My Mac is in the shop and my Vista PC is inoperable. So I’ve wiped all of my drives clean and installed Linux for home projects.

Since I’m a Flash developer, I’ve stuck with Mac and PC mainly for the Flash IDE (which crashes constantly).  But now, SWF compilers are open and free. For graphics, I’ll be using Inkscape to export SVG.

A minimalist at heart, I’m not a fan of bloated IDEs. I think the fastest way to edit code is with Vi (invented in 1976.) Or emacs if you prefer.

Here are some software links for open source Flash development:

Flex SDK – A cross-platform Command-line swf compiler written in Java

HaXe – An ECMAscript language and compiler that compiles to the Flash player and other languages

Vim AS3 and MXML Syntax File – Sweet

Free AS2 compiler - If you’re still stuck in AS2, this compiler can give even better performance than Adobe’s compiler

Apache Ant – A command-line build tool that can replace the flash project panel

Inkscape - Open alternative to Adobe Illustrator