There are lots of cool applications based on Adobe Air platform e.g. Seesmic Desktop, Twhrl & TweetDeck for Twitter,  Times Reader for reading NewYork Times etc. on your Desktop.
Adobe Air is operating system independent so all the applications work on Windows, Mac and Linux.  Installing an application is quite easy too.  You just need to have latest Adobe Air installed on your machine.
Image representing TweetDeck as depicted in Cr...Image via CrunchBase

Don’t worry if it is already not installed, any application you try to install will automatically do it for you or at least ask you to have it installed.


Now the question is how do you uninstall Adobe Air Applications.  Uninstalling air applications involve different steps on different OS.
Fortunately it is no different on Windows as you can remove air applications the same way you uninstall any other application.
I am not sure about Mac, because I have never used it.  So I will request someone using Mac to please add in the comments if the process is different on Mac.

Removing Air Apps on Ubuntu (Linux):
Method 1: (The easy way)
  1. Download the application in question again and save the file on your desktop.
  2. Go to Applications ->Accessories ->’Adobe Air Application Installer’ and browse to the file you downloaded.
  3. On the prompt screen, select uninstall.
  4. That’s it.  The application will be removed.
Method 2: (Alternate easy way)
  1. Go to ‘Applications -> Add/Remove Programs’ and search for the program name you are planning to remove.  e.g. Friendfeed, TweetDeck etc.
  2. Just un-check the box for the application in question.
  3. Hit Apply and confirm.
  4. That’s it.  The application will be removed the way any other application on Linux is removed.  Cool huh…
  5. UPDATE: Starting Ubuntu 9.10 onwards, you can uninstall Adobe Air applications from Ubuntu Software Center itself.  No need to search for package or anything.
Method 3: (The Geek way)
  1. Hit the terminal.
  2. Enter ‘sudo dpkg -S /opt/*’ (without quotes).
  3. You will get an output like this:

    adobeair1.0: /opt/Adobe AIR
    boxee: /opt/boxee
    app.destroyflickr.f242b970c206039aa6d597ec43895e3dd9c3cfe0.1: /opt/DestroyFlickr
    app.destroytwitter.23ca2f9b070e2fb8c4472f982f88b1a471f11ae2.1: /opt/DestroyTwitter
    com.friendfeed.friendfeed.e15dd0e93fae91f55000c2534280f7d2e075d241.1: /opt/FriendFeed
    picasa: /opt/google
    com.seesmic.desktop.client.d89f32799270693bef34aaa36e9b2632b59240fa.1: /opt/Seesmic Desktop
    com.nyt.timesreader.78c54164786ade80cb31e1c5d95607d0938c987a.1: /opt/Times Reader
    tweetdeckfast.f9107117265db7542c1a806c8db837742ce14c21.1: /opt/TweetDeck

  4. Enter ‘sudo dpkg -P tweetdeckfast.f9107117265db7542c1a806c8db837742ce14c21.1′ for example to uninstall TweetDeck.
  5. You will see the output like this:

    (Reading database … 117955 files and directories currently installed.)
    Removing tweetdeckfast.f9107117265db7542c1a806c8db837742ce14c21.1 …

  6. That’s it.  Any application can be uninstalled by copy and pasting the required location from the output received in step 3.

A little explanation about the commands I used is mentioned below:

  • dpkg: provides the information about applications. (Debian Package)
  • /opt/*: provides information about all applications in ‘opt’ directory.
  • Enter ‘dpkg –help’ in the terminal to get complete list of commands you can use related to packages installed on your Linux machine.
Hope this information helps who are finding difficulty in uninstalling Adobe air applications.  Drop a comment below if this article helped you.

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