Posted on by Jeff Hendricks

Installing Adobe AIR 2.6 in Ubuntu 12.04 64-bit

Five years ago, I posted an article here on how to install Adobe Air (the discontinued native Linux version) on Ubuntu 12.04.

Everything that I had written here I decided to pull, because Adobe likes to do massive bulk DMCA Takedowns without actually verifying whether the reported page actually violated anything. They simply did a text web search, and smote down everything that looked even remotely offensive. And as an added note: this isn’t the first time they’ve done this with this exact page.

I can no longer recommend trying to get any Adobe products working on your computer for any reason. I realize that this page has helped hundreds (if not more) people to get Adobe’s horrible (and non-supported) Air platform working in Linux, just to be able to use third-party apps. But as useful as it might have been, I just can’t in good conscience help anybody with it any more.

Adobe falsely accuses me of stealing their property and has my page forcibly removed from Google searches? Yeah, okay, there’s enough links out there that I still got some traffic. I felt good in knowing that I was helping people (or so I thought). So I left the content up, exactly as it was, knowing that I hadn’t violated anything, in hopes that some people would still find it.

Fast forward a year, and I’ve been hit by another DMCA takedown, again from Adobe, for the same exact page. It’s become obvious to me that instead of making products that people actually want to use, they’re focusing their attention on punishing users who they think might have remotely stepped out of line. Now they’ve filed a complaint against my AdSense account, and are taking money from my pockets- and I still haven’t done anything wrong. At no point have I ever offered any of Adobe’s products for download here.

Google is as complicit in this as Adobe- don’t think I’m letting them off the hook. I went through their extensive review process last time, and they basically told me “Tough luck, buddy. Sucks to be you.” I’ll have a few more articles about how to break free from the many-headed Hydra that is Google in the near future. Their time is coming, as well. They can rot as far as I’m concerned.

Adobe can bite me. I’m through with them, and you should be too. As is fitting with a blog called “Living Outside the Box,” Here’s a non-extensive list of alternatives to Adobe products:

I’m sorry if you came here looking for help with getting Air to run on Linux. I really wanted to help you, but Adobe had other plans.

Please, urge your third-party developers to move away from anything having to do with Adobe. You’ll be better off for it.

120 Replies to “Installing Adobe AIR 2.6 in Ubuntu 12.04 64-bit”

  2. Perfect! The library ‘linking’ is the only thing that was holding me up on installing Adobe Air Mint 13 (based on 12.04) 32bit. All the other reqs were already in place.

    Thanks for taking the time to write it up and share!

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  4. Thanks so much–only started using Ubuntu yesterday and managed to get AIR installed with this step by step guide!

  6. Thanks for this handy walkthrough, Jeff.

    I’ve recently installed Xubuntu 12.04, and I am working through getting my photography tools installed. I had been stumbling over Adobe AIR until I found this blog!

  7. Followed The Steps One By One & Was Able To Install AIR files without further hassles. Magic !! 😀

    Thanks Much!! 🙂

  8. Change the line

    getlibs -l libgnome-keyring.so.0.1.1

    into

    getlibs -l libgnome-keyring.so.0.2.0

    Newer version is available!

  9. Please replenish: On Kubuntu 12.04, I get error message “not allowed” when installing with sudo. If I instead run the installer without sudo, and then enter my password when prompted (needs administrator privileges), it works.

  10. As Edward pointed out, libgnome-keyring0 has a newer version, so check and see if you have 1.1 or 2.0! I’ll add a note to the post. Thanks!

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  15. Nice write-up. I followed it to the letter and everything worked as expected, thanks!

  17. chmod: impossible d’accéder à «./AdobeAIRInstaller.bin»: Aucun fichier ou dossier de ce type
    what can i do ? help plz

  19. I recently installed Ubuntu 12.04.1 and found that the gnome keyring was already installed as were the 32 bit libs (perhaps from another install?). I only needed to install libhal-storage1 and lib32nss-mdns and create the link. There was no need to use getlibs. AIR installed with no problem. I was then able to install Pandora One and Balsamiq Mockups.

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  31. Brilliant! I’ve been looking for good instructions for half an hour before finding yours. They were very clear, comprehensive and it worked! thank you very much.

  35. Thanks! These instructions worked fine with 12.10. I did get a warning about lib32nss-mdns not being available, and libgnome-keyring.so.0.2.0 saying I already had the newest version.

