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x86 Linux Flash Player 9 is Final
Schlaegel writes "The official Adobe Linux Flash blog has announced that Flash player for x86 Linux is now final and no longer beta. Every x86 Linux user, at least those willing to load binary software, can rejoice and no longer feel like a second rate citizen. Distribution packages are also available, for example the Macromedia Fedora repository already has the flash player marked for update."
Us Linux users can now watch Zdnet's interview with Torvald about Linux kernel 2.7:)
I am not going to remove flashblock from firefox any time soon, I don't expect for flash to become any less annoying and inefficient because of this new release.
x86_64, not x64_86
Now you too can win an ipod.
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
Remind me why I should rejoice again?
Because you will now have the option of punching the monkey in addition to spanking it.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Don't. But don't think the entire world isn't interested in what you're not interested in. There's plenty of great flash content out there.
What they failed to tell you, was that flash version 723 is being released for windows next week.
I was getting ready to gripe about onerous EULA terms, so I started looking around for the actual text and found... nothing? I wasn't asked to accept a license agreement when installing the player, and I don't even see a license file anywhere.
Is it possible that Adobe actually did something really good here?
It wouldn't impact you anyways because the flash player can't be integrated with lynx.
Flash is a proprietary software app that uses proprietary protocols that are becoming ubiquitous on the internet. The new Linux 'Flash 9' will just help to further cement flash as the mainstream format for video content distribution. The linux support can be (and will be) easily dropped at some point in the future when Windows moves to 'flash 14' and Linux is hopelessly stuck on the obsolete 'Flash 13' standard. Seems like this is bad news for OSS, net neutrality, and protocols that are freely available for everyone to use anywhere.
Mod me redundant if you wish, but I second this.
As an amd64 linux user since a year and about 5 months, this platform is very mature nowadays and it makes sense to be paid more attention from adobe guys: please learn from nvidia people.
I have a 32bit chroot for any disturbances like this one, but I'm using it less and less.
On the other hand, my own dirty tests show that amd64 behaves about a 15% faster when executing 64bit code than when doing 32bit, so it is not just that 64bit can address more memory: these chips shine at 64bit and deserve a 64bit OS. Sorry but I've not tested intel 64bit CPUs so far.
They started too, but it took them a while in the design phase and then they realized there aren't any 86-bit computers out there.
You can use nspluginwrapper to use the 32 bit Flash plug-in on AMD64 and compatibles. It works quite well.
so, wait, tell me again - how do I compile it?
Do not. Touch. Down.
Anything can be integrated with lynx!
Do not. Touch. Down.
Go make a comment to that adobe site and You'll see that only positive comments are shown...
Flash Player is behaving badly on win, why would it do other on Linux ?
I guess an ARM9 version waaay back of line?
That's moot for my Linux ARM9--unless someone does a Flash to ASCII graphics version for my terminal--but I'm sure there are a number of hand-held ARM9-based devices that could use a Flash player. (/me not willing to convert my Palm TX to Linux just yet, even if browsing Flash sites is a pain.)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
...now I can get back to work on the Linux port of indi. It's one of the few Flash desktop apps out there, and it's a shame not to have it on Linux.
Besides, it'd be a waste of all that code I wrote for the Evolution extension!
The Army reading list
The Free Software Foundation is working on an open source implementation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnash
I think it came installed by default in Firefox last time I installed Ubuntu. Currently doesn't seem to work very well, but the effort is worthwhile, and hopefully the software will improve.
"The official Adobe Linux Flash blog has announced ... rejoice and no longer feel like a second rate citizen."
Congratulations, my Linux bretheren, and welcome to the exciting world of Flash! Take a look at the exciting new multimedia experience before you. Note how the banners and advertisments blink for your attention. Wow! It's just like being at Las Vegas!
Now, head to http://flashblock.mozdev.org/index.html and get Flashblock. Soon, it'll all seem like it was just a bad dream!
With an ad-blocker and Flash, you get the "best" of both worlds: You Tube *and* (relatively) ad-less surfing.
Brilliant!!
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Whenever I watch a YouTube video, sound and image are not synchronized.
If I run VMWare, boot Windows in it and play the videos inside a browser in Windows, the sound IS synchronized...
I always attributed the problem to the GPL flash player I use.
