Adobe Releases Preview of 64-bit Flash For Linux

Rinisari writes "Finally, the day has come. Adobe has released a pre-release version of the 64-bit Flash player. It is available at the Adobe Labs Flash Player 10 download site immediately. Where are the Windows and Mac versions? 'Release of this alpha version of 64-bit Flash Player on Linux is the first step in delivering upon Adobe's commitment to make Flash Player native 64-bit across platforms. We chose Linux as our initial platform in response to numerous requests in our public Flash Player bug and issue management system and the fact that Linux distributions do not ship with a 32-bit browser or a comprehensive 32-bit emulation layer by default. Until this pre-release, use of 32-bit Flash Player on Linux has required the use of a plugin wrapper, which prevents full compatibility with 64-bit browsers. With this pre-release, Flash Player 10 is now a full native participant on 64-bit Linux distributions.' Windows and Mac OS X 64-bit versions will follow, and the final versions all will be released simultaneously. Tamarin, the JIT compiler in Flash, is now capable of producing 64-bit code and nspluginwrapper is no longer required. There are, however, no plans to release a debugger version of the 64-bit plugin."

Comments

Silverlight

[Enderandrew]

Was this prompted by Microsoft supporting Silverlight and Moonlight on 64-bit platforms from day one?

Either way, thanks for finally making it happen. We now have Java and Flash on 64-bit. No more reason to bitch.

Re:Silverlight

[Ed Avis]

We now have Java and Flash on 64-bit. No more reason to bitch.

Java is free but Flash is not (gnash and swfdec are getting there, but still not good enough for everyday use). And x86_64 is not the only 64-bit platform; what about Sparc and Itanic users, for example?

A binary blob for x86_64 is nice, I guess, but better would be for Adobe to give a bit of help to the projects trying to make a free implementation of Flash. So please continue to bitch, if you think that helps.

Re:Silverlight

[Richard_at_work]

And x86_64 is not the only 64-bit platform; what about Sparc and Itanic users, for example?

Out of interest, what do you consider the smallest possible user base that any concession should be made with regard to support? How much effort should be put into supporting either Sparc or Itanic, or indeed any other minority platform?

And I'm not just talking about closed source apps here, I'm also talking about open source projects and the stance they take, and the whole range of possible support options, from supporting them yourselves (releasing binary or code for the platform) on the one extreme to simply answering questions from a porting developer (since answering questions does take up potentially valuable time) on the other extreme.

Re:Silverlight

[Jeff Hornby]

Probably something like that.

I would guess that this is Adobe's "revenge" for Microsoft releasing a competing technology. They probably think that using this they can force Microsoft to cry "Uncle". Somebody at Adobe should ask Corel how that worked out ten years ago.

Re:Silverlight

[peter_gzowski]

We now have Java and Flash on 64-bit.

No 64-bit Java browser plugin until early 2009.

Re:Silverlight

[Anonymous Coward]

Java is free but Flash is not

Seriously? Did you have to pay to download the flash plugin? No.

So let me get this straight, you get a professionally developed product, which adobe sees absolutely no profit from(unless you want to count the relatively microscopic desktop Linux userbase as "gain"). And you still have reason to complain? Your like the guy on the street who is given a wad of money and complains that the bills are dirty.

Unless that is.. you can think of a business model where flash gives up all control they have over their products and still makes a net profit.(I'm listening)

Re:Silverlight

[tobiasly]

Agreed... and, much like Sun with Java, I expect that someday in the future, Adobe will be saying to themselves: "We were so close to becoming the ubiquitous platform that everyone used for deploying rich internet content to every type of device and platform. Our decision to keep the Flash player closed-source for so long looks so stupid now. What were we thinking? If only we could go back ten years and open it up..."

Re:Silverlight

[Abcd1234]

IcedTea (an OpenJDK port) has a working 64-bit Java plugin. While it doesn't work on all applets (it's not a complete implementation, IIRC), it seems to work fairly well for the few applets I've encountered.

Re:Silverlight

[hedwards]

Considering the fact that Flash is essentially mandatory for many websites, I'd say that's moot. They don't make money on the player anyways, it's the tools that developers use that they make them money.

I'd be more than happy to not ever install flash if not for the sites which just don't work without flash. And don't forget about the poor people needing to navigate flash sites with screen readers.

Or in other words, most of us would be more than happy to not bitch about a lack of Flash support for our OS of choice if we didn't have to have it to make the most of the web. That didn't used to be much of an issue, a few sites had it and most of them were dumb flash games. Then there were the ads which made it beneficial to not have flash. But now...

Re:Silverlight

[Anonymous Coward]

And what have *you* done to make swfdec or gnuash a good alternative? Can you post to your patches/changesets? Thanks!

Most people that bitch about "blobs" are the ones that do very little work on the free alternatives. So, stop bitching, start doing.

Re:Silverlight

[bigstrat2003]

Java is free but Flash is not (gnash and swfdec are getting there, but still not good enough for everyday use).

This is not, and has never been, a reason to bitch. The vast majority of users aren't going to cut off their nose to spite their face by refusing to use "non-free" software, and nor should they.

Re:Silverlight

[Enderandrew]

How many Sparc and Itanic users need a 64-bit Flash for web browsing needs?

Adobe isn't going to GPL Flash just because people complain it isn't "free". Nor do I need every app in the world to be OSS. I prefer OSS apps, but at the end of the day, I'll take the best app for the task.

I don't think the GPL was the way to go for Java either, as Java needs to be fairly standardized. I would like to see a new OSS license that prevents forking, but allows me to read the source code, submit patches upstream, and recompile. However the license would prohibit people from distributing altered/forked versions. Such a license might very well convince Adobe to release the source code, as well as Nvidia for their drivers.

Re:Silverlight

[Enderandrew]

It does fully past the test suite however, and works well enough for every site I've come across.

Re:Silverlight

[Anonymous Coward]

Might I suggest open standards so anyone who cares can implement their own?

Re:Silverlight

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems to have worked fine for PDF. Last time I checked Adobe Pro was still selling pretty well. Do I get bonus points for my example being from the same company?

Re:Silverlight

[Sylvak]

Silverlight is not currently available on linux... only windows and mac. So I guess adobe beat them to that milestone.

I have been waiting for the linux flash 64bit plugin for 3 years+. I can't believe a company like adobe couldn't deliver during all this time. It seems that they had their head in the sand for all that time. If Microsoft caused them to finally face reality, then I send them my thanks.

I don't really care who wins this tech war, as long as I don't have to use windows to view a freaken web site.

(I know my 64bit linux could load flash sites, but the implementation was buggy as hell, causing me to restart firefox and cross my fingers many times. Hopefully their release will change this.)

Re:Silverlight

[bcat24]

I don't think the GPL was the way to go for Java either, as Java needs to be fairly standardized. I would like to see a new OSS license that prevents forking, but allows me to read the source code, submit patches upstream, and recompile. However the license would prohibit people from distributing altered/forked versions. Such a license might very well convince Adobe to release the source code, as well as Nvidia for their drivers.

I can see the benefits of such a license for some applications, but I think it would create a real headache for Linux distributions. Very few distros ship upstream software as-is. Instead, they apply patches to improve integration with the rest of the system. The last thing Sun wants to do is review every single tweak Fedora or Debian or Ubuntu (or whoever) makes to their codebase. What you propose is certainly better than a binary blob, but it still has some issues, IMO.

Re:Silverlight

[D. Taylor]

Hmm, the test suite must be incomplete then, because I've certainly found sites that don't work (formula1.com Live Timing applet being the main one).

Re:Silverlight

[doom]

The vast majority of users aren't going to cut off their nose to spite their face by refusing to use "non-free" software, and nor should they.

I would rephrase this as "the vast majority of users are short-sighted, and have no clue as to why they should be concerned with open standards".

But hey, don't let me bug you with something that's uncomfortably close to a moral injunction. We don't need no stinking ethics when we've got self-interest to guide us. It's never let us down before.