    I followed the instructions, ignoring the warnings, and everything works. I suspect I already had some of the requirement installed for some reason.

    uname -a
    Linux ubuntu 3.5.0-21-generic #32-Ubuntu SMP Tue Dec 11 18:52:46 UTC 2012 i686 i686 i686 GNU/Linux

    I’m using Air to use Zinio reader (digital magazines). Runs fine on my Xeon workstation, but is slow as molasses in January on my little ol’ Atom netbook.

  36. Thanks a lot. All the process worked fine to the end. Using Ubuntu 12.04. Merry Xmas and all the best for 2013! From France.

  38. Thank you so much for this. Apparently Adobe Air is needed to download programs from BBC website but instructions for Linux users are non-existent there. This worked beautifully on Linux Mint 14 64-bit.

  41. Hallelujah!!!!
    Thank you for this.Seems to be installing great. Ubuntu really do need to sort this issue as Air is becoming as ubiquitous as Reader.
    Thank you again

  44. Mint is based on Debian just like Ubuntu, so yes, it will work. If it’s 32 bit, you won’t need to use getlibs for the 32 bit libraries.

  46. Thanks so so much, it’s perfect for my ubuntu 12.04 x64! I’m searching for this for hours!

  47. I run sudo ./AdobeAIRInstaller.bin command and get the next error.
    /tmp/air.SbGiSM/setup: error while loading shared libraries: libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
    Any sugestions

  49. It’s looking for a library that’s not there (or in a different place). You can try searching for that file, and make a symlink to it in /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu

  51. I didn’t realize Zinio had a desktop reader, I’ve been using it with the web reader for a while. Thanks for letting us know, I’ll have to check it out!

  56. Worked like charm, but the package of getlibs you pointed to will not install manpages. On installation Ubuntu Software Center refuses to install it, because the package does not specify size_installed. You can choose to ignore that warning, but I think it should be mentioned, because it might confuse newer users.

  57. …..Brilliant. As with these guys above, just a load of unecessary faffing about. Thanks Muchly.

    Billy~boy did a fantastic job in convincing fledgling computer manufacturers that ‘m****$***’ was the way to go….

    …. borking it up…..

  58. SOrry!!! i dont understand the last part. what do i do with the archive or AdobeAir that i download? HOw do i run it on the terminal! Please help!

  59. You have to make it executable… go back and read the directions.
    In a terminal, cd to the directory you stored “AdobeAIRInstaller.bin” in and run this:

    chmod +x ./AdobeAIRInstaller.bin
    sudo ./AdobeAIRInstaller.bin

  60. I’ve been trying to install Terry Cavanagh’s Bosca Ceoil, which was recently ported to Air 2.6 for linux users. I have followed the instructions entirely, and upon running the deb installer for Bosca Ceoil, I get the following: boscaceoil pre-depends on adobeair (>= 1:2.6.0.0). However, when trying to install Air again I get a message saying it is installed. I’m running Ubuntu 13.04 if that changes anything.

  61. Does everything else run with the Air installer? It might be a problem with the particular app, especially if you’re installing it from a .deb package. You can always use “dpkg -i –force-depends” which will ignore the dependancy. If Air is actually installed, the app should still work. Sometimes it’s just the package installer not recognizing the correct version.

  62. Jeff did you try installing Adobe AIR on Ubuntu 13.10 because I can’t get it to work.

    You can install 32-bit libgnome-keyring0 without getlibs but there is no ia32-libs anymore and there is no libhal-storage1. I installed other 32-bit libraries like: gtk2-engines-murrine:i386, libcanberra-gtk-module:i386 (with other i386 dependencies) also lib32nss-mdns but that is not enough.

    When I run ./AdobeAIRInstaller.bin there are these:

    Gtk-Message: Failed to load module “overlay-scrollbar”
    Gtk-Message: Failed to load module “unity-gtk-module”

    They don’t show up if I run the installer as root but still I only get screen with help messages about installing AIR on 64-bit distros (no installing).

  63. I haven’t tried it with 13.10 yet, I just downloaded the .iso for it this past weekend. I’ll probably look into it in the next week or so, as I have to rebuild one of my machines anyway, and I wanted to try 13.10.

