Running Twhirl on Ubuntu 7.10

The Twhirl Adobe AIR application is a great client for Twitter. Unfortunately, neither Twhirl or Adobe AIR officially support Linux (yet). Having recently switched to Ubuntu for my primary OS at home, I’ve been missing Twhirl. Knowing that Adobe AIR supports Mac OSX, I decided to see if there was a Linux edition in the works. Turns out there is an Alpha version of Adobe AIR for Linux. Armed with this, I decided to give it a go. Here’s how to install Adobe AIR and Twhirl on Ubuntu (current for 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon). Please note that Adobe AIR for Linux is still Alpha and is a bit unstable. There, you’ve been warned. Now for the fun:

1. Open the Terminal
2. Run the following commands:

cd ~/Desktop
wget http://download.macromedia.com/pub/labs/air/linux/adobeair_linux_a1_033108.bin
wget http://www.twhirl.org/files/twhirl-0.8.air
chmod +x adobeair_linux_a1_033108.bin
sudo ./adobeair_linux_a1_033108.bin

3. The installation then presents the following dialog:

4. Click on “I Agree” and it commences installation (into /opt/Adobe AIR – yes, with a space in the path):

5. If all goes well, then you get the following screen.

6. Back in Terminal, run the following command:

/opt/Adobe\ AIR/Versions/1.0/airappinstaller ~/Desktop/twhirl-0.8.air

7. The first thing you get is this very frightening dialog:

Hm. UNRESTRICTED access to my computer. What could possibly go wrong? Click “Install” to find out.

8. Next, you get the twhirl installation preferences dialog. Set the preferences you want and click “Continue”:

9. Once the installation is done, Twhirl will open. Sign in to your Twitter account. Having run Twhirl on Ubuntu for several hours, I’ve managed to make it crash or simply disappear several times. Adobe AIR on Linux is indeed ALPHA quality currently. I’ve found that changing some of the default settings has made it more stable. First, untick “hide when minimised”:

10. Then click on Notify and untick “show notification windows” (found that the notification windows would sometimes play up with the window manager):

11. Click Save, and you should be twitterhappy with Twhirl on Ubuntu.

Addendum: The default icon on the Twhirl launcher is the generic AIR icon. If you want to change this so you can easily identify it as Twhirl, follow these steps:

1. Right click on the Twhirl launcher on the Desktop and select Properties:

2. Click on the red AIR icon on the upper-left.

3. Enter or navigate to /opt/twhirl/icons/twhirl-48.png and click Open.

4. Click Close and then you can drag/drop the launcher to your main menu or window manager.

16 Responses to “Running Twhirl on Ubuntu 7.10”

  1. tiggsy  on May 6th, 2008

    I tried following your instructions. When I did the “sudo ./adobeair_linux_al_033108.bin” line it seemed to work ok until it came back with the message: Sorry an error has occurred. An error occurred while installing Adobe AIR. Installation may not be allowed by your administrator. Please contact your administrator.”

    I am the administrator. I tried running sudo chown on the folders opt and opt/Adobe AIR but these don’t seem to exist. I tried creating them and then chowning them, but as Im not sure where they should go, i may have put them in the wrong place. Whatever, it didn’t work. Can you tell me how to get round this?

  2. tiggsy  on May 6th, 2008

    i got it working, finally. Not entirely sure what i did that was different – but it was after 8.04 lts update had been completed and i had spent 3-4 hours finding a way to revert to firefox 2 so i could get my google toolbar back, lol

  3. rob  on May 14th, 2008

    Now that twhirl 8.1 is out, you need to go to the website (www.twhirl.org) to get the current version. the one above ( /opt/Adobe\ AIR/Versions/1.0/airappinstaller ~/Desktop/twhirl-0.8.air ) gives an error in the terminal.

  4. Eric Odom  on May 24th, 2008

    Just tried it and it worked flawlessly on 7.10. Thanks!

  5. Mark Hinkle  on June 7th, 2008

    Thanks Seth, this was a great tip. Works like a champ for me on 8.04

  6. Marysia Kurowski  on July 31st, 2008

    I downloaded adobe air and the newer version of twhirl to my desktop and then ran the chmod and sudo commands, but got the message:

    (./adobeair_linux_a1_033108.bin:5304): Gtk-WARNING **: cannot open display:

    Any tips as to what I should do next would be much appreciated.
    Thanks.

    Marysia

  7. Marysia Kurowski  on July 31st, 2008

    I’ve now managed to install it ok on my big pc which runs mandrake, and having had that relatively positive experience will have another go at installing twhirl on my laptop (which runs Suse).

    Hm, I wonder if there’s going to be any problem with the following message from my pc’s terminal:

    “Flash Player: Warning: environment variable G_FILENAME_ENCODING is set and is not UTF-8″

    It means not a thing to me.

    Will get back to y’all with my Suse experiences…

    Marysia

  8. Marysia Kurowski  on July 31st, 2008

    Ok, I’ve tried again on my laptop, which runs Suse, and I still get the message:

    (./adobeair_linux_a1_033108.bin:5304): Gtk-WARNING **: cannot open display:

    and then everything stops. :-(

    Any suggestions anybody?

    Thanks.

  9. axobeauvi  on August 15th, 2008

    I can’t get it to work on suse 11
    it just seg faults when I try to install an app

  10. Jamsi  on October 10th, 2008

    Great article Seth.

    For some reason, it wouldn’t work when I used the installer with the twirl path as the argument

    /opt/Adobe\ AIR/Versions/1.0/airappinstaller twhirl-0.8.air

    However when I just ran

    /opt/Adobe\ AIR/Versions/1.0/airappinstaller

    It prompted me to select a package, which worked flawlessly!

    Cheers again.

    http://www.jigsawboys.com/2008/10/10/how-to-install-twhirl-on-ubuntu/

  11. Oren  on November 2nd, 2008

    Did you manage to get it running on system startup? When I add a session item fro the binary, it runs but without the icon in the notification area, which is essential.

  12. hape  on November 18th, 2008

    thank you for your how-to, it seems to work fine, at least the installation (ubuntu 8.04) completed without any errors.


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