Re:Silverlight

[morgan_greywolf]

Might I suggest open standards so anyone who cares can implement their own?

You mean like this one? Yes, good idea. ;)

Re:Silverlight

[PitaBred]

And if you use Konqueror, it directly calls the Java executable for plugins, so 64bit Java has worked as a "plugin" for quite a while in KDE. Since there are only a few Java plugin sites around the web, I'm happy with just using Konqueror when I actually need to access one on the short term here.

Re:Silverlight

[jdgeorge]

Java is free but Flash is not

Seriously? Did you have to pay to download the flash plugin? No.

So let me get this straight, you get a professionally developed product, which adobe sees absolutely no profit from(unless you want to count the relatively microscopic desktop Linux userbase as "gain"). And you still have reason to complain? Your like the guy on the street who is given a wad of money and complains that the bills are dirty.

Unless that is.. you can think of a business model where flash gives up all control they have over their products and still makes a net profit.(I'm listening)

Vehemence of this response aside, this poses some fair questions, to which there are reasonable answer.

I think the GP was referring to free as in "free and open source software". Fantastic as it is to have the latest Flash player on 64-bit Linux, it's still not "Free and Open Source Software".

The Linux community would undoubtedly prefer a free software version of the Flash player. However, it is unlikely to be produced by Adobe, since the Flash software business model is based on selling server products: the server and development software. Providing a free implementation of the client would probably result in competition for those products that would result in less revenue for Adobe.

As with any free software I know of, a free software flash player business would need to depend on selling service. To my knowledge, Adobe is not prepared to shift to a service-based revenue stream for Flash. It could be done, but it is unlikely to be desirable, as I suspect the vast majority of the Flash client market is completely uninterested in whether they have a free-software-based player. Most of that market is using a non-free operating system and other software; they are extremely unlikely to care about whether the Flash software they downloaded for free has source code available for modification and redistribution.

I congratulate Adobe for having the foresight to provide quality support for Linux clients, enabling them to provide service on low-cost embedded systems and help cement their dominance of the web-based animation and video streaming markets.

Those clever bastards.

Re:Silverlight

[bigstrat2003]

We don't need no stinking ethics when we've got self-interest to guide us.

That would apply if open-source vs closed-source software was an ethical/moral issue. It isn't. Your cute comeback doesn't apply here.

Re:Silverlight

[Ed Avis]

Out of interest, what do you consider the smallest possible user base that any concession should be made with regard to support?

I don't think Itanic workstation users who want to watch YouTube are a significant user base; just making a general point that x86_64 != 64-bit. This being Slashdot, I guess I could have left it unsaid, since many others made the same point.

In general I'm all for dropping esoteric crap and focusing on the most important systems, as long as people have freedom to muck around with the code and port it to their platform of choice if they're willing to make the effort themselves. That's not the case with a binary blob, so arguably it should be held to slightly higher standards.

Re:Silverlight

[Anonymous Coward]

You think self-interest hasn't brought humanity this far, and won't take it even further? Good deeds done for the sake of doing good are done few and far between. There is always going to be self-interest involved.

Re:Silverlight

[thtrgremlin]

I think this is the whole issue with open source. If the source was open, well written, and documented, then anyone willing to make an effort can provide support for their own platform. The real issue is "We are going to make this a standard that everyone is going to use / want to use.... oh, except you. You can't use what everyone else is using"

So I question, and what I think the parent is questioning, is whether the die hard Itanic and Sparc development base is CAPABLE of developing and maintaining a "port". Gnash is amazing, in its own right, but it is still a 'guess and hack' piece of code. It is amazing that it works at all. I THINK what people are saying is that so much more could be done, from compatibility to stability, if they could just take out some of the guesswork, which at minimum for what DEVELOPERS want, is simply a matter of releasing the code. As for the crying consumer that doesn't take the time to code things for themselves, they can wait like everyone else.

I will say though, being in the later category of computer users, I am thrilled by 64-bit native flash, and I must apologize for being part of the group that said this would never happen. Yay adobe for listening!

Re:Silverlight

[ZerdZerd]

Out of interest, what do you consider the smallest possible user base [...] open source

One

Re:Silverlight

[Kilroy]

I'll rephrase it right back to cutting off noses to spite faces. Feel free to go drink the RMS ethics Kool-aid, but please don't cripple those of us who like working systems instead of half baked political ideology driven designs with your poison.

Re:Silverlight

[jvillain]

>>"I would like to see a new OSS license that prevents forking, but allows me to read the source code, submit patches upstream, and recompile." That by definition would be against every thing that OSS stands for. What you are talking about is proprietary software. Microsoft could do this with any thing that they own for example with out the need of yet another licence. They choose not to.Not many developers want to contribute their time and money to making some one else richer without any thing coming back.

Re:Silverlight

[emailandthings]

Check your facts.. SilverLight will NOT run on Windows64

Re:Silverlight

[RAMMS EIN]

``The Linux community would undoubtedly prefer a free software version of the Flash player. However, it is unlikely to be produced by Adobe, since the Flash software business model is based on selling server products: the server and development software. Providing a free implementation of the client would probably result in competition for those products that would result in less revenue for Adobe.''

Something isn't quite right with your reasoning there. If the first part of what you say is true, and Adobe's business model is based on selling server products, then they would win by having the client as widely deployed as possible and lowering the client development costs as much as possible. Both of these can be achieved by making the client open source. By keeping it closed source, they have to fund all the development themselves, which increases their cost and (in practice) limits the presence of the client.

Re:Silverlight

[Anonymous Coward]

Out of interest, what do you consider the smallest possible user base that any concession should be made with regard to support? [...] And I'm not just talking about closed source apps here, I'm also talking about open source projects [...]

One of the reasons people want Flash to be F/OSS is that, once it is F/OSS'd, Adobe doesn't have to go out of it's way to support such small user bases. Others can take the source and hack it up to work for Sparc, etc.

By not supporting such-and-such platforms and making it nearly impossible for the users to get it to support their platforms, Adobe is going get an earful. If they F/OSS it there is a lot less room to complain.

Re:Silverlight

[Kjella]

I would like to see a new OSS license that (...) would prohibit people from distributing altered/forked versions.

That has way too many possibilities to go horribly wrong, like the main entity dying, being bought up, refusing to accept patches, make new releases or any number of dirty tricks, maybe just as much from laziness, indifference and arrogance as malice. Plus remember every time people make an alternate branch, not a true fork they too are "forking" in the eyes of the law. You probably couldn't post a patch on any mailing list anywhere since it'd be distributing a derived work, anything like an outside community would almost certainly be violating copyright law left and right just to discuss the improvements they want to push upstream. Plus it's by definition not OSS by the OSI definition at least.

Re:Silverlight

[Burz]

Java is not complete on Linux x64: The JNLP support needed for things like Java Webstart is either missing (Sun) or supplied by "netx" which uses a very old version of the spec. I have already experienced one game and one app that could otherwise run on a 32 bit system (but not my 64 bit systems) because of this problem, and it has me rather worried.

Re:Silverlight

[ArTourter]

PDF and SWF have exactly the same status at this point. both format are free with the specifications released but still under control of adobe. every one can create software to read of create either formats.

Adobe releases a free (as in beer) proprietary reader for each formats and make money on their own creator software.

So I am not quite sure what you are trying to prove. The business model for flash and acrobat is the same.

Re:Silverlight

[thtrgremlin]

I think they know why they do things the way they do, even if they wish they could do things different. it is just economics: The data dictates business decisions, even if people are involved. The issue is how much the data is being manipulated by the likes of certain companies to their own benefit.

There are fundamental reasons why FOSS is better for society and some people understand that (I think fewer than those that actually use it though). We can help inform people about the advantages for companies to work with and develop FOSS code, give them the data to assist them in understanding the competitive advantage. It isn't just something different.

