OK. So for anyone else having this issue, when Adobe decides to piss on us Linux Flash developers again:
This time it was making my Flex Builder Alpha expire. First it took hours ( and two unhelpful Adobe reps ) to realize that there was a new alpha available for Flex. I thought they were trying to make me buy a license. So I figured, oh, cool, it'll be a cinch to upgrade. But I was incorrect.

Upgrading Flex builder linux to alpha 5, on 64-bit Ubuntu 9.10:

I've decided it's high time to bite the bullet and learn a bit of our favorite four-letter word, Java. I've been itching to get into some serious red5 development lately.

For those of you not familiar, red5 is an Open Source Flash Server written in Java that lets you do very cool things like flash remoting, sharing objects between Flex apps and Java, and more. What does this mean?

In-browser videochat, multiplayer games that update in real-time, live steaming video recording from your browser to my server, etc. Cool, huh?

So, my plan for getting started has been the following: