Adobe Flash CS4 on Ubuntu 8.10

Ok. I admit the title can be misleading. This is more of a tip for people who do flash work and cannot survive as Ruby on Rails or Python developers on a Windows machine or simply for people want to explore Linux without discarding Windows (and Mac is something they pretend they haven’t heard of. Steve Jobs, throw us some Macs here. We need them).

Since November 2008, I’ve pretty much survived using Ubuntu Linux as my main operating system. I am primarily a frontend developer (CSS, XHTML, Javascript, Actionscript and some PHP, Ruby work as well).

Question is, can a designer survive in a Linux environment? The answer is YES and NO. Yes, you can use Flash CS4 or any Windows application well in Linux. And no because you still need to run Windows XP (I suggest not using Vista) on a Virtual Machine.

Step 1: Install VMWare Server 2 for Linux

The answer to all your Windows apps on Linux worries is VMware Server. You’ll also need to get a license key. Choose VMWare Server 2 for Linux. And I hate replicating other people’s post so I might as well just direct you to this link for installation guide.

Note that the minimum system requirements of Adobe Flash CS4 is 1GB of RAM so you need at least 1.8GB all-in-all to actually run both Windows and Ubuntu on your laptop/desktop.

My very opinionated tip: Forget about WINE! Wine can make Windows applications work in Linux but just forget about it if you have enough RAM anyway.

Step 2: Install a guest operating system

You’d need a CD of Windows XP or an ISO file to install the guest operating system on VMWare. The ISO file I dropped on a the vmware folder worked just fine. There is a whole blog discussing how to install a Guest OS on VMWare Server 2. But believe me, you don’t even need to read the whole pdf to get things working.

Step 3: Use Samba File Sharing to access your files from your guest operating system

This is important. You wouldn’t want your data to be within the C drive on your guest OS which is pretty much within the directory of vmware on your linux file system. Read the guide on how to access files and folders from your guest operating system.

Step 4: Install Adobe Flash CS4. I recommend not installing the whole Adobe Creative Suite 4 if you don’t need everything.

Flash CS4 on my Windows XP Guest Operating System