Adobe unveils Flash 9 for Linux

Adobe is increasing the development of rich internet applications for Linux

Adobe has unveiled its Flash Player 9 for Linux, allowing online services such as YouTube and Google Video to function with the open source operating system. 

The player requires an 800MHz processor, 512MB Ram and a 128MB graphics card. Advanced Linux Sound Architecture software is required for sound playback.

Red Hat and SuSE are the only two Linux distributions officially supported by the player, although Adobe said at the beta announcement in October that it expected the player to work with most distributions of Linux. 

The release of Flash Player 9 is part of a larger offensive by Adobe aimed at increasing the development of rich internet applications for Linux. The company also released a free software development kit (SDK) for Linux called Flex 2 SDK.

Emmy Huang, senior product manager at Adobe, said that the release of the player and SDK were aimed at "bringing Linux developers and users to the forefront of the Web 2.0 experience".

Rich internet, or Web 2.0, applications are online services such as Flickr and Gmail which are designed to replace conventional software. The services usually run in a bro wser and require a third-party plug-in such as Java or Flash.