Installing Adobe AIR and Tweetdeck on an Asus eee 701

Tweetdeck is an Adobe AIR application that is a twitter client, and recently also a Facebook client.

My attempts to install Adobe AIR on the Asus eee 701 (running the default Xandros distro) were foiled several times in spite of following the instructions:

1. Download Adobe AIR
2. Make the AdobeAIRInstaller.bin file executable
3. Run the .bin file as a superuser

I got a nice friendly fail message from the Adobe AIR installer every time.

I found a few relevant forum posts, e.g. Adobe Air Linux won’t install on Eee PC, that suggested memory was an issue. Sure enough, running in Full Desktop Mode with 1440×900 screen resolution (on an external display), I only had about 90MB of 500MB free.

I restarted the eee in Easy Mode and then immediately ran AdobeAirInstaller.bin. Success! (I later found these same instructions on the eee user forums.)

Installing Tweetdeck was trivial at that point: download the .air file, find it in the File Manager, and double-click it. However, when I ran it, it didn’t do anything. At one point I got a message that I was running an unknown desktop, and that Tweetdeck required Gnome or KDE.

I restarted in Full Desktop Mode, and was surprised to find a Tweetdeck icon already on the desktop. I ran it and was prompted to use KWallet, a KDE password manager. I canceled out of that, and found that Tweetdeck opened, but still didn’t do anything.

I tried again, activated the KWallet password manager, and then it worked! Tweetdeck prompted me for my twitter login, I additionally logged in to Facebook, and now I have a mean, lean, social networking machine.