  64. It’s me again I solved this on my own. I looked at the control file of the 32-bit adobeair .deb package and then checked what’s need to be installed. I already had libgtk2.0-0:i386 so installing libxslt1.1:i386 which pulled also libxml2:i386 was enough to get the AdobeAIRInstaller.bin to actually work.

    Also I had to install libasound-plugins:i386 to get sound in one of my AIR apps WiMP (ALSA emulation on OSSv4 drivers). That’s a music streaming service which only supports Windows and OS X.

  68. Mateusz, I ham getting the same errors,

    Gtk-Message: Failed to load module “overlay-scrollbar”
    Gtk-Message: Failed to load module “unity-gtk-module”

    I have already installed all the libraries you have mentioned in your post including libxml2:i386 libxslt1.1:i386, for my Adobe AIR installation, but am still getting that error.

    Can you think of anyother reason that error could occur

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  71. Are you running 12.04? I really didn’t intend for this to work with newer releases, and I of course can’t write a new one for every single release. If you’re running 12.04 and it still isn’t working, then I’ll have to dig into it and see what they changed. Do you have any other repos or packages installed besides the stock 12.04?

  72. Sorry, for not mentioning earlier, I am facing issue with AdobeAIR installation on 13.10.

    Like Mateusz I got it working with successfull install, but like him facing issue with AdobeAIR supported application only starting it starting as root, otherwise giving error :

    Gtk-Message: Failed to load module “overlay-scrollbar”
    Gtk-Message: Failed to load module “unity-gtk-module”

    I already have xml and xslt i386 packages as he mentioned and hence suspect the problem is much more than that.

    I realize you can only support only as much and your original article is of great help to start off against. It si that since Matusez seems to have resolved the issue, if I could get some additional pointers from him that would be helpful.

  73. Hi jethar,

    Did you install the libgnome-keyring0:i386 gtk2-engines-murrine:i386 libcanberra-gtk-module:i386 lib32nss-mdns libgtk2.0-0:i386 packages because I also installed them while trying to install AdobeAIR on 13.10.

    Those two errors will not disappear even when you have all those things installed but they will not make problems with installling AdobeAIRInstaller.bin and running AIR programs.

  74. Yes I installed all those, except for libgnome-keyring0:i386, which I could do without. Instead of that, just did :
    sudo LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu ./AdobeAIRInstaller.bin

    here is a complete list of what I did use to install Adobe AIR, in case anybody needed help:

    gcc-4.8-base:i386 libc6:i386 libgcc1:i386 libstdc++6:i386 libncurses5:i386
    libgtk2.0-0:i386
    libnss3-1d:i386 libnspr4-0d:i386
    lib32nss-mdns
    libcanberra-gtk-module:i386
    gtk2-engines-murrine:i386
    libxml2:i386 libxslt1.1:i386

    Actually i also installed skype whcih I needed anyway, which pulled in quite a lot of i386 libraries automatically, including libxml2:i386 libxslt1.1:i386 which is needed above. It even pulled in things like libasound2-plugins:i386, whcih I think helps with Adobe AIR applications in some cases.

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  77. Jeff, please help me I had tried every way to install Adobe Air for 13.10 but fail to do so, I have ready many post of yours as well other post but while executing command ./AdobeAIRInstaller.bin , am contantly getting one error that is No such file or directory exist , though I have given all permission and everything then also it is same.

  79. I’m going to assume you know the filenames are case sensitive… so if it’s giving you an error, there’s something else wrong. If it were a permission issue, it would tell you “This file is not executable” or something like that. But since it says it can’t even find it, there’s something elsewrong. Maybe your path isn’t set to use the current directory. Also, are you running it with “sudo”?

  80. My friend, Yes am using Sudo and with that help am trying all this, you know with another forum help I got the other library but now the problem is , if I executing command ./AdobeAIRInstaller.bin then cursor come down and nothing going on, I mean after pressing enter, I can not see any changes, though am waiting for 30 mins. Please help me because I required Adobe Air for the Elance time tracker.

  81. @Bharat as Jeff already pointed out you have to change the directory in terminal to the location of the file that you want to run.

    There is also simpler way that doesn’t involve the knowledge of how to change directory in terminal. You can simply drag and drop a file on the terminal window. Terminal atleast the one in Ubuntu will add appropriate path on it’s own.

    sudo ‘/home/mateusz/Pobrane/AdobeAIRInstaller.bin’

    This is example from my system of droping AdobeAIRInstaller.bin on terminal.

