For those of you who don't know what AIR is... (pause in disbelief) ...OK, let me start by giving you a link.
Adobe AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime)
The good news is YESTERDAY AIR for Linux is official public release 1.0... err, nope. Same version as the other platforms. It's version 1.5 so the Linux guys don't have to wait to catch up. If you are a developer you can write an application one time and it will work on Linux, Mac or if you insist Steve Balmer could even install it on his desktop (yes that means windows).