Could you imagine the kind of world we might have today if, as crazy as it might sound, there was some kind of clause in the Constitution that from the beginning could limit the control people could have over ideas for the sake of human knowledge and advancement? Guess the founding fathers never really anticipated a world of such powerful imagination and information exchange. Oh well, guess the founders could only be so amazing in their own ideas.

Re:Silverlight

[nsheppar]

Out of interest, what do you consider the smallest possible user base that any concession should be made with regard to support?

1 user.

Release the source, or at least an open API/documentation/something, and then let us do the work. I don't expect companies to spend their money supporting every random OS, but I would like them to at least make it possible for us to do the work ourselves for whatever OS we want to use.

Re:Silverlight

[shaitand]

Forking is a solution not a problem. It was Sun itself that made a big stink with the fork red herring argument you are referring to.

You can fork a project all day long and it doesn't hurt a thing. A fork may as well not even have happened if it isn't adopted and it won't be adopted if there was no valid cause to fork.

Your license lets the company retain control of the project when they are doing things the community does not want or is opposed to (See Sun's CEO wanting to put ads in OO.org output documents). That is a polar opposite of one of the pillars of open source philosophy.

Microsoft came up with a system essentially the same as what you desire. They called it the 'Shared Source' initiative.

Re:Silverlight

[Lord Jester]

Yeah, but in all fairness, Adobe (and previously Macromedia) didn't have a 64-bit version for Windows either.

I just hope this puts ideas in to the heads of the Acrobat group and we see a 64-bit reader plugin too.

Re:Silverlight

[shaitand]

Actually they didn't entirely choose not to. Microsoft's 'shared source' initiative is essentially what he is referring to.

Re:Silverlight

[Burz]

True. But there are quite a few more sites that use Java Webstart to run apps (not applets), which is basically unsupported and unusable on Linux x64 in any browser.

Re:Silverlight

[thtrgremlin]

And imagine the economic disaster that would ensue if people respected useful labor, bought things as necessary, and the right product the first time without inevitable time locks (intended or otherwise). It is very important to the economy that you keep replacing your software all the time, and frequently purchase vaporware. It is little different than buying a lottery ticket, or hiring a completly unqualified employee that could be a diamond in the ruff if just given a chance, right?

If we embrassed FlOSS, we would run out of code to write, in like, 3 years at most! Then what would everyone do?!? Microsoft ensures that everyone has stuff to do, and that we extend those three years as long as possible until we can start over on the 128 bit platform in the future.

What? Are you going to try to tell me that ISN'T how software development works???

Re:Silverlight

[Anonymous Coward]

"I would like to see a new OSS license that prevents forking..."

While writing that up, make sure to include information on steps to collect a paycheck.

No fork = proprietary software. I work on YOUR software, I expect payment. I work on OUR software, I am kosher to make things better. Forking proves it is OUR software.

Re:Silverlight

[pembo13]

Microsoft supports Moonlight? When did this happen?

Re:Silverlight

[Anonymous Coward]

I would like to see a new OSS license that prevents forking, but allows me to read the source code, submit patches upstream, and recompile. However the license would prohibit people from distributing altered/forked versions.

Then it's not an OSS license. The freedom to distribute one's modifications is a key part of what makes open source, well, open source. Without that freedom, it's something along the lines of Microsoft's "shared source", which as we all know isn't open source at all.

Re:Silverlight

[Anonymous Coward]

The vast majority of users aren't going to cut off their nose to spite their face by refusing to use "non-free" software, and nor should they.

"The Adobe flash plug-in is non-free software, and people should not install it, or suggest installing it, or even tell people it exists." -- Richard M. Stallman, champion of freedom

Re:Silverlight

[Ecuador]

And x86_64 is not the only 64-bit platform; what about Sparc and Itanic users, for example?

Seriously? +5 Insightful?
Exactly how many Itanic & Sparc systems do you supposed are being used for browsing (Flash sites in particular)?
Maybe you should research it, and after you identify all those users, you can call them (all dozens of them) and ask "WHY?".

Also, friggin hell froze over and we have 64bit Flash. Now you expect Adobe to help open source implementations of Flash... where do you get these ideas, are you driving around in the Heart of Gold?

Re:Silverlight

[Ed Avis]

As you know, being free is a matter of freedom, not price. Myself I do not think that complaining at Adobe is likely to help the situation (as hinted at in what I wrote). But it's clear that the release of a binary blob Flash player for x86_64 is not going to solve the problems of Flash at a single stroke. There is much more to do.

Re:Silverlight

[thtrgremlin]

I would like to see a new OSS license that prevents forking, but allows me to read the source code, submit patches upstream, and recompile.

*poof* Your wish is granted. Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States

Congratz, now go promote it. Oh, one little thing. Forking is a strongly protected freedom, principle of FSF, and the Free Culture movement... so not sure it would really take off. Open standards and standards bodies groups , IMHO are much stronger and more influential in the FOSS world. Can you name even one standards body that Microsoft even gives a flying F*** about, let alone follow aside from bare necessity to allow their OS to work on certain hardware?

A standard that can't be changed completely defeats its own purpose. It is why Communism works on paper and not in reality; you can't find the most efficient and effective way to do something unless you let people try. People will adapt, and the world will be a better place for it. Things fork, merge, and die all the time, it is a principle of development and evolution. I see a good Godwin in here about trying to perfect things one way, but I'll skip the obvious. How many other ways are there to explain this?

Re:Silverlight

[m50d]

Try the QPL. I'm surprised more companies who complain about the fear of incompatible forks don't use it; guess that was just an excuse after all.

Re:Silverlight

[Anonymous Coward]

That would apply if open-source vs closed-source software was an ethical/moral issue. It isn't.

What?

Re:Silverlight

[m50d]

PDF and SWF have exactly the same status at this point. both format are free with the specifications released but still under control of adobe.

No; the SWF spec is available but only under a license agreement that says you're not allowed to use it to write your own player. That's the difference.

Re:Silverlight

[Abcd1234]

Really? On Intrepid Ibex, I installed IcedTea, and I see a JWS program right in my applications menu. Granted, I've never tried it, so I have no idea how well it works.

Re:Silverlight

[LordMyren]

Was this prompted by Microsoft supporting Silverlight and Moonlight on 64-bit platforms from day one?

MS basically got it for free, since its all on the .net platform which runs non-native / virtual machine code from the start.

The pressure's been on for a while-- Adobe continually tries to market Flash and now AIR as "the" cross platform rich application platform, yet their software runs on vanishingly smaller and smaller amounts of machine architectures. Most people have 64 bit these days, and you'll see the same problem in 64-bit Windows with all browsers that dont merily downgrade your plugins to 32-bit if they so ask (see: IE). I'd say the demand far pre-dates Moonlight.

Re:Silverlight

[not already in use]

Release the source, or at least an open API/documentation/something, and then let us do the work.

Yeah I've heard this before. Must have been last week that people were bitching that Google hasn't ported Chrome to Linux yet (here on slashdot). It just seems to me that the more companies give in to the Linux community, the more they demand. It usually goes:

Release the specs! -> Release the source! -> Port it for us!

Re:Silverlight

[MikeBabcock]

And what do you propose happens to such a piece of source code when the upstream no longer accepts patches or releases updates? Do you then propose to share patches between users to avoid illegally distributing your modified versions in the future?

Re:Silverlight

[fm6]

And x86_64 is not the only 64-bit platform; what about Sparc and Itanic users, for example?

Who would use them? Sun just discontinued its last SPARC workstation, and Itanium workstations disappeared years ago. These chips are still used in servers, but the utility of Flash on a server isn't obvious.

It's bad enough that niche platform fanboys refuse to understand why ISVs can't afford to support platforms with a few thousand users. Expecting them to support dead platforms is just plain absurd.

Re:Silverlight

[ArTourter]

PDF and SWF have exactly the same status at this point. both format are free with the specifications released but still under control of adobe.