Can anyone else attest to whether or not this will change things?
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
Flash Player 7 for Linux used OSS. This required loading the ALSA-OSS compatibility modules, or or using aoss. Both methods had occasional quirks. I'll be glad to get rid of my last OSS application.
Penny - plain text accounting
There's no excuse for Flash taking 40-50% CPU time of a 1.8 GHz to decode a damn video when traditional video decoders can do it in a fraction of that. Even non-video Flash sometimes makes my laptop step up to the highest frequency, resulting in all the noisy fans ramping up. Ridiculous.
Yeah, perfectly is you don't mind it crapping out Firefox on some sites. Thank god for session saver.
Signature v3.0, now with 42% less memory usage.
For Fedora Core users you can go to this website: http://macromedia.mplug.org/ /etc/yum.repos.d
It has the required yum repo file that you need to install the flash-plugin with yum.
Quick howto:
$ wget -v http://macromedia.mplug.org/macromedia-i386.repo
$ sudo mv macromedia-i386.repo
$ sudo yum install flash-plugin
Restart Firefox for the plugin to become active.
If you already have that repo file installed you can upgrade the flash-plugin with:
$ sudo yum upgrade flash-plugin
Thanks Adobe. Hopefully we'll see a 64bit version soon.
There was no flash 8 for Linux, and a lot of sites were using it. They should all work now with this new player.
Flash Player 9 is more than just an update to what you all have known as flash. Sure, it will still play older flash content but new content written in Actionscript 3.0 using the new Actionscript Virtual Machine to playback will be way more efficient. The new methodologies for programming have a large base in JAVA, so JAVA developers will have any easy time using this new tool to make true ( rich internet ) applications that have greater ubiquity than JAVA on the web. To be honest, I think it will help take flash away from being a great tool for building horribly intrusive banner ads to being better know as one of the great tools for building rich internet experiences. On the note of proprietary versus open source, sure it is a proprietary program but Macro-Dobe ( Macromedia / Adobe ) have done a great job of using the open source community ( http://www.osflash.org/ ) to push themselves into making a better product. They support the open source development, even if it competes ( http://osflash.org/red5 ) directly with one of their products.
Flash 7 Linux was nearly in sync with the other plattforms. They took quite some time for FLash 9 (more than a year). According to Macromedia Labs it was because they redid the entire codebase and now can move on faster in xplattform developement. That's why they skipped Flash 8.
:-) )
I'm inclined to believe them.
And, being a professional Flash developer who deploys all his webstuff on Linux aswell I am now going to update from Flash MX 2k4 Pro IDE to the newest. Support Flash on Linux and I'll continue using it, drop it and I'll be off to Java/Xul/Whatever before you can say "people want cross-plattform RIA". It's that simple.
Bottom line:
Nice job. Took you long enough. Be faster next time or you'll have one flasher less.
(Now all we need is a fresh batch of O'Reillys to go with ActionScript 3 and I'm set.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
``Every x86 Linux user, at least those willing to load binary software, can rejoice and no longer feel like a second rate citizen.''
And, as usual with binary software, users of any of the many other architectures Linux support are left in the cold.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Give me a goddamn x64 build, you bastards! >:(
One of these days, I'm going to cut you into little pieces.
I'll refer you to Bug #155528, in which AbiWord 2.4.6 is released, and this bug report is filed on Nov 17th of 2006. Someone bumped the ebuild for the plugins (copied the ebuild file from 2.4.5), and it built and ran just fine, which is what I like about Gentoo -- ridiculously transparent, anyone who can do a little shell scripting can fix issues with packages.
So, you'd think this would be a simple, simple upgrade.... Nope. On Jan 1st of 2007, they bumped AbiWord to 2.4.6, but left the plugins were at 2.4.5, meaning you had a circular dependency loop -- tell Portage to update (-uDN world), and it would upgrade AbiWord to 2.4.6, because that's the latest version. Do it again, and it downgrades to 2.4.5, because that's where the plugins are.
So, one person informs them of this by adding to the report. Someone else says "abiword-plugins needs to be bumped. Thanks." I finally came in Jan 14th, and asked "Is anyone out there?" The next day, it was bumped.
Yes, it took them from Nov 17th to Jan 14th -- almost a month to do a fucking version bump. Rename two files, run one command to generate digests, commit to CVS. And they wonder why people are leaving for Debian and Ubuntu...
