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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."
Flash (and Silverlight, et al) are a threat to the Internet generally. I wouldn't run Flash even if they bothered to create a version that runs on my OS (64-bit Linux).
The more of use that don't use Flash, the better.
Flash 9.0.124.0 crashes all the time on my wife's Windows XP system running Firefox as well. Most of the time it exhibits as not being able to play sound. So it definitely isn't limited to Linux. Flash is just crap.
Flash is a great channel to provide commercial products (video, ads, DRM'ed shit).
It's no threat at all when Flash isn't abused as website critical table of contents.
To comment on the OP: have you already tried the version 10 release candidate? It's supposed to support new audio API's and hardware acceleration.
"I really do have to suspect Adobe's motivation for keeping Flash on Linux in such a deplorable state."
This is an irksome statement. I doubt Adobe has an interest in making Linux look bad. Isn't there a saying, "never ascribe to malice what can be explained by incompetence."
Probably what would work better here is, "never ascribe to malice what can be explained by business sense." Linux is 4%ish of the desktop market so it would make sense that 4% (or less, but certainly not more) of Adobe flash development go to linux porting. 4% of their development just isn't going to make Flash as good as it is on other platforms, and I doubt they are receiving a lot of money from linux distros to change this.
Yeah it sucks if you use linux but no need to point a finger at Adobe. Its simple dollars and cents (or sense).
What does it say if Adobe only has 1 employee (if that) working on the linux Flash port and he's doing a better job than GNASH and open source development?
If you really feel so strongly about Flash's importance, maybe you should help turn GNASH into a viable solution.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
There's various bug reports about this with regards to Pulseaudio and Flash--as well as numerous othat applications--in all major distributions that have packaged Pulseaudio by default. I'm not going to link all the bug reports in a slashdot comment, but you can search for them yourself.
The story and summary seems to be calling out Adobe on this issue, when it's not really their fault. If PA didn't have as many compatibility issues with alsa applications as it has, Flash would work fine.
It's unfair to call out Adobe on this issue. It expects a working alsa implementation, and when it has to use Pluseaudio's version of the virtual device, it crashes. Adobe doesn't have any control over the faultily implementation. So if there's a story that's about Flash crashing fine, but let's put the blame where it belongs here.
Of course it's possible to implement Flash with free software, but that won't solve the problem. Free software is a powerful enough development method to overcome CSS, the Windows API, SMB, and DX. What task do you think is out of reach? The problem then is one of a legal framework that makes it impossible to distribute free software that works with broken media like DVDs and websites that use Flash. There are technical solutions but legal solutions are better. Software patents and the DMCA must go.
There are several technical solutions to broken media. One is for individuals to ignore bad laws and just get DeCSS. A better one is to code around YouTube like Clive does. You can also simply avoid non free media, after all the Internet Archive, Wikipedia and Creative Commons have multiple lifetimes worth of excellent entertainment and education. Most of these send a clear message that Flash, Silverlight and other non free media is broken. Competing technology and it's users are going to win.
Legal solutions are better. We would not have problems with broken media if people were allowed to share their solutions. Laws that prohibit people from sharing free software are always wrong and should never have passed. Modern copyright law is at odds with its purpose and must be reformed.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Forget the admin -- he/she probably got paid for doing the Flash work and is glad to have the bucks. What you need to do, is walk in and ask to talk to the owner. Tell him/her his website design is causing him to lose business because you can no longer order dinner on your way home. This causes you to patronize other shops. As a small business owner myself, I can tell you that that sort of feedback has a 99.99% chance of getting serious attention. There's always an outlier here or there of course.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Have some tcpdump or ngrep logs to show such behavior? Or maybe your tinfoil hat is too tight.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
I agree with this - but it's important not to go off on some zealotry-driven rant (this being Slashdot) that's full of generalizations. Keep it simple, and explain the exact situation: There is no way to use the restaurant's new website on an iPhone, at all; while it used to work perfectly fine (make sure they realize this second part - something is broken that used to work well).
I've seen and heard plenty of zealotry-driven rants about the web, usually regarding Flash or Javascript. In the real world people don't care about your opinions regarding "good" or "evil" technologies. What they DO care about is something that isn't working in a practical manner.
A burger place may listen politely to a vegetarian, but they're not going to change much to accommodate that person. When a repeat customer is taking their business elsewhere, they're a bit more willing to make changes.
#DeleteChrome
There is two versions of Flash decoding libraries, one called Gnash and another called Swfdec. I still wonder why they don't work together, but hey, they are open source and both has kinda different visions how to deal with Flash proprietary stuff.