No; the SWF spec is available but only under a license agreement that says you're not allowed to use it to write your own player. That's the difference.

Err...

you can download the specs from http://www.adobe.com/devnet/swf/ and it doesn't mention any license agreement one would need to agree to beforehand. On the contrary, the page specifically says:

The SWF file format is available as an open specification to create products and technology that implement the specification.

I'd be interested to know where you found the license agreement requirement.

Re:Silverlight

[Ilgaz]

Moonlight is not Microsoft software. Linux doesn't have an official, full feature Silverlight and likely will never have it. A half functioning, non 2.x compatible software being 64bit compilable is not big deal. Let them have to support 10 generations of software on 3 Major desktop operating systems having nothing to do with each other and the entire mobile/device scene. That is what Adobe has to do.

MS buddy Novell guys half functioning emulator coming with usual EULA traps is no comparison to a full feature, full supported Flash plugin.

Flash needs a rival but it is not Silverlight or its "open source" clones.

Re:Silverlight

[fm6]

You can have open standards without conforming to some weird ideological definition of "free software".

That's the problem with the FS crowd. They're so caught up in their little anti-IP jihad that they've forgotten how to achieve any realistic goals. (Speaking of which, how is Hurd doing?) Meanwhile, those of us who have to work for a living are creating useful products using mere "free as in beer" Open Source.

Re:Silverlight

[Thalaric]

Adobe isn't going to GPL Flash just because people complain it isn't "free".

That's true, they'll only open source flash when gnash arrives at near feature parity.

Re:Silverlight

[Anonymous Coward]

Only in this case it's actually something like:

Release the source! -> Release the specs! -> Release the source! -> Release the specs! -> Release the source! -> Release the specs! -> Port it for us! -> Port it for us! -> Port it for us! -> Port it for us! -> Port it for us! -> Port it for us!

Re:Silverlight

[billcopc]

You don't work in the support industry, my guess...

Re:Silverlight

[Anonymous Coward]

And how do you know that this moment hasn't been lived yet ? There is a subtle but persistent move at Adobe to embrace the open and free-as-in-speech software. If I'm not mistaken, the Tamarin virtual machine which has excellent performance will be put in Gecko 2.0, there is ongoing contribution to Webkit, and there are other areas on which Adobe silently, but consistently contributes to OSS. But this won't happen overnight, because there are a couple of 800-pound gorillas still breathing down their neck, and no mistakes are to be made.

Re:Silverlight

[jdgeorge]

``The Linux community would undoubtedly prefer a free software version of the Flash player. However, it is unlikely to be produced by Adobe, since the Flash software business model is based on selling server products: the server and development software. Providing a free implementation of the client would probably result in competition for those products that would result in less revenue for Adobe.''

Something isn't quite right with your reasoning there. If the first part of what you say is true, and Adobe's business model is based on selling server products, then they would win by having the client as widely deployed as possible and lowering the client development costs as much as possible. Both of these can be achieved by making the client open source. By keeping it closed source, they have to fund all the development themselves, which increases their cost and (in practice) limits the presence of the client.

That's what I was thinking at first. Then it occurred to me that if they "freed" the client, that would (I assume) make it much easier to create free development tools and server applications for Flash.

Re:Silverlight

[hrimhari]

Good luck with YouTube :)

Re:Silverlight

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah. Finally Flash ads will work on my 64 bit Ubuntu install! Good thing too, I'd almost forgotten how easily readable and silent the web is without them!

Re:Silverlight

[Enderandrew]

Some things need to be standard. How quickly we forget Microsoft releasing a modified version of Java without permission. They were famous for Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. I wouldn't say such a license would be great for an entire distro, or most software, but for certain projects such a license would be ideal.

Re:Silverlight

[Enderandrew]

"Forking" Java, and Microsoft releasing their own version without permission is a problem. If Flash were open, and Microsoft extended it so that it worked best with IE and Windows, and that caused problems for Linux users, which version would be adopted more?

Certain things need to remain standardized without forks.

Re:Silverlight

[Enderandrew]

Use it personally, or don't. Just don't distribute a forked version. It doesn't help maintain Java as a stable standard, nor would it help Flash as a standard to have 20 forks.

In my scenario we could have had 64-bit Flash and Java ages ago, as we could recompile it. We could fix bugs and submit them upstream. We could help with ports to BSD or whatever. But it would be prevented from fundamental forks, such as Microsoft releasing a modified version that extends Flash to do more, but only on IE and Windows.

Re:Silverlight

[Enderandrew]

Microsoft pledged to offer official support for Moonlight, and Moonlight does match all the Silverlight 1.0 features/specs. They are working on the 2.0 features/specs. The nice part is that Microsoft is helping the Mono devs, but the Mono devs maintain any copyright on the code and use a FSF license.

Re:Silverlight

[mixmatch]

Seeing as the swf format can be completely decompiled by current software on the market, I find it hard to believe that open sourcing the client would have any significant effect on development tools. It probably has more to do with proprietary/messy code, time, liability and other factors that weigh in on a cost/benefit analysis.

Re:Silverlight

[Tumbleweed]

How many Sparc and Itanic users need a 64-bit Flash for web browsing needs?

Mmmm...both of them?

Re:Silverlight

[Hatta]

If they released the source, they wouldn't have to put any effort into supporting other architectures. The community would do it for them.

Re:Silverlight

[LandruBek]

Ouch! "Ideology" isn't always a bad thing, at least for those who admire, for instance, the Bill of Rights of the US Constitution. Pragmatists like Carnegie and Roosevelt have certainly caused plenty of misery and harm too, just as have ideologues. We all like working systems better than anything half-baked, but some balk at the cost, and why should they not bitch? And how can you possibly call their bitching "poison" that threatens to "cripple" you (figuratively)?

Re:Silverlight

[spyowl]

In other news, anything you "hear" from anyone on /. that doesn't gel well with you, you can safely attribute to anyone else whom you disagree with. That way, you can label everyone you have an argument or a disagreement with with the same stroke of the brush chosen at your convenience. Whew! What a relief!

Re:Silverlight

[shaitand]

'which version would be adopted more'

That is and should be up to the users and the developers (really the developers) not up to some dictatorial for profit entity that has contributed some portion of the code in the original project.

This problem has been solved elsewhere. There is no conflict between releasing java as an open technology and trademarking the name "Java" at the same time. That is why there will never be a Microsoft embrace and extend Linux, or Firefox, etc.

There is no need to castrate the most powerful tool the community has. The fork.

Again, what you are proposing is what Microsoft called Shared Source and it was rejected by the community a long time ago. It wouldn't be any better coming from Apple, Google, IBM, or Sun.

Re:Silverlight

[windsurfer619]

Make it open source so that the small user bases can support themselves. Community support can be quite good.

Re:Silverlight

[walshy007]

It usually goes: Release the specs! -> Release the source! -> Port it for us!

Depends on what it is, device drivers for example are a good one, in which case it goes Release the specs! > awesome now hurry up developers, faster faster! with little patience for the thing to be written.

Re:Silverlight

[walshy007]

both format are free with the specifications released but still under control of adobe.

but that means little if the specifications are not complete, while some docs have been released for swf, it is nowhere near enough to complete a full implementation.

Re:Silverlight

[AmberBlackCat]

Out of interest, what do you consider the smallest possible user base that any concession should be made with regard to support? How much effort should be put into supporting either Sparc or Itanic, or indeed any other minority platform?

So, when there's no Linux support because not enough people use Linux on the desktop then that's bad. But after we get Linux support, then not supporting other platforms because they're even smaller targets is okay. Because we're all pots and we hate all those black kettles out there. And there's enough pots out here to get you modded +5 Insightful in spite of you being a hypocritical jackass... or am I missing something?

Re:Silverlight

[bzzzt]

Microsoft supported Moonlight? All I've seen is some tech-demo thing which craps out on 90% of the Silverlight content I've found. At least Flash works...

