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Linux Now an Equal Flash Player

Posted by timothy on from the cheek-by-jowl dept.

nerdyH writes "As recently as 2007, Linux users waited six months for Flash 9 to arrive. Now, with Microsoft pushing its Silverlight alternative, Adobe is touting the universality of its Flash format, which has penetrated '98 percent of Internet-enabled desktops,' it claims. And, it today released Flash 10 for Linux concurrently with other platforms. Welcome to the future." Handily enough, Real Networks released this summer RealPlayer 11 for Linux, the first release for which they've included a .deb package, and offers nightly builds of their Helix player, for which Linux is one of the supported platforms.

7 of 437 comments (clear)

  1. yay competition! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Now make them do the same with Photoshop.

    1. Re:yay competition! by Virtual_Raider · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I don't see a great number of professional graphic artists willing to brave the murky linux technowaters. They love Apple because to them it's basically a TV.

      No, wait, hold your flamethrowers! I don't mean it isn't a powerful OS, what I mean is that they don't have to do anything to make their tools work. When was the last time that you needed to upgrade, configure or recompile something to watch a show on a consumer television set? Yes, the signal goes digital so you ditch the old box and get on with the shinies. Exactly as in the Mac world. Need more functionality — channels — then get cable, satellite, TiVo, younameit. No messing about with the appliance itself, just plug the add-on and bother about using it. Want a car analogy? You need know nothing about carburetors or lack thereof to drive. As long as you heed the lights on the dashboard and shell out at the mechanic when the issue goes beyond them, all a user needs to know is how to operate the thing, not how to service it.

      The average /. enthusiast's personal anecdote is irrelevant because they are a vanishing small percentage of the target market. For instance, Automakers don't cater to blingers, modders and assorted $YOURHOBBY$ers, those are a niche markets serviced by niche players.

      I believe this is the reason you won't see Photoshop on linux until there is a rock solid OSX-like distro that the userbase (the pros, mostly) can use with a kitchen microwave level of ease. If you are an enthusiast you'd be MUCH better off supporting GIMP with both your time and bug reports as with your bucks donating to the project. Check out 2.6, its orders of magnitude better than, say, 2.4 (my previous version).

      I only wish they'd change the name to G-Imp or Imp/G or even GNU-Imp because most of the time the stupid name is the biggest objection people cite to not even give it a chance. English being my second language, the name means jack to me, but I've encountered the argument often enough...

      --
      +Raider of the lost BBS
  2. Competition is good! by rotide · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And this is a good example! Why change, update, or innovate if you have no competition? Throw a little in there and all of a sudden the things people actually wanted, are given!

  3. Linux people, I want your platform to succeed... by not+already+in+use · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...But please, lets be realistic.

    In your minds, if company Z doesn't support Linux, they lose. If they do support linux, they lose even worse. They get screamed at for not releasing specs, not GPL'ing the source, not supporting a specific distribution, not supporting 64-bit... the list goes on.

    Now if you're going to take the time to respond to this, please answer me this: Why should company X spend the most time supporting a platform that has the least marketshare?

    Linux folk see the problem being that software vendors don't support linux. The fact of the matter is Linux doesn't support ISV's. There are a million different distro's with no standardization. You already have your market share working against you, and you realize that. What you don't seem to realize is that your platform is the hardest to develop for and support.

    You really should do something about this before you scream with a sense of entitlement that some company should spend time and money supporting your platform when it is not likely to be financially viable.

    --
    Similes are like metaphors
  4. Re:No 64-bit by PitaBred · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That was also written, oh, two fucking years ago! They haven't figured out how to make their JIT compiler work in two years? What kind of incompetents are they? I'm sure it's a hard problem. Lots of problems are hard. But somehow Firefox and Opera and even IE managed to get their Javascript code working on 64bit platforms in the meantime. Why is Flash somehow special?

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    My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
  5. Re:The future? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    *cough*Opera*cough*

    But seriously, Opera now has a native 64 bit build but it runs 32 bit plugins without any special voodoo. "OMG it isn't open source" you say... well neither is flash.

  6. Gnash 0.8.4 Released Yesterday by ink · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Gnash 0.8.4 was released yesterday, but I guess that doesn't merit a slashvertisement:

    http://gnashdev.org/

    --
    The wheel is turning, but the hamster is dead.