Gustible - under the rubric of [$_SELF]

I have been fortunate to have been closely involved with the development team that has recently launched the new version of feedalizr. This has given me an inside view on the extent of the architectural changes that has been done to the application, and I believe that this version has the potential to become the standard for Adobe AIR feed readers, if not for all feed readers – regardless of the development platform.

Enough praise singing – guys, you know who you are – and you did an astoundingly good job on feedalizr. It was worth the time and effort.

On to the application itself. This post will talk you through installing feedalizr on Ubuntu Hardy.Easy to do, and it works well!

Since feedalizr relies on Adobe AIR, this is the first thing to install: you can get a copy of the Adobe AIR Beta for Linux here. There are always questions about installing AIR on Ubuntu – so here is the quick installation guide again:

1) The download is a bin file, call adobeair_linux_b1_091508.bin. This file must be granted execution rights after you have downloaded it. You can do that by opening a console window, navigating to the file, and typing: chmod +x adobeair_linux_b1_091508.bin (no italics required of course ) In some distro’s, notable Ubuntu, you can right click the file, select properties from the menu. Navigate to the Permissions tab, and check the box that says Allow executing file as a program – it is circled in this image:

AIR - execute permissions

2) To install the Adobe AIR application, open a console window, and type ./adobeair_linux_b1_091508.bin and follow the instructions. It is a no-brainer.

3) Once you have done that, you need install feedalizr. Now, if you go to the site, you will find this message:

Linux is unfortunately not supported yet,
but our old version is still available for you to use.

OK – here’s the deal. You can install the old version, and it will work 100%. OR – you can take a chance, and install the unsupported new version. Yes, it really is unsupported, and yes, there MAY VERY WELL be small issues.

My advise to you:  install it! Even though it is unsupported the feature set makes it very much worth doing. It is also very unlikely to harm your Linux installation. I installed it. And I am very happy that I did.

You can download the unsupported version by clicking this link. Once you have got it downloaded, simply right-click the file, choose Open with Adobe Air Application Installer, sit back and enjoy the show. Installation is very straightforward, and the process will guide you through the required steps.

Once the installation is done, the application will start. You will be prompted to register the services you use – and this is in fact a big departure from the previous versions of feedalizr. In the previous versions you had to have a friendfeed account. In this version you can use any combination of your friendfeed, twitter, jaiku or flickr accounts. You can use all of them, or only one of them. Feedalizr supports each service as an independent service.

I will do another post detailing feedalizr, and how it works on Ubuntu. Feel free to ask questions if you have difficulty. The feedalizr team maintains a presence at getsatisfaction. But remember to mention that you are running Ubuntu, and remember that this release is not “officially” supported on Ubuntu.

Enjoy feedalizr. Watch this space for a follow-up post on the application’s features!