or you can click on the link to that post and install TweetDeck too.  If you already have Air installed just follow the link to go to the site and install Seesmic.

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 have AIR installed and be ready to install Seesmic.  If you have any issues with AIR, please check the comments at Install TweetDeck on 64 bit Ubuntu Linux Desktop, there are a couple comments from people that had some issues and possible solutions.

Now, you are ready to download the Seesmic application from the website here. Once you download the file the AIR installer should takeover and install it, after the application starts you can enter your Twitter and Facebook information and make any changes to the settings that you wish.  When you want to start the application again you just need to go to Applications -> Accessories -> Seesmic Desktop to start the application.

After a few minutes of Seesmic, it seems to have many of the same features as TweetDeck.  I think the decision over which application to use will really come down to personal preference, once AIR is installed they are both easy to install so give them both a try and see which one you like best.