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Linux Now an Equal Flash Player
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.
Now make them do the same with Photoshop.
What's that?
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
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!
Non-ascii text input has been broken forever.
http://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/FP-40
We need a proper Open Source flash as a BSD user I am still jaded by flashes lack of support
There's still no 64-bit version yet!
Follow me
But still not open-source. So if you need it on PPC Linux, or FreeBSD, you are still SOL. Give us the source guys, and we'll maintain it for you. Or if you absolutely cant do that, publish a spec that somebody can use to write compatible player.
-- Home is where you eat your heart out.
Did you fix the cookies yet?
Free Martian Whores!
Now, I can watch my CPU's max out, and my systems become unresponsive on EVERY platform!
Some of us have been waiting a lot longer for flash9 and still don't have it for wii, iphone, and I believe even the Opera web browser.
Do you really need reason for beer? Wingman Brewers
Adobe would just encourage more webmasters to write actual code instead of relying on flash for their entire websites.
But of course there wouldn't be much profit incentive for Adobe to do such a thing...
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
So they fixed the transparency problems in Linux?
Complaints about lack of Photoshop and a 64-bit version aside (it's interesting how much Slashdot resembles a sewing circle of old ladies in the complaints department), this is actually pretty significant news. Especially if this is the beginning of a new Way Things are Done for the Flash developers. With most major video sites using Flash-based players and the other wealth of Flash content on other websites, Flash support is pretty essential for desktop users. This is a major stepping stone. Hopefully Adobe will see enough rewards from doing this that will encourage them to embrace the Linux platform even more.
My theory is that Adobe's Flash player is a horrible hack that is so utterly fragile and bug-ridden that Adobe can't actually make a 64-bit version without doing a full rewrite.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
If I recall correctly, it was six months after the release of Flash 9 for Windows when Linux got it, but there wasn't even a Flash 8 for Linux. Linux users had actually been waiting for a new release since the release of Flash 7.
Competition is good and all, but this is just annoying. It only exists to muddy the waters.
I'm just waiting for MS to announce that they will no longer speak english, but will communicate only in Anglush-Sharp. A language in which every noun is copyrighted by Microsoft and only MS approved verbs will generate an intelligible response.
My thoughts exactly. I'd really like to turn my Wii into a Hulu box, but the one browser I actually paid for doesn't have flash compatibility. What gives?
First of all, as some have already pointed out, where's the *BSD binaries and 64-bit binaries?
Why doesn't Adobe go (L)GPLv3 with their flash plugin, keep all the products that produce flashes commercial and watch how other people (while being angry at their original plugin's performance) fix their bad code?
In all seriousness, what bad could releasing flash renderer as a GPLv3 or LGPLv3 mean for adobe? They have the market for 90s style websites (one big graphic) and 100% of Internet's video sites already, their actual closed source not so well performing plugin is the first reason why people don't think flash is great for anything other than attracting teenager users.
If the do not open source it, one day it will a better alternative will grow out of the open source community or flash simply ceases to exist as it's replaced by more open standard X or better renderer Y.
Well done Adobe! Now we're talking. Help us help YOU keep Silverlight still-born.
Looks like they changed it during they beta to require glibc 2.4-based Linux distributions (RHEL 4, CentOS 4, Debian 4 are out) for stack-smashing protection.
Link.
Interested in open source engine management for your Subaru?
Most of the 64-bit work is still in the opensource Tamarin Project. You can still contribute, if you've got the chops.
http://blogs.adobe.com/penguin.swf/2006/10/whats_so_difficult_64bit_editi.html
http://www.kaourantin.net/2006/11/spidermonkeys-relative-tamarin-joins.html
The "we'll maintain it for you" line has not particularly been borne out by experience.... ;-)
jd/adobe
The SWF file format specifications have been published for a decade. Just like HTML.
The sourcecode to the canonical implementation has not, just like most of the HTML browsers out there.
Adobe licenses high-quality video decoders from third-parties, so it's difficult to have an ideologically-pure Player.
jd/adobe
That would be a more plausible explanation if they didn't have a version for Solaris on Sparc. I'm more inclined to believe that the root problem is unwillingness to devote the resources.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
The iPhone SDK T&Cs prevent using it for writing anything that loads third-party code, which eliminates Flash as a possible thing to port (and Java, Python, whatever).
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Yes, Linux folk did have an unusually lengthy gap back then. Worse, it coincided with the rise in YouTube popularity, so the gap was felt particularly acutely.