Re:Silverlight

[sepelester]

He's got a point. You need it? Build it.

Re:Silverlight

[hitchhacker]

Must have been last week that people were bitching that Google hasn't ported Chrome to Linux yet (here on slashdot).

Have you looked at the source code to Chrome? As far as I can tell, there was no effort, other than adopting Webkit, to make the thing portable. Why on earth should we make an effort to port it when we have so many other good OSS browsers to choose from? What makes Chrome so great? The fancy tab organization?

-metric

Re:Silverlight

[Enderandrew]

It was part of the interoperability pledge they made for the EU. Microsoft said they'd provide the same level of support for developers working with Silverlight and Moonlight. I was skeptical but the Mono devs have said it was because of Microsoft's help that Moonlight already supports all of the Silverlight 1.0 spec.

Re:Silverlight

[Burz]

Really.

Any webstart program that uses a JNLP format version greater than 1.0 (i.e. most of what you will find out on the web) will fail.

The Netx software used to handle webstart JNLPs is dead. The project was last updated February 2003!

The only source for a current JNLP handler is Sun, and they only supply it for Linux with their 32 bit Java package.

Re:Silverlight

[Abcd1234]

The only source for a current JNLP handler is Sun, and they only supply it for Linux with their 32 bit Java package.

So, just to be painfully clear, you're saying that code, which sounds pretty important, isn't included in OpenJDK, either?

Re:Silverlight

[doom]

Meanwhile, those of us who have to work for a living are creating useful products using mere "free as in beer" Open Source.

You "pragmatists" have trouble seeing where the juice is coming from that's flowing into your mouth, and can't look far enough down the pipeline to worry about someone turning off the pigot.

Re:Silverlight

[Anonymous Coward]

Install the icedtea plugin in 64bit. That gives java in the browser.

Re:Silverlight

[fm6]

Maybe so. But we get stuff done. Can you make the same claim? When was the last time you actually finished a software project?

Re:Silverlight

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft supports Moonlight? When did this happen?

since Fall of 2007 when they decided to let Novell do the official Silverlight Linux port instead of doing it themselves.

Re:Silverlight

[jonadab]

> Out of interest, what do you consider the smallest possible user
> base that any concession should be made with regard to support?

I don't know that I could put a number to that, but I sure wouldn't expend any great effort supporting Itanium. The only people who moved to Itanium in the first place were people who absolutely had to be on the latest up-and-coming platform (which Intel *assured* them Itanium was going to be), and almost all of that userbase has long since moved on now. I think the Vax *still* has a larger userbase than Itanium had at its peak, to say nothing of now.

Sparc is more worthy of consideration. I realize it's been a platform in decline since before Itanium was announced, but it's declining from a position of significance, so its userbase is holding onto something that was once very much a major platform. Also, the Sparc userbase has always tended more toward the "Upgrade? Never!" end of the scale. I mean, if it took Sun fifteen years to get all their users migrated from the old SunOS to Solaris, which was *supposedly* a straightforward upgrade, how long do you think it's going to take to get them all moved over to x86 and/or x64, which is clearly a whole different platform?

All of that is to say, putting Sparc and Itanium in the same category is *weird* to my way of thinking. They're very different cases.

Re:Silverlight

[Kilroy]

"Poison" is just a reference to drinking the Kool-Aid.

"Cripple" is much more literal. There's a strong contingent in the open source community that prefers no solution to a solution that's closed, and this leads to systems that could work much better but don't, for reasons of pure ideological stubbornness.

"Ideology" isn't bad in general, this one is bad specifically. There's a reason my mom runs Ubuntu instead of Debian. Ubuntu actually works out of the box for people that don't know what the difference between open source and free software is and don't care.

Re:Silverlight

[Burz]

Correct. OpenJDK uses the outdated Netx component.

Re:Silverlight

[LandruBek]

"Poison" is just a reference to drinking the Kool-Aid.

I think you might be confusing Jim Jones with Ken Kesey.

Re:Silverlight

[Spugglefink]

I prefer to moan. Moaning is much more effective than bitching.

Re:Silverlight

[MikeBabcock]

You completely ignored my point, namely that Adobe could have hypothetically ignored all your upstream patches, and while you could tell everyone on Slashdot about your personal success making 64 bit Flash work for you, they'd all have to recompile the sources they got from Adobe after patching against your diff files. Not only that, but others who make patches against your patch would also have to distribute those, until Adobe decided to incorporate them, if ever.

And if your patches ended up doing things Adobe didn't approve of for one reason or another, and never got applied, why do you believe we'd all be happy with retrofitting those patches every time we wanted to install Flash on a computer?

And yes, stuff like this happens -- look up the number of patch-merged distributions for qmail for example until Dan Bernstein clarified the status of the source code. He made it available under almost exactly the terms you give above, and the result was a complete mish-mash of random patches distributed all over the Internet and a few attempts to merge them (and eventually net-qmail).

People who don't understand the belief in Free Software shouldn't believe that the subtleties of things like the GPL or BSD licenses were arrived at by accident -- rather they're designed to preserve freedom for those using the software.

Re:Silverlight

[Enderandrew]

Yes, Adobe can ignore all patches but does it behoove them to do so? Not really.

However, the bigger point you keep missing is that web developers can't have twelve forks of Adobe Flash player running around. They need to be able to develop to one standard.

A restrictive license that prevents forks is not ideal for most scenarios, but there are a few where it makes sense.

Re:Silverlight

[Walter Carver]

Of cource. Source is better than specs and porting is better than source. Having just source will take more time and just specs will take even more time. That's the point, having the candy now!

So it's like this specs source port.

No Debugger?

[JCSoRocks]

So people developing on a 64-bit platform are still screwed... Well I guess that's just another reason for me not to use Flash.

Re:No Debugger?

[internerdj]

Or not use 64-bit...

Re:No Debugger?

[hedwards]

You do realize that 64-bit is the way of the future, and that you can get a decent 64-bit computer for under $500, right? 64-bit is way too mainstream at this point to force people to use 32-bit software because you didn't bother to start the process when the machines were first shipping.

Everybody with any technical sense knew years ago that things were going 64-bit, there really isn't any excuse for Macromedia to have not made meaningful process since then. Adobe should get a bit of a free pass by virtue of not owning Flash at that point, but still.

Re:No Debugger?

[X0563511]

I would be interested (read: entertained) for the reasoning behind their decision.

Re:No Debugger?

[Walpurgiss]

Agree. My first 64bit cpu was an Athlon64 Clawhammer around 5 years ago. So developers had about 5 years to plan ahead for 64-bit capable home computer ubiquity, and for the most part did not.

Now of course, 64bit windows XP didn't launch until about 2 years later, so maybe they only had 3 years to 'really' develop, since before that it was probably still not viable for the home market. But they should have got the hint that 32-bit can not address enough memory for the ever increasingly demand of new applications and operating systems. They (not just Adobe, but most developers of popular/necessary software) should have planned ahead better.

Re:No Debugger?

[internerdj]

Sarcasm is so very hard on the internet. I'm going to have to expand my routine.

Re:No Debugger?

[PitaBred]

Because, you know, 64bit is better and faster for pretty much everything except Flash, especially if you have 4GB or more of RAM (a lot of people do). Let's just not use 64bit because Adobe hasn't blessed it yet.

Re:No Debugger?

[Massacrifice]

Hell, I bought a _USED_ SGI Indy for less than 500$ _NINE_YEARS_AGO_ and this thing already had full 64 bit CPU (R4400) and OS (Irix 6.2, IIRC).

I still dont understand why every software developper and company seems startled by 64 bits technology. It's been a long time coming, really. Any architect with half a brain would have made sure that the code ports over nicely. I mean, it's not that hard, and doesn't cost that much.

Re:No Debugger?

[flinkflonk]

There are plenty of *other* reasons not to use Flash.

From what I've seen, Flash is only used to show the visitor that you a) don't care about him, b) don't care about his abilities/disabilities, c) think a user interface is something you eat or smear all over your behind.

