Adobe Systems is thinking about Linux users too! The company wants to extend its AIR - Adobe Integrated Runtime - software to Linux later this year. The first stable version - 1.0 - was released a few days ago, only for Windows and Mac platforms.

AIR was known at first as Apollo, and is a runtime that enables rich Internet applications, or RIAs, to run offline on the desktop. Kevin Lynch, Adobe CTO, said : "This could enable a whole new frontier of applications for Linux. We're actually looking for Linux users to help us test it." The current Linux version of AIR is in alpha stage, according to Adobe.

Because Microsoft has to get involved everywhere, they've prepared a statement that cited security concerns about AIR, and compared it with the Silverlight technology, developed by Microsoft. In the statement, the company said: "There is a significant risk in letting Web applications run loose outside the browser security sandbox. [Microsoft] Silverlight applications run within the browser security sandbox."

Michele Turner, Adobe vice president of platforms, denies this with the fact that AIR has modifications to enable applications to run securely. She said: "It's not that it's running wild and free on the desktop. We kind of created our own sandbox."

After Linux, the next step will be mobile devices, which Lynch considers a growing market in its emphasis. He said: "I believe is going to shift in the next few years where we're actually going to start talking about mobile first and making it work on the big screen."

AIR brings to Web applications desktop capabilities, like drag and drop, local file system access and system notification. Programs that are using AIR can be made using the same technologies used for building Web applications, such as HTML, JavaScript, Adobe Flex and Flash.