One wonders how they would handle a real bug. Actually, I have another one:
A bug in the jabberd init script. Opened 8/14. Found a strange hack to fix it, submitted that the same day, asking someone to tell me why my hack worked, and what the "right way" of doing it would be. 8/16, someone joined the discussion to say my hack worked, but agreed it's a hack... 9/4 something was marked dupe... 9/5 was the first patch that looked like it did the Right Thing. Few more "me too"s, few more dupes... 10/8, another update broke both my hack and the "Right Thing". 10/11, someone finally gave us a completely new init script.
Now, the final script was really the right thing to do, but one has to wonder... It's an init script. How can it be so hard to fix an init script that it takes them almost two months?!
Final exhibit, saved for last because I made a bit of an ass of myself on this one: Enigmail disappears from amd64. Now, I admit, a bug report may not be the right place to bitch about how insanely long this is taking... But still: Filed on 8/07/06, and I have a comment on 9/19 complaining about the lack of Enigmail 0.94.1, which seems to have been released on 8/12. Over a month and no upgrade in sight -- but the existing "stable" build is completely broken. On 9/29, I finally posted my success following someone else's crazy hack that somehow worked, but still no actual fix. Finally fixed on 10/19.
So, over a month with no upgrade (and a broken older version), but the new version was just as broken. Finally fixed two months after the original report. I think I can honestly say that I've only had Apple be slower at dealing with known, verified bug reports.
And I just checked... apparently, my enigmail didn't get automatically rebuilt with my last Thunderbird upgrade. Fortunately, remerging it fixed the problem... I was about to reopen that report.
If others are worse than Gentoo, it makes me think that maybe the idea of a central authority for a Linux distro is no longer workable. Sure, things like Flash will go in right away (and faster on Gentoo, because Portage is easy to work with both technically and legally for that sort of thing), but the less popular things -- like, say, Enigmail and AbiWord -- always seem to be a few months behind. Yes, months, plural -- even Microsoft is starting to look better, with their "Patch Tuesday".
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
The problem with Real, QuickTime, Windows Media and all the other video players, is that all they are just stupid video players boxed into a rectangular prison, and not customizable or adaptable in any way. You can't add to their user interface, or fix their horrible design problems. No control over how closed captioning is presented. No transparent video overlays. No extra buttons or links to related videos. No webcam support or two-way video conferencing.
From a user interface design perspective, Flash has an enormous advantage over old-school video players, because developers are able to deeply customize and integrate the video player into their own user interfaces, like Google's and YouTube's video players, the OpenLaszlo YouTube player, or the SimFaux Network TV Fox News Simulation.
The other overwhelming advantage to Flash over all the other video players, is that it's installed on way more platforms than any other existing video player. So the fact that it has almost universal coverage, plus the fact that you can customize the user interface (like YouTube, Google Video, and everyone else does), combine to make Flash the hands-down best way to distribute video over the internet.
Here's an example of what I mean by customization: A set of reusable video playback and recording components that I've developed for OpenLaszlo, which are easy to customize and integrate into your own OpenLaszlo applications:
OpenLaszlo YouTube Player Demo and Source Code
I've been working on developing streaming video support for OpenLaszlo: LZX classes to support improved audio and video, including RTMP streaming via Flash Media Server (aka Flash Communication Server) and also the Red5 Open Source Flash Server, as well as streaming video via http. It supports playback of recorded FLVs, recording from camera and microphone, live two-way (or multi-party) audio/video conferencing, and FLV streaming over http.
It's easy to use the OpenLaszlo video components, because they're nicely integrated with the OpenLaszlo programming model. They expose logical attributes and events which make it easy to integrate video into OpenLaszlo applications.
To test it out the code and demonstrate its functionality, I've developed a simple YouTube Player in OpenLaszlo [click here to open it in a window]. It uses the YouTube ReST Web API, and some simple html screen scraping to get the URL parameters to stream the FLV file directly.
Here is the source for the test application wrapper that puts the YouTube video player in a resizable window, and the more interesting source for the youtubeplayer component, that uses the new OpenLaszlo video classes I'm developing (whose source is in this directory).
The new video classes and the YouTube player demo are now checked into the OpenLaszlo svn repository.
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com