Video was added in Player 6. Player 8 was a massive re-architecture of the graphics engine. This was also due to include a re-architecture of the logics engine, but the latter was re-scheduled out into Player 9 timeframe. Rather than make a graphics-oriented Linux Player which would need to be rev'd in six months, the Linux Player went straight from v7 to v9. It was pain, but it's over now.
Flash/Linux has been an emphasis from the start:
http://web.archive.org/web/20000815054538/www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/alternates/
jd/adobe
I hate to disrupt a good theory with references, but What's So Difficult? 64-bit Edition claims the main issue is that rewriting the JIT compiler to emit 64-bit code is non-trivial.
I agree that a version for the Solaris Sparc platform is a slight negative, but I bet that version is a 32-bit version as well.
There are liberties you can take when you can assume that some particular integer type and a pointer type are interchangeable, or that pointers have some particular internal structure. Most 64-bit platforms break all those assumptions.
In particular, on x86_64 the pointer is specifically structured so you can't steal either the high or low bits to represent some other sort of data. And the 'int' type in most compilers is still 32 bits, you have to use 'long' or even 'long long' to get a 64 bit integer type.
So, I think sloppy and bad programming practices are still the likely culprit.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
and there are much better solutions for video.
Considering Flash is what made video on the web actually viable and reliable, I would like to hear of these "much better" solutions. You apparently don't remember the Bad Old Days before Flash video when streaming video worked about 10% of the time, and when it did work, it took about 60 seconds to start up.
Say what you want about Flash, but it works pretty damn well.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
So did they fix the *really* annoying problem where on linux firefox configurations that flash objects appear ontop of *everything* else in the page? This annoyance has made many pages very much un-usable (especially ones with drop down menus where the menu gets hidden behind the flash object :( ...adobe's own site fits into this catagory).
Now do the same for Shockwave Player so it can be on linux as well.
Time line for flash on iphone?
...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
And a major company can finish porting a program to a new, reasonably similar, platform in less than 6 years. Sorry, lame excuses about porting to 64 bit being hard were great in 2005 or so, but at this point it's completely clear that there's no 64 bit flash player simply because Macromedia / Adobe has chosen not to devote the resources to it. It's not like they're the ones who will get shit when web browsers hit the 2GB barrier.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
Just what I've always wanted, RealPlayer on a computer that I own! Can we have QuickTime too?
And the benefits (even on Flash 9 sites, without the new features in 10) are significant:
Better performance and smoother graphics
The fullscreen video mode is no longer choppy
Unfortunately, there's a significant drawback as well:
Often crashes my browser as soon as I visit a page with Flash.
(or at least crashes the plugin process, when using a browser smart enough to isolate plugins from the main system)
Obviously I got to enjoy Flash 10 for a while before it started dying on me. Wiping my .macromedia directory doesn't seem to restore the stable behavior. Neither does reinstalling flash. Did Hulu change their video format in some subtle way that breaks just my system? I don't know, but he official Flash 10 breaks too, not just the betas. Unless anyone here has any good ideas, back to 9 it is.
Maybe a post from 2006 (summarizing an explanation from 2005) is not the best thing. At the end of the day, the excuses seem lame. Java had 64-bit support out pretty quickly (are you telling me the JIT in Flash is more complicated than the Java JVM, of which the JIT is a minor portion?)
The reason is that Adobe doesn't feel there's a big enough market for 64-bit platforms, thus it doesn't throw many resources at getting a 64-bit version, end of story.
Why couldn't you just quote it like this:
--penguin.swf (Penguin.SWF tracks development status and issues regarding the Linux version of Adobe's Flash Player)
Question everything
I just browsed the Tamarin mailing list, status reports, and commit logs. Adobe employees seem to do at least half of the work, but that's less than all of the work you'd do if you hadn't donated the code.
how to invest, a novice's guide
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?
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
The kind who would think the Flash player was a good idea in the first place.
Specific distribution: Supporting all distributions isn't hard, you know.
No. Supporting Linux is not hard at all. It's not like you have to release 10 different packages for each distribution you support... and stuff.
Flip it around and ask yourself why shouldn't company X spend a little time making something cross-platform (it's not as hard as you think) and get that many more sales?
You say "It's not as hard as you think." I say, "It's easier said than done."
This just screams troll right here. I find it a pain to develop for Windows myself given that libraries and headers can be all over the place, or are you thinking of RAD C# stuff that is useless for many applications (note I'm saying it's useless for things like, say, Flash; it certainly has a use for smaller programs and other apps that don't need speed, etc).
Yeah, I'm a troll. Instead of developing a modern tool chain, linux folk scream, "Emacs/VIM, the GNU toolchain and a command line debugger is all you will ever need!" Which, wherein lies the most fundamental problem of the Linux crowd, they feel entitled to tell people what they should want and need, rather than listen to what people want and need. And then you call them a troll.
