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Why Is Adobe Flash On Linux Still Broken?
mwilliamson writes "As I sit reading my morning paper online I still cannot view the embedded videos due to auto-detection of my Flash player not working. One in every three or four YouTube videos crashes the browser. I remember sometime back reading that Adobe has a very small development team (possibly only one) working on the Linux port of Flash. It has occurred to me that Flash on Linux is the one major entry barrier controlling acceptance of Linux as a viable desktop operating system. No matter how stably, smoothly, efficiently, and correctly Linux runs on a machine, the public will continue to view it as second-rate if Flash keeps crashing. This is the worst example of being tied down and bound by a crappy 3rd-party product over which no Linux distribution has any control. GNASH is nice, but it just isn't there 100%. I really do have to suspect Adobe's motivation for keeping Flash on Linux in such a deplorable state."
I've noticed, at least since I switched from Firefox 2 to Firefox 3, that when Adobe Flash Player 9 ( or 10 ) is installed the browser exhibits sporadic lockups and crashes when navigating the Web -- not just when viewing Flash video or a site that makes heavy use of Flash, although that does seem to increase the odds of the browser eating itself.
After the release of Firefox 3.0 I opted to install Adobe Flash Player 10 Beta. The performance was much better as was the video quality and I didn't experience as many crashes. This all changed when Adobe updated the Beta and the details can be found in the bug report that I filed here. To summarize, after the update, Flash Player 10 would cause the browser to segfault and lockup so frequently, sometimes even upon startup, that the browser became unusable -- I had to downgrade to Flash Player 9. Currently there is someone from Adobe assigned to work on the "problem" whatever it is, but I haven't heard anything in weeks.
jdb2
See, thats marked as troll, and the poster probably was trolling. However, is there a real difference between flash and silverlight? They're both controlled by a single company. If Moonlight (the linux based open source version based on mono) takes off, shouldn't that put more pressure on Adobe to fix their crappy linux port?
Of course, I'd take silverlight more seriously if it worked better on Windows. Several computers I've set up have had problems installing Silverlight.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
I've never been able to make any Flash site at all work with gnash (I'm currently using gnash 0.8.2).
I too am using 64 bit Linux and and just recently gnash has come on by leaps and bounds. I'm currently running 0.8.3 and suddenly quite a lot of things (including youtube) work.
I'm puzzled by the original article though. I've always found Adobe flash on 32-bit Linux to work without problem. The real issue seems to me to be their failure to produce a 64-bit version of flash for *any* platform - Linux or Windows. With the steady shift to 64-bit computing, they're going to find themselves frozen out soon if they aren't careful.
Not just that - Flash is also great for minigames, original animation, small applications... The only thing flash should NOT be used for is making websites, wholly or in part. Unfortunately, lots of bad webmasters just don't get it.
Of course, maybe if Javascript behavior was more consistent across different browsers, versions of the same browser and operating systems, people would stop making crappy flash websites.
First off, I think Slashcode ate some tags in your post.
On topic: for YouTube and other embedded video, one can try one of the few bazillion "play this video using embedded MPlayer/Media Player/QuickTime/VLC/whatever" Greasemonkey scripts over on userscripts.org. That is, if you use a Mozilla-based browser.
The Hacker's Guide To The Kernel: Don't panic()!
Oh and don't forget to AdBlock the original video with a suitable pattern, as otherwise Flash and your favorite player will fight a duel to the death over which one is going to play the video, the loser (Flash) often taking the browser down with it.
The Hacker's Guide To The Kernel: Don't panic()!
but there are plenty of ways to present video via JavaScript without using a plugin monster like Flash or Silverlight. That's what Apple does
No. Apple uses Quicktime, which is a plug-in. Are you being purposefully dense?
It's pretty monstrous, too. Flash is, what, 1.4 MB download? Silverlight is like 4.5 MB or so... the old 1.0 version less. Quicktime is somewhere around 23 MB.
Using the presentation of web video as a killer app for browser middleware is absurdly ridiculous.
Ok; so how do you do it without using "browser middleware?" The only browser with any form of video support at the moment is Safari, since they're already starting to implement HTML5. Hey, maybe HTML5 will be super successful and using plug-ins like Quicktime and Flash to present video will be seen as quaint. But that doesn't change the fact that, right now for the majority of users, a browser plug-in is the only way to view video on the web.
So let's take the third application of Flash/Silverlight beyond animated ads and framing video: rich apps. Apple is also proving that this can be done just as well using a JavaScript framework with MobileMe. Yes, Apple had problems getting their servers up to serve the few million upgrading .Mac users and an an influx of new iPhone MM subscribers, but the apps work pretty well, and they outclass anything I've seen built in Flash/Flex/AIR.
I can't drag a file from my desktop and drop it on a Javascript application. I can't have a Javascript application ask me where to save a file to my computer, then save it. There's no such thing as a Javascript runtime (although I hear Mozilla is working on one) so that I can use the JS app like a local application, without requiring a browser.
There are tons of things Flash/Flex/AIR can do that Javascript can't. Remember the concepts there were cribbed from Shockwave, and Shockwave has a track record of making functional cross-platform applications that don't require a browser.
You don't even have to like Apple's hardware to appreciate what its doing for open source.
I don't really give a crap about what license a particular piece of code is under. I do, however, care that you're so busy giving your Steve Jobs collector's doll a blowjob to realize that Quicktime is actually a browser plugin... seriously, man, get a grip.
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