  82. I will try to see if I can figure it out, but getting things to work on 13.10 isn’t a priority. I think I have an install image for 13.10 Ubuntu Studio, I can throw that onto a machine as a live CD and see if there’s something obviously different. I haven’t tried it yet, but it should be possible, assuming all the dependencies can be met.

  83. Jeff, I know which 32-bit libraries are required to install AIR on Ubuntu 13.10 and newer.

    I’ve been trying to determine this using Live CD of 14.04 (development branch) and after couple hours I successfully installed AIR 2.6. First I had to add i386 architecture:

    sudo dpkg –add-architecture i386

    Next enable universe repo from Software & Updates and refresh the software sources. Then you can install necessary packages.

    sudo apt-get install gtk2-engines-murrine:i386 libcanberra-gtk-module:i386 lib32nss-mdns libgnome-keyring0:i386 libgtk2.0-0:i386 libxslt1.1:i386 libxt6:i386 libstdc++6:i386 libnss3-1d:i386 libnspr4-0d:i386

    We have libgnome-keyring installed but not where AIR is looking for so we make the same symlink that you made in 12.04 LTS.

    sudo ln -s /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libgnome-keyring.so.0 /usr/lib/libgnome-keyring.so.0

    Now we can use the installer:

    sudo ./AdobeAIRInstaller.bin

    Also I recommend to install libasound2-plugins:i386 which contains plugins for the ALSA library that are not included in the main libasound2:i386 package (PulseAudio, OSSv4 and JACK).

    You could use that 13.10 Ubuntu Studio to verify my list of packages.

  85. I tested Ubuntu 13.10 64-bit in Live CD and everything worked. Adobe AIR installed and I tested installation of one game made in AIR.

    I used the same commands that I posted for 14.04 (development branch).

  87. Thank you so much Jeff and Mateusz. I was starting to get very frustrated with trying to install air. I only want it so a little but very nice program called “Balsamiq” mockup can be run. This so far has proved the single most difficult thing to setup in Ubuntu 13.10 migrating from Windoze.

    Thanks again

  88. Thank you! I have an essential Air app, and now that’s one more thing I don’t need to run in VirtualBox.

  90. Thanks, I am using Ubuntu 13.10 and I stalled following the adobe installation instructions because getlibs-all.deb is missing.

    I don’t know about gdebi but “sudo dpkg -i getlibs-all.deb” does the trick to install it.

    ~/system $ sudo apt-get install libhal-storage1 libgnome-keyring0 lib32nss-mdns
    Reading package lists… Done
    Building dependency tree
    Reading state information… Done
    E: Unable to locate package libhal-storage1

    Some searching got me to:
    http://www.ubuntuupdates.org/package/core/saucy/universe/base/libhal-storage1
    where it says that libhal-storage1 was deleted from the 13.10 repos
    This thread http://ubuntu.5.x6.nabble.com/libhal-dev-td5042700.html indicates that its functionality was merged into udev in 2008 and that it was discontinued five years ago 🙁

    Apparently hal was causing compatibility issues with other desktop packages but there is a ppa for it to be used at our own risk – https://launchpad.net/~mjblenner/+archive/ppa-hal

    Adding this repo gets past that step and installs libhal… et al but then:

    ~/system $ sudo getlibs -l libhal-storage.so.1
    Reading package lists… Done
    Building dependency tree
    Reading state information… Done
    Package ia32-libs is not available, but is referred to by another package.
    This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
    is only available from another source
    However the following packages replace it:
    lib32z1 lib32ncurses5 lib32bz2-1.0

    E: Package ‘ia32-libs’ has no installation candidate
    No match for libhal-storage.so.1
    No packages to install

    At this point I surrendered.

  92. Thanks a bunch. This worked. I tried to figure out which version of libgnome-keyring and was confused as to why the version numbers seem to be 0.1 for 1.0 and 0.2 for 2.0, apparently some numbering convention there? Anyway, I was scared to break the system sudoing around with executables downloaded on the intarneths, so you might want to mention that installing the wrong version with getlibs won’t break anything, it’ll just refuse to install.

    Also, I managed to install 64 bit Balsamiq mockups after this, was wondering if 64-bit binaries still work after this. Turns out they do.

  93. @savolai could you confirm whether you need to start Balasamiq mockups as root or similar, or you can use the normal user account. I had to originally start it only if doing a sudo. Just wanted to check what is the latest on that.