I have the noflash plugin installed in my Firefox, and a page consisting of *only* a Flash "script" is silently skipped by me. Not to mention those pesky Flash advertisements that reload stuff without you doing anything, clogging up your internet connection ("because everybody has a 100mbit connection directly to the backbone").

Really, only idiots use Flash. A 64-bit version will not change that. Rant over.

Re:No Debugger?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, the 64-bit transition still appears to be going much faster than the 32-bit transition did. Consider that the very first 32-bit personal computers didn't come out until around 1986-87 or so, and it took a decade before 32-bit computing really started to take off. Even after Windows 95 shipped, many of the apps that shipped for Windows were 16-bit.

Re:No Debugger?

[JCSoRocks]

Which was exactly my point in saying that people developing on 64bit boxes get the short end of the stick... again.

I remember a couple years back when it seemed like everything was going 64bit. There was talk of Windows 7 being 64bit only, all the processors supported it, we had XP 64 and then Vista started right out with a 64bit version, wow! Then the reality of the fact that none of the people writing software wanted to bother to make them work in 64bit set in. Even worse, it seems like the few that have updated their applications to support it have rolled that support into a new version and are forcing people to upgrade. It's the same garbage the hardware manufacturers pulled with Vista all over again.

Re:No Debugger?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh slashdot... bash microsoft and you get +5 insightful. Point out that Adobe is a bunch of lazy bastards and you end up with Flamebait.

Re:No Debugger?

[UdoKeir]

Bah. We could address more RAM on 32-bit systems by some fancy memory paging or mapping scheme.

Let's call it the Expanded Memory Specification. We could gather the support of Intel and Microsoft for this, and maybe an app vendor that makes a spreadsheet or something.

No wait, the Extended Memory Specification.

Re:No Debugger?

[badkarmadayaccount]

I think its more about shuttling more data to the CPU and bigger registers.

Why linux first

[sakdoctor]

"We chose Linux as our initial platform in response to numerous requests in our public Flash Player bug and issue management system"

Linux users asked, and adobe listened. Great stuff.

Re:Why linux first

[Kjella]

Well, I read half that and half "this is a great little alpha testing ground while we get our 64-bit act together, once it's somewhat usable we'll release it for Windows and Mac too". Considering my experience with their release builds, I wouldn't sing too many praises just yet.

Re:Why linux first

[Just Some Guy]

Linux users asked, and adobe listened. Great stuff.

Other considerations:

There are fewer Linux users and the average technical skill is higher than with other operating systems. This means that if there are problems, the pool of affected users is smaller than with Windows, the users are more likely to be able to recover without Adobe's help, and they're more likely to file bug reports.

This sounds like a big win for everyone involved. Nicely played, Adobe!

Re:Why linux first

[rallymatte]

That is true.
I'm a bit disappointed that it has taken several years though. Most Linux distributions has been available in 64-bit versions for a few years.
We've been using CentOS 64-bit along with RedHat 64-bit on a number of systems here and if we wanted to have the Flash plug-in in Firefox on one of those, we either had to install a 32-bit version of Firefox. Alternatively use the wrapper, but that causes Firefox to crash sooner rather than later.
So it's a much welcomed change, but again, it took a while.

Re:Why linux first

[Anonymous Coward]

> Linux users asked, and adobe listened. Great stuff.

That's part of it I'm sure. I've mentioned in the past that Adobe didn't even have a native 64bit version of the flash plugin. Usually it's something I mention in passing when people tell me how ubiquitous flash is.

So although this doesn't change my views of flash and I'm still not going to install it. Adobe just did something else* very cool and earned themselves some geek karma at least.

* Tamarin / nanoJIT being the big thing although I was also impressed that they used lua for lightroom. How the engineers explain Acrobat Reader however...

Re:Why linux first

[Anonymous Coward]

Right on the money. Mod up.

Re:Why linux first

[value_added]

Linux users asked, and adobe listened. Great stuff.

For what value of "great"?

FreeBSD users and devs, for example, have asked for just as long.

Re:Why linux first

[Shotgun]

Just to put an emphasis on your post, not only are the Linux users more likely to report bugs, their bugs reports are more likely to make sense and contain relevant data.

Re:Why linux first

[AndGodSed]

Question - Does it run on Linux?

Answer - Why Yes it DOES!

Q - Does it run on Windows?

A - Uh, no - it seems for once the Linux Desktop holds precedent over it's Windows counterpart...

Q - Uh, okay, how about MacOS?

A - Nope - you will have to wait in line for it, wanna try Linux in the meantime?

This was bound to happen sometime. (does a little victory dance...)\o/

Re:Why linux first

[hedwards]

That's been my feeling. I don't like having a half-assed half-working wine firefox installation which is not that much more useful than the linux plug in.

It wouldn't be an issue if not for the fact that so many sites out there require flash. And the fact that as of now there's still no evidence that a Flash plugin will ever run natively on FreeBSD.

Re:Why linux first

[tylerni7]

Bug #3129 in Windows Adobe Flash Player (64bit)
Affects: My computer
Importance: Extremely High

Description: can u release a update 4 this!?!? it doesnt work rite on my computer!!

Re:Why linux first

[dreimanis]

Also, their FAQ site mentions that Linux'es do not have a capable emulation layer, that is why x64 version comes first for linux. Like.. when will that day come, when flash animation will require more than 4GB of RAM?

Re:Why linux first

[robthebloke]

I think it has more to do with the chicken and the egg scenario on Windows 64 at the moment. You can't get a native 64 bit version of firefox/IE at the moment, so there's no need for 64bit flash.... And since you can't get a 64bit flash player, there's no reason for firefox/IE to switch to 64bit builds.

Re:Why linux first

[X0563511]

You've also been asking for 64-bit nvidia drivers for a good while as well?

The real solution is to give the community what they need to do it themselves. It's the easy, cheap, lazy, and better way out.

Re: Re:Why linux first

[morgan_greywolf]

Also, their FAQ site mentions that Linux'es do not have a capable emulation layer, that is why x64 version comes first for linux. Like.. when will that day come, when flash animation will require more than 4GB of RAM?

I take it you haven't been to YouTube lately? ;)

Re: Re:Why linux first

[Walpurgiss]

That day is now, with its brand new feature, multiple simultaneous memory leaks (MSML), which promises to halt X-servers across the nation.

Re:Why linux first

[gbjbaanb]

you mean like:

"Adobe, your flash crashed my boxen, you sux0r. Give me teh codez so I can work l33t skillz on it and fix it 'cos you are so n00bs". :-)

Re:Why linux first

[PitaBred]

64bit FreeBSD users and devs are a much smaller community than 64bit Linux users and devs. Gotta make the cutoff somewhere, and I'd bet that Adobe will get much better feedback from a larger group of people with Linux, from a tech-savvy audience that will actually try beta versions in large numbers. I know I'm already running it, and it's been great so far, especially compared to the 32bit wrapped version.

Re:Why linux first

[FullCircle]

You can't get a native 64 bit version of firefox/IE at the moment, so there's no need for 64bit flash....

Modded Insightful? Really?

So why is there this "Internet Explorer (64-bit)" icon on every 64bit version of Windows?

There is also this link with 64bit builds of Mozilla products: http://wiki.mozilla-x86-64.com/Download

Re:Why linux first

[rhavenn]

Yeah, now lets hope they listen to us FreeBSD users as well. 32-bit or 64-bit, I don't care, just give us something native.

Re:Why linux first

[Lord Jester]

Hopefully they choose the same route with Acrobat reader.

It'd be nice if the full products were available as well. Adobe used to have a version of Photoshop for Unix.

It'd be nice to get a few mainstream apps ported to further cement the foundations of the *nix user baser. It should be even easier now that Macintosh is on an x86 platform. OS X is built on a BSD foundation. One would think that there would be a natural transition to GNU/Linux porting of the Adobe apps. It'd be a win/win situation.