While the Slashdot story opined that "Flash on Linux is the one major entry barrier controlling acceptance of Linux as a viable desktop operating system", I think you've unintentionally hit on the real reason Linux isn't taken seriously in the desktop arena by the masses. How many times have we seen this exact scenario played out on Linux (e.g. in window managers, browsers, digital music, video, etc.)?
#DeleteChrome
Poor Flash is the one major barrier? Pah - there are a number of more pressing issues, like poor wireless support...
Hardware problems are annoying, but they are fundamentally different from the problem of "critical" software being broken or unavailable. A computer manufacturer that wants to ship computers with Linux pre-loaded, instead of Windows, can pick Linux-friendly hardware to work around the hardware problems. There is no work-around for Flash being crap.
Depends, is one trying to be productive or is one a hobbyist? I find that most of the time when I spend the time to troubleshoot the problem, I end up with some ideas as to how to avoid the problem the next time around, or how to fix it in minimal time when it does occur.
But in terms of productivity, unless it's a recurring problem, it probably is more productive to just reinstall the OS in those cases.
Well, that's assuming that one doesn't compile everything from scratch and lack backups of the packages from which to quickly reinstall them.
I'm a flash developer and I'll be the first to admit that the format has some major drawbacks.
The parent is correct though, there are no viable alternatives to the format. Nothing I know of provides the kinds of experience that flash is capable is. (see this site) Advertising drives the consumer side of the web and advertisers aren't going to move to less interactive or more static mediums. It also doesn't hurt that flash has a 99% penetration.
If there was a better platform with good penetration, while maintaining the ability to build rich interactivity, I'd be the first to jump.
The original poster of this article is experiencing bugs with his or her distribution, *not* merely with Flash. There are several issues at work here.
a) Flash 10 RC is the first version to support "windowless mode" flash content that several sites use. Unfortunately, there is a bug in Firefox that causes "windowless mode" content to crash. It is not a bug caused by Adobe Flash; un fact, the newest version of swfdec (which also added support for "windowless mode" content) also causes Firefox to crash. This fix is due for release in Firefox 3.0.2 and a workaround is available for older releases already. See: https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/239182
b) Ubuntu Hardy was the first release to integrate PulseAudio, but its default configuration can cause a lot of trouble for users. PulseAudio provides ALSA plugins that enable plain ALSA applications to work correctly with PulseAudio; these plugins are supposed to be enabled by default. Some (buggy) applications do not work correctly using these plugins, including Flash 9 and Audacity. Hardy was released without these plugin enabled, causing many audio mixing problems for users. See: https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/198453
c) It appears the original poster is using the libflashsupport library, which is a workaround to enable PulseAudio support in Flash without the need for the ALSA plugins mentioned in point (b) to be enabled. There is a bug in Flash when using the libflashsupport API; closing and opening new flash streams will result in a crash (such as navigating from one Youtube page to another). See: https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/192888
d) Flash 10 has fixed its ALSA implementation, allowing it to work correctly with the PulseAudio ALSA plugins as mentioned in point (b) - this means that the (buggy) libflashsupport library is now redundant.
Note that all the above bugs contain links to the upstream issues when applicable. For those too lazy to follow the individual bugs, I have posted a guide to configure PulseAudio (and Flash 10) correctly for Ubuntu users, complete with testing packages. See: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=789578
But at least we have access to the Moonlight source code to fix bugs when needed.
Well, Microsoft officially endorse the open-source client, so I'd imagine that they have at least a somewhat vested interest in making sure that it works and remains compatible with the official windows/mac clients.
It's really a shame that people haven't embraced Silverlight, as it really does have the potential to be a lot better than Flash. Unfortunately, the Open-source community treated it with outright hostility, and it looks unlikely to catch us.
Therefore, instead of getting a slightly-more-open and slightly-more-compatible standard than Flash that also addresses many of Flash's performance issue, we're left with.....Flash.
Unless the Open Source community has a legitimate alternative to Silverlight or Flash ready, I wouldn't go parading around and criticizing either.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
The reason why it won't ever supersede Flash or Silverlight is because it's not supposed to supersede Flash or Silverlight. SVG is designed for still vector images and animation on the order of animated gif (IE, short and no sound). Nothing else.
This means that both the parent and the grandparent are being dumb. SVG isn't meant to do what flash does and so the GP is ascribing abilities to it which it will never have and P is criticizing it for not doing things which it was never meant to do. Obligatory Car Analogy: GP suggests using a pickup truck to move a shipping trailer on a long-haul delivery. P says that pickup trucks suck because they can't pull shipping trailers very well and then calls everyone who drives one a smelly virgin.
As for online video, why the fuck is every sonofabitch out there making their own fucking flash client for video? Video should be distributed in a proper file none of this "Compress->Re-encode/resample for flash->stream to my computer" bullshit...
