I recently moved over to Linux Mint. Their catch-phrase is “from freedom came elegance” and it rings so true.

Linux Mint is one of the surprise packages of the past year. Originally launched as a variant of Ubuntu with integrated media codecs, it has now developed into one of the most user-friendly distributions on the market – complete with a custom desktop and menus, several unique configuration tools, a web-based package installation interface, and a number of different editions. Perhaps most importantly, this is one project where the developers and users are in constant interaction, resulting in dramatic, user-driven improvements with every new release.

The truth be told – i’m a bit of a n00b when it comes to Linux, but wow… What an OS. You can download the OS here, then simply write it to disk and restart your PC and boot from the installer disk. Mint can be run from the disk, which is quite a cool feature (available on a few other Linux distros i’m told – such as Ubuntu)

My main line of work – and my passion – is developing Flex applications, and as a consequence, i need to be able to develop Flex apps from Linux. The incredible folks over at Adobe have released the fourth public alpha release of Flex Builder for Linux. Being an alpha version, it does not have all the features we’re accustomed to in the Windows or Mac incarnations, and you’ll need to install Eclipse Europa 3.3.2 for it to work (Flex Builder only comes as a plugin at this point). The main missing features are:

  • Design view
  • States view
  • Refactoring
  • Data Wizards
  • Cold Fusion – Data Services Wizard
  • Web Services introspection
  • Profiler

However, the features that are present are more than enough to develop Flex/AIR applications, and if you can’t build Flex apps without design view, you suck :P .

Please note: The Flex Builder plugin will NOT work with Eclipse Ganymede (3.4.x). The plugin will install just fine, but the MXML editor will not work. There has been much discussion about it on the bugs.adobe.com site, but no solution has been found as of yet.

The installation of Flex Builder for Linux is quite simple. Follow these instructions:

  1. Download Eclipse Europa 3.3.2 to your desktop. Open the terminal and extract the archive to wherever you like.
  2. Download the Flex Builder for Linux plugin to your desktop. Open the terminal, direct the terminal to your desktop and enter the following:

    sudo sh flexbuilder_linux_install_a4_081408.bin

  3. Follow the installer’s instructions and install the plugin. Please be sure that the directory you’re installing the plugin to is the correct Eclipse directory.
  4. The plugin will now be installed to your Eclipse install. Go to your eclipse folder and run the main application. Click on the Window menu and select Open Perspective. Click Other and search for Flex. From here you can open your Flex Development perspective and start developing Flex applications :D !

Great! So now you have installed the Flex Builder for Linux plugin. Unlike the Windows/Mac versions, you will have 311 days or something like that to test the application. If you are a student, you can apply for a free Flex license here. I’ve used my student license on both my Windows and Linux versions and it works fine.