Re:Why linux first

[Eil]

But you snipped off this part, which said:

and the fact that Linux distributions do not ship with a 32-bit browser or a comprehensive 32-bit emulation layer by default.

While Adobe's statement was in general quite positive, this little bit translates roughly to, "We're entirely confused and a bit offended that you Linux folks won't ship your distributions will all manner of legacy middleware and glue libraries for eternal backward compatibility like some other OS we could mention."

Re:Why linux first

[Anonymous Coward]

For what value of "great"?

FreeBSD users and devs, for example, have asked for just as long.

As one of their devs wrote, it still needs some work:

The 64-bit version of the plugin compiles and runs on FreeBSD 7.0 which I demoed at Flashforward 2008. There are no plans for release yet as it is still rather unstable and will require substantial work to get it ready for public consumption.

But hey, they're actually working on a FreeBSD port.

Let me be the first to say...

[MasterOfMagic]

Final-fucking-ly.

Now if only Gnash and libswf would get their shit together. I can't even play YouTube with their latest releases on my AMD64 box.

Re:Let me be the first to say...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey! You know the rules. No bitching that people freely giving their time aren't delivering the results you want, unless you're helping.

Re:Let me be the first to say...

[MasterOfMagic]

From the Gnash website:

Streaming Video
        Gnash supports the viewing of streaming video from popular video sharing sites like Lulu.tv or YouTube.com.

When they stop claiming it as a feature, then they get to be free of my criticism of their broken feature.

Re:Let me be the first to say...

[thue]

I can't even play YouTube with their latest releases on my AMD64 box.

Youtube changed the video format to H264 for some/most/many of their videos recently. It used to work with swfdec.

In the very latest dev version of swfdec the video works again, but there is no sound.

Re:Let me be the first to say...

[ColdWetDog]

In the very latest dev version of swfdec the video works again, but there is no sound.

You say that like it's a bad thing...

Re:Let me be the first to say...

[LWATCDR]

"In the very latest dev version of swfdec the video works again, but there is no sound."
Interesting use of the term "works". While technically true really misses the point.
You can not use swfdec two watch youtube videos they way that most are meant to be watched.
Of course fans of Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Mary Pickford will not be disappointed.

Re:Let me be the first to say...

[funkatron]

I only like two Chaplin films and they both have sound. Still I guess that means I'm not technically a fan.

Re:Let me be the first to say...

[X_Bones]

In the very latest dev version of swfdec the video works again, but there is no sound.

That sounds like progress to me! Is the next version going to remove user comments from the page too?

Re:Let me be the first to say...

[n1ckml007]

YouTube's audio compression IS terrible.

Re:Let me be the first to say...

[snl2587]

Streaming Video
Gnash supports the viewing of streaming video from popular video sharing sites like Lulu.tv or YouTube.com.

But it is a feature: they just never said how much streaming video.

Re:Let me be the first to say...

[Anonymous Coward]

So no OSS project can claim to have any features, lest you find a bug in their implementation?

Re:Let me be the first to say...

[LWATCDR]

Yes the Great Dictator is brilliant. But give me a break just how many well known silent film stars do you expect me to come up with? :)

Re:Let me be the first to say...

[Anonymous Coward]

Final-fucking-ly.

Now if only Gnash and libswf would get their shit together. I can't even play YouTube with their latest releases on my AMD64 box.

still not supported properly in facebook games either darn it is not 100%

Re:Let me be the first to say...

[Anonymous Coward]

And that's because I didn't bother hooking up AAC yet, as I'm currently busy with RTMP.
There's not a lot I could do even if I wanted right now as distros just released and they usually don't take features in stable release updates, so you guys have to wait until Jaunty/Fedora 11 anyway.

And as it's not that hard to add support for those codecs, you can be sure it'll be there. If you want it in devel builds faster, send me a patch. We definitely lack developers.

Cheers,
Benjamin

Re:Let me be the first to say...

[Abcd1234]

That renders said feature completely inoperable? Yeah, that sounds about right, actually.

Re:Let me be the first to say...

[windsurfer619]

2 seconds is barely more than 20 frames on YouTube. That's barely a video :\

Re:Let me be the first to say...

[Anonymous Coward]

They did say "viewing", not hearing video.

x86-64

[TeknoHog]

The summary talks about 64-bitness in general, while the Linux release is for x86-64 only. Linux users on non-x86 platforms are still without Flash, for better or worse. At least there's a Sparc build for Solaris.

Re:x86-64

[tepples]

The summary talks about 64-bitness in general, while the Linux release is for x86-64 only.

As I understand it, Flash Player is designed to run on workstations, and the vast majority of workstations still manufactured and marketed for use in home and office environments are x86 or x86-64. Which other architectures are you talking about? ARM-based PDAs?

Re:x86-64

[TeknoHog]

I understand why Adobe would target x86 mainly. But on Slashdot, it would be appropriate to mention this x86 even once in the summary. After all, we don't immediately think of "Windows on x86" when somebody says "computer".

Re:x86-64

[Anonymous Coward]

You missed the obvious, PowerPC.

Re:x86-64

[tepples]

workstations still manufactured and marketed for use in home and office environments

You missed the obvious, PowerPC.

Pardon my ignorance, but what uses a PowerPC anymore? Wii, Xbox 360, and PLAYSTATION 3 aren't sold as workstations, and pre-Intel Macintosh computers are discontinued.

debugger version?

[girlintraining]

Oh please. You just released a working binary to the most rabidly well-educated disassemblers, hackers, kernel developers, and programmers in the world. You don't have to. But you'll need to document it after they make it... They HATE documenting their work.

Just tested it

[NeoBrain]

I just tried it on my Fedora 9 64-bit installation and it works just fine. No crashes, no freezes, not like ATI drivers in XServer 1.5 :P Definitely a great move by Adobe, better release a working Flash plugin than a buggy and crashy one!

Re:Just tested it

[Radhruin]

Confirmed. It's played everything I've thrown at it, and it is also considerably faster. With NSPluginWrapper, when I loaded a page full of flash graphs, the browser became sluggish for some time. With the alpha, the graphs load up instantly. So far I'm very impressed.

Re:Just tested it

[websitebroke]

Working great here too. Now I can actually watch a full-screen HD video on Vimeo without the sound stuttering on me. Compiz running and everything.

Re:Just tested it

[Anonymous Coward]

It worked right off the bat for me on openSUSE 11.1 Beta 5, but NOT on Fedora 10 Preview.

I'll wait a few hours to see what kind of advice shows up on the various mailing list archives. I'm sure that I have the wrong packages installed or they were installed in the wrong order or some such nonsense, which seems to be a recurring problem with Fedora, at least on my AMD64 laptop.

Re:Just tested it

[TheUni]

Make that 4. No problems here on gentoo 64.

It sure did feel good to emerge -C nspluginwrapper

Re:Just tested it

[McNihil]

I just tried it on Fedora 10 x64 preview and on this site http://joecartoon.atom.com/ It is magnitudes faster than the nspluginwrapper "hack."

I would like to extend the thanks for the nspluginwrapper people for making it possible in the past and a big qudos to Adobe to make a native 64 bit version available for the present and future.

Re:Just tested it

[CarpetShark]

Now try it on Arm Linux, Linux/MIPS, Linux/PPC, or one of the many other branches that make up the complete Linux platform.

Re:Just tested it

[Tubal-Cain]

Works in Ubuntu.

Technically, where should the libflashplayer.so reside? Both /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/ and /usr/lib/firefox/plugins/ contained a link to the flashplugin-nonfree file. Right now I have the file in /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/ and a hard link in /usr/lib/firefox/plugins/

Re:Just tested it

[bristley]

Works on debian testing. I removed the nspluginwrapper library for flash, edited my plugin reg file, and then had to do an update to the latest iceweasel. I'm in Australia and can now watch the ABC iview player :-)

Re:Just tested it

[Abcd1234]

If you're the only user, I'd *strongly* suggest just throwing it in ~/.mozilla/plugins/. Polluting the distribution-controlled directories with non-tracked software is a sure road to pain later (like, say, when Ubuntu rolls this plugin into the official package repository).