Well, Microsoft officially endorse the open-source client, so I'd imagine that they have at least a somewhat vested interest in making sure that it works and remains compatible with the official windows/mac clients.
It's really a shame that people haven't embraced Silverlight, as it really does have the potential to be a lot better than Flash. Unfortunately, the Open-source community treated it with outright hostility, and it looks unlikely to catch us.
Long story short:
If you're trying to gain market share you'll get in bed with pretty much anyone for backing.
If you're trying to keep market share you'll sabotage any real compatbility and interoperability.
Microsoft is not trusted because they have a deeply vested interest in making sure that the only place things really work is on the Windows platform. So we help Microsoft kill flash and when Silverlight has momentum enough, they won't need us anymore. Then you have another Microsoft-controlled technology that ships by default with Windows tying people to the Windows platform, while the OSS community tries to pull off another half-assed dotnet clone which doesn't really work well. Adobe's support for Linux sucks, but replacing it with Microsoft won't be any better in the long run.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Microsoft owns several patents related to Silverlight, covering both implementation and concepts. Microsoft promises that it will not sue the Moonlight team over any of these patents. However, a promise is not a legal agreement.
How much faith do you have in Microsoft keeping its promises?
I'll tell you how I'm helping FOSS - Advocacy.
Over the last 12 years I've been in and out of various small to medium companies, tearing out expensive proprietary systems leaving Linux-based OSS solutions in my wake. No - I can't fix the DNS vulnerability that we just had, and I'll probably never be instrumental in getting Flash working on Linux. What I can do is teach the masses what's available to them from the FOSS world in a professional and non-rabid manner (I'm looking at you, Twitter), and get them using and talking about it.
I've even (in an uncommon fit of diplomacy) attempted to bring the Gentoo crowd together and try and start acting like adults, concentrate effort on the distribution rather than all the factionism - but like trying to figure out why my Sparc20 would hang when I loaded the fibre-channel module - some things are simply beyond me.
What do you think happens to all these non-dev / non-tech people who encounter the "submit-a-diff-or-GTFO" mentality? Do they actually spend the rest of their days learning to code? No - they bugger off back where they came from - Proprietary Closed-Source Software, probably never to return. Thanks pal, that's all my work down the drain, thanks to some smug elitist twit that doesn't realise that - as good a developer he is - he is only one part of the puzzle.
Without sane and reasoned advocates, FOSS will wind up being excellent software (only by virtue of defeating their critics) used only by those that develop it. I've a sneaking suspicion that's exactly what some devs want.
Keep in mind though, that using a no CD crack is pretty much a requirement for running many games in Windows too. All convenience issues aside, SecuROM and other DRM can actually break the games' ability to run in many systems CD or not. To say nothing of various Windows issues you may have due to the DRM. So after you buy the game, you frequently need either a No-CD cracked .exe, or you just pirate the damn thing and leave the unopened game on your shelf.
In regards to Flash, I've never actually had an issue with it. I run Ubuntu 8.04 and the non-free binary version of Flash and Firefox has no issues whatsoever with YouTube or any Flash site. Indeed, I've not had a problem with flash since Ubuntu 5.10 or thereabouts. Now, Shockwave, that's another issue. It doesn't work AT ALL. I'd like to see a fix for that sometime this millenium.
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But Flash suck on OS X aswell, a couple of pages with flash ads can easily take all my processor power, no matter how much there is, which is just unacceptable.
What we need is to get rid of flash since it sucks balls, who needs it?
1) Flash are mostly used for ads, who wants ads? Especially if they move, makes sound, sits on top of other things, take lots of CPU power, memory and heats up your machine.
2) Flash are sometimes used to design complete webpages, which suck because they have to be navigated in a non-standard way, design goes over function, they take forever to load and I can't open lots of screenshots in multiple tabs...
3) Finally flash are used for videos, which I guess some people who don't have a clue like because that way they don't have to install any more codecs. But personally that's (youtube, gametrailers, and such) the only thing stopping me from removing flash completely, so I so much want this to change. Safari can handle video directly in the browser and I hope we see more of that, won't happen until the suckers with IE get the functionallity + couple of years extra I guess though :/
Even old embedded quicktime days was better.
As for online video, why the fuck is every sonofabitch out there making their own fucking flash client for video? Video should be distributed in a proper file none of this "Compress->Re-encode/resample for flash->stream to my computer" bullshit...
Because it Just Works, and Flash is ubiquitous whether you like or not. According to the stats on the commercial site I maintain, upwards of 96% of visitors have some FLV-capable version Flash installed. That means I can deploy video without forcing some large percentage of my users to install yet another player/plugin/codec just to see it. That just isn't true of any other comparable streaming video technology.
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