Similes are like metaphors
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?
At one point back in 1995, the Microsoft Windows market was only 20% of the PC market. The other 75% of the market was OS/2, QNX, DrDos, Novell and a few others. Windows was an emerging market so we coded for it.
Linux is now an emerging (or growth) market. Ignore it if you want. Your competitors are not.
There is a reason that google has released Picasa and GoogleEarth binaries for linux and its not because of a bunch of hippies yelling at them demanding the code. There is a reason that Dell is still continuing its Linux line of products. Asus, Adobe, Quicken, Oracle, Real, etc, do not make their product support decisions based on a bunch of screaming smelly basement dwellers.
What you don't seem to realize is that your platform is the hardest to develop for and support.
Linux is the hardest platform to develop for if all you know how to code in is Microsoft based technologies.
Enjoy,
It's just the normal noises in here.
http://www.oiloja.com.br/ - Brazilian cellphone carrier I use. They had a transparent Flash that covered everything - now it WORKS!
http://www.formula1.com/ seems to be OK too.
Anyone has other sites with that problem so we can test more?
The "we'll maintain it for you" line has not particularly been borne out by experience.... ;-)
Well said from a closed source company. Heck, we might even be able to resolve all the serious flaws in your code. *cough* cookie *cough*
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.
It's a browser dependency. The search term you're seeking is "WMODE". Some browsers allow compositing. Others don't. Others are quirky.
Mike Melanson has some info, current as of a few months ago, here:
http://blogs.adobe.com/penguin.swf/2008/07/turkish_localization_also_wmod_1.html
Release Notes from today seem to say that FF3/Linux is supporting it well, although I'm not certain if that's for all Linux or just most:
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/releasenotes.html#features_ocre
jd/adobe
Flash 10 makes my browser (Firefox 3.0.3) hang when I browse a youtube video and I make it go full screen.
This is on Linux (Slackware 12.1.0)
Flash has nothing to do with any of this. The codecs, container, and streaming technology Flash/FLV uses are exactly the same as used in The Bad Old Days. In fact they're really quite sub-par today (Sorenson Spark, MP3, and even VP6).
The only difference is that you've got a higher speed connection today than you did the last time you used RealPlayer, or Quicktime, or Windows Media Player.
Point of fact... Flash 9 added support for MP4/H.264/AAC files. Exactly the same format used by Quicktime for years and years.
Other players are infinitely more flexible, higher performance, etc., than Flash could ever hope to be. An animation plug-in, loading a player applet, loading a video, in a browser, was never a good idea. It just caught on because so many people already had flash installed.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I know that Wikipedia isn't considered the most reliable source of information, but it does give some links to relevant information should we care to look for it.
If we examine the OS spectrum (as software companies no doubtedly do) (see Usage Share of Desktop Operating Systems for an example), Linux comprises 2% of the share. We're excluding servers on purpose, for the sake of this argument, since end-users will no doubt be the ones interested in things like Flash. Let's say those numbers are deflated, and Linux really is about 5%. Of that 5% how many have made the transition to 64-bit? 50%? That means 2.5% of my potential target audience needs a 64-bit product.
Is that fair though? Not really. I'm typing this reply on a perfectly suitable 32-bit Linux on a processor that supports x86-64. Why? Unnecessary. I get proven, stable applications with 32-bit that perfectly suit my needs. I'd say for the DESKTOP OS, there my have been a reality of 25% who use a 64-bit Linux (and that, too, is probably high)
So, with our modified numbers, 1.25% need a 64-bit flash player, while the 98.75% of my potential user base is perfectly fine with my 32-bit product. I think the numbers speak for themselves.
Ayup
"...if it the Flash format was open, documented and reimplementable..."
It is. But the third-party codecs Adobe licenses for redistribution aren't, so it's still hard to see how to get a functional clone.
The SWF format has been published for a decade, just like HTML. A few years ago reading rights were traded for the promise to not fracture Flash's distributed predictability, but by now that has loosened too. Here's a starting point:
http://www.openscreenproject.org/
jd/adobe
Hey, thanks for the tip. I turned off desktop effects (I'm using Ubuntu, and I believe that the Desktop Effects feature is Compiz?), and after turning that off, it did seem to improve the playback of flash quite a bit. (It also seemed to fix full-screen playback; previously, whenever I tried to switch a stream to fullscreen view, it would immediately snap back to windowed view, and I couldn't figure out why it was doing that). I didn't realize there was a conflict with Compiz. Maybe it's not Adobe's problem after all.