Re:Just tested it

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm in Australia and can now watch the ABC iview player :-)

Until Australia's government filters that access... :) *ducks*

Re:Just tested it

[xSander]

Tried it on my Debian testing (amd64) as well. Works perfectly with nfl.com and YouTube so far. BTW, no plugin regfile needed. I just removed swfdec and put the libflashplayer.so in my ~/.mozilla/plugins and restarted Iceweasel.

Re:Just tested it

[badkarmadayaccount]

This is OT, but is it true that fedora has the best support for 32bit userspace and 64bit kernel? Or something to that effect, I thought Fedora users had the least problems with 32-bit apps on x64. Just curious.

Hath hell frozen over?

[A12m0v]

Falsh 64bit! and on Linux before Windows and Mac!

Windows/Minefield support?

[Stiletto]

Great news. It's about time! I'm curious if they have plans to release a Windows 64-bit version for Firefox's "Minefield" releases.

Really?

[jadedoto]

I try to install it, and all I get is a segfault.

Re:Really?

[jadedoto]

...Nevermind *doh*

Coming up in 6 months

[Rik Sweeney]

"Where's the 128-bit version?!"

Re:Coming up in 6 months

[Anonymous Coward]

Bah. You're behind the curve. I already plan to bitch about the lack of a 256 bit version 12 months from now.

Re:Coming up in 6 months

[jbeaupre]

using Intel processors as a baseline-

4 bit - 1971
8 bit - 1972 (1 year)
16 bit - 1978 (6 years)
32 bit - 1985 (7 years)
64 bit - 2004 (19 years)
128 bit - 2026 (22 years by my VERY crude estimate)

128 bit Flash some time after that.

Re:Coming up in 6 months

[Just Some Guy]

So, it took Moore's law 14 years to consume the first 32 bits and another 19 to consume the next 32. By my very crude estimate, 64 bit computing should be good for another 30 years.

Re:Coming up in 6 months

[jbeaupre]

My first estimate was likely more crude than yours. A straight line curve fit x vs y ( x=log base 2 of bits , y = delta years). I ended up playing some more and a power curve fit predicts just about 30 years to get to 128 bit too. The fit is good enough to make me wonder if there's a grain of truth in there somewhere.

Re:Coming up in 6 months

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, 64-bits should be enough for anyone.

Re:Coming up in 6 months

[Anonymous Coward]

you just have to install it twice...

Re:Coming up in 6 months

[windsurfer619]

Huh. The Unix epoch time for 32-bit numbers will be occurring is about 30 years as well. Co-incidence?

yay Adobe!

[NaCh0]

Thank you thank you thank you!!!!!!

This is a great day for flash support on linux!

And they came forth...

[MindlessAutomata]

Upon a sea of grease and neckbeards I sailed, and I heard the calling in the distant. It was the sound of fat, wolf shirt-wearing nerds crying out in triumph. Their voices merged into one, and I heard them exclaim, "The year of the Linux desktop is upon us!"

And then everything was silent once more.

Re:And they came forth...

[X0563511]

"wolf shirt-wearing"

What, you would prefer sans-shirt? I think you meant:

"wolf-shirt wearing"

Re:And they came forth...

[MindlessAutomata]

Thanks for the correction. I also meant "distance" instead of "distant". I don't know how I'll sleep tonight.

More Importantly

[Anonymous Coward]

While native 64 bit support is good news, it's not that big of a deal. 32 bit operation on 64 bit Linux has long been feasible so everyone was more than capable of poisoning their systems with Flash all along.

What is desirable and still missing is a Flash player that can run a video without putting dual core processor utilization at 60-90% for the duration of the video. It amazes me that there isn't a great outcry over this as it is an issue that has been around since circa Flash 7 and it only seems to be getting worse.

On the subject of 64 bit software, Skype is the more urgent need. Presently, it is not possible to run any version of Skype on a 64 bit Linux system. 64 bit Skype is a much bigger deal that is still absent.

Re:More Importantly

[Anonymous Coward]

Strange, since I've been running skype on x86_64 for years. Not 64-bit native, I'm sure, but it works so who cares?

Re:More Importantly

[Anonymous Coward]

What is desirable and still missing is a Flash player that can run a video without putting dual core processor utilization at 60-90% for the duration of the video.

Flash has been a tragic failure as a video platform. Perhaps your insight on this matter could help correct this.

O.o

Flash uses a lot of CPU because it doesn't attempt to leverage native decoding hardware. While that doesn't contribute to efficiency it does have one positive benefit; it works. It works well on Window, OS-X and Linux. The day Adobe starts mucking around in all the myriad and sundry half-baked and buggy native video codec acceleration APIs to make you happy they will put 'just works' at risk.

I suspect that instead they will continue to ignore you by delivering working players. I also suspect that this policy will continue to be rewarded by the market, despite you.

Re:More Importantly

[Anonymous Coward]

> On the subject of 64 bit software, Skype is the more urgent need. Presently, it is not possible to run any version of Skype on a 64 bit Linux system.

It's not? Gee, when was someone going to tell me that the Skype client I'm running on my 64-bit Linux laptop wasn't working? I could have sworn it was since I've been using it without problem for a number of months now.

Re:More Importantly

[macshit]

On the subject of 64 bit software, Skype is the more urgent need. Presently, it is not possible to run any version of Skype on a 64 bit Linux system.

The 32-bit version of skype runs fine on my 64-bit debian system. It's the version from skype website which is statically linked against libqt; dynamic libraries it gets from /lib/lib32 and /lib32.

Re:More Importantly

[Anonymous Coward]

There has been Skype 64 bit for Linux for a while. I use it on Ubuntu 64 bit for IM chat with workmates. I suspect getting voice to work probably requires some faffing around, but I don't doubt it works.

Re:More Importantly

[Delkster]

I don't think that's enough of a reason. Most other video decoding doesn't use much hardware acceleration either -- my Linux + NVidia system might be able to accelerate MPEG-2 decoding or so, but that's pretty irrelevant because that's pretty fast to decode anyway.

Support for hardware accelerated H.264 decoding is beginning to appear (perhaps also on Linux, with NVidia releasing VDPAU support for Linux), but to the best of my knowledge, most systems aren't hardware accelerating it anyway.

It might be, though, that the slow part is video output rather than decoding the input stream, and the reason you suggest might be significant for that. I think I recall reading that at least Flash 9 for Linux uses OpenGL for scaling etc., and that might well be slower than using hardware accelerated video overlay like most video player software.

Finally...

[neonux]

Now I'm waiting for the 64-bit version of Duke Nukem Forever!

Re:Finally...

[Constantine XVI]

Just as soon as the 64-bit lemon-scented paper napkins have been loaded

Re:Finally...

[robthebloke]

I think it's probably safe to say it'll only be available as a 512bit build.

Who tagged this 'buggy'?

[gblues]

It's an alpha release. NO SHIT it's buggy. Live with it and file reports so Adobe fixes it, or wait for the final version.

Why no 32 bit browser?

[F�an�ro]

Linux distributions do not ship with a 32-bit browser or a comprehensive 32-bit emulation layer by default.

Why don't they anyway?

Given that many if not most users will want to install some plugins, installing a 32-bit browser by default would seem logical.

The browser would only have 2 gb address space, and it could not make use of new 64-bit registers or processor extensions.
Both seem like a very minor disadvantage for a browser, especially compared to being able to run 32 bit precompiled plugins.

Is this just one of these ideological things where the actual advantages for the user are disregarded?

Re:Why no 32 bit browser?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because that would require emulation libs for x86, which take up quite a lot of space, which would mean install-dvd's and not install-cd's for some distros.

Re