  96. Hi, I am having a problem with ‘”sudo apt-get install libhal-storage1 libgnome-keyring0 lib32nss-mdns”‘ this code. my computer returning “coderx@coderx:~$ sudo apt-get install libhal-storage1 libgnome-keyring0 lib32nss-mdns
    Reading package lists… Done
    Building dependency tree
    Reading state information… Done
    E: Unable to locate package libhal-storage1”
    Would you please help me?
    Thanks in advance.

  102. I too am trying Matusz’s process but when I try the sudo dpkg -add-architecture i386 command I get ‘dpkg: error: need an action open.

    I too am trying to run Balsamiq on a 64-bit install.

  104. Sir Cumference that command might be unnecessary did you try skipping it and installing things from step two.

    Also the comments section doesn’t get it right because before the add-architecture there should be two consecutive “- -” not one and that might be your problem.

  105. When i type ‘sudo getlibs -l libhal-storage.so.1’ I get a message saying ‘No match for libhal-storage.so.1’. I get the same sort of response when I enter ‘sudo getlibs -l libgnome-keyring.so.0.2.0’.

  107. Hello I am new to ubuntu but I want it to work somehow.. Currently I am facing following issue.

    The following packages have unmet dependencies:
    lib32nss-mdns : Depends: libc6-i386 (>= 2.4) but it is not going to be installed
    E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.
    I am running fresh ubuntu 12.04 with apache, mysql, php installed on it.

  109. See what packages are being held with “dpkg –get-selections | grep hold” and fix that first. If there are none, then something else isn’t liking it. Have you run all system and security updates?

  110. Hi Jeff, your write-up seems to be one of the main sources of info on installing AIR. However, I think it needs updating for more recent Ubuntu releases, as noted in some of the other comments. For example, libhal-storage is no longer available. Also, I don’t think getlibs is needed any more. I was able to install AIR (on 14.10 64-bit) with just the following preparation:

    sudo apt-get install libnspr4:i386 libnspr4-0d:i386 libnss3:i386 libnss3-1d:i386 libgnome-keyring0:i386 libnss-mdns:i386
    sudo ln -s /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libgnome-keyring.so.0 /usr/lib/

    After installation, the symlink in /usr/lib can be removed, because AIR will find that library in /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu via the normal lookup path. It’s appropriate to remove the symlink because the library arch is non-native.

    I believe the commands above will also work on a 32-bit system. Although the :i386 suffix is then redundant, it doesn’t do any harm.

    It may be that there are some dependencies I’ve missed, because I already had them on my system for other packages (eg Skype from the partner repository).

  111. You’re absolutely correct, of course. The main reason I haven’t updated the Howto is that my laptop can’t run 14.04 or newer without breaking the ATI Catalyst driver (my card isn’t supported by versions past 12.04 at all)… but you know, now that you mention it, I had to install the actual ATI drivers to get games working in Steam. Sooo…… thanks to your comment, I will see if I can upgrade the machine to 14.04 and then we’ll try it again. If nothing else, I can do it in VirtualBox. I’ve had spotted success with upgrading Ubuntu in general, though it seems the newer versions handle it better than pre-12.04.

    TL;DR: I’ll see what I can do. 🙂

  112. Okay, I got a hold of 1. a new-ish laptop with 14.04 on it, and 2. a spare HD for my current LT. We’ll give it a shot over the holiday break and see what happens! Thanks to everyone for reading!

  113. FYI, this page is now excluded from Google search results because of a “DMCA (Copyright) Complaint to Google” . It’s part of a long list of pages hosting Adobe binaries for download. I don’t believe you were doing that, so you might want to appeal the decision. No idea how you do that, though!

  115. Never mind: I was able to find the original DMCA notice (from October 2014! Which explains why site traffic plummeted since then). I have filed a counter-notice, they have 14 days to either sue me (which they would be stupid to do) or the page will be reinserted in Google’s search results.

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  119. Hello. Is there any chance you send me those in my private e-mail? I need to set up this shit on my compute and the customer has no plans (neither budget) to redevelop this. It seems you were my last chance.

  120. These instructions were for Ubuntu 12.04, that’s a pretty old distro. You can try it on a newer one, and it might work… but I haven’t tested it. I don’t see an email link in your G+ profile.

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