EDIT: Added a couple of other things I found that *might* be necessary. Let me know if people are running into stuff that still doesn’t work…
The latest version of twhirl (0.8.7) came out last week to deal with changes in the twitter API. All well and good. Until I tried to update twhirl on my laptop, and my desktop. What’s this? It requires Adobe Air 1.5? But Air 1.5 isn’t available on Linux yet… Sad is me, until today. Today Adobe moved Adobe Air from the Beta column on Linux to the full release with version 1.5. All is good. Except for getting the new version installed and getting twhirl working is a bit of a chore. After a bit of googling I have figured out the secret sauce required to get it to work. And I share this secret sauce with you here. (this was done on Ubuntu 8.10 but the process should be similar on any flavor of Linux just substitute the appropriate package management commands and you should be golden).
Start by downloading Adobe Air 1.5 and twhirl 0.8.7 and save them somewhere handy. I choose the Desktop.
sudo aptitude remove adobeair1.0 adobeair-enu
sudo aptitude search twhirl (note the package name)
sudo aptitude remove ${name of twhirl package from above}
sudo rm -Rf /var/opt/Adobe\ AIR/ /opt/Adobe\ Air/
rm -Rf ~/.adobe/ ~/.macromedia/
sudo rm -Rf /root/.adobe /root/.macromedia
chmod +x ~/Desktop/AdobeAIRInstaller.bin
~/Desktop/AdobeAIRInstaller.bin
Install twhirl-0.8.7.air
That’s it. You should now be ready to share your uber witty comments with the rest of the world.
Update: Somebody has claimed that there was a typo in this post. That, of course, is a blatant falsehood and the person claiming this should be ashamed.