A blessing or curse? Here are five bytes to help you cope with the loss and pave the way for a better builder.

00000001: Resource Allocation
Responsible companies take resource allocation very seriously... and spend their dollars where they, and hopefully we, get the best bang for the buck. We should always voice our developer and end-user needs, wants, and luxuries - but need to embrace the fact there there is a 'big picture' driving resource allocation.

Sometimes you win...
http://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/SDK-17854

Sometimes you are given a priority of none and are deferred...
http://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/SDK-14327

Does it make sense to allocate resources for a development environment that runs on any OS? If you answered yes - you've just tipped the scale in favor of OS / system compatibility over features / functionality.

00000010: Preserving Product Focus
Flex Builder runs under the Eclipse umbrella right? It should be simple to make a cross-platform development environment that is feature rich and... and... and will obviate the need for specialized teams, management, and product oversight. In the real world there is time, money, quality, and quantity... of which you can realistically have three.

Be careful what you ask for - you might get it.

00000011: Open Source Goodness
Adobe has, at an enormous expense, open-sourced the Flex SDK and invited the development community to contribute directly to product improvement. I do need to come clean on the Flex Bug Quash though... when I first heard about it I thought, "yeah... sounds like a great way to get free development resources." The post-mortem on the Quash tells a different story. My apologies to the planners, participants, and providers; I won't hesitate signing up for the next event.

000000100: The Virtual Machine
The proliferation of the virtualized OS has driven cost down (ridiculously inexpensive) and performance to a point that it is difficult to dismiss the technology as a serious tool in the developers arsenal. Do you really _have_ to develop on Linux? I have a hard time saying yes... If you feel differently, consider the 'integrated' experience that products like Parallels and VMWare offer.

Whilst I am ruminating... wouldn't it be awesome if Adobe was thinking about wrapping the development environment as an appliance? Erk... I think my head just exploded.

00000101: Manageable Test Matrices
Tom Chiverton rallies the troops IN DEFIANCE OF MY THUNDER FIST TECHNIQUE!

Er...

It is important to consider the speed that technology is advancing / evolving and how iteration cycles are being impacted (getting shorter and shorter). Even if Flex Builder on Linux seems like low hanging fruit - I think it is safe to say that adding another OS (with it's respective quirks) to the testing matrix isn't trivial and would require people with specialized knowledge to resolve problems when (not if) they come up. Quelle est la distribution?

Feel differently? That's ok... you have every right to cast your vote along with Tom to keep Flex Builder on Linux alive.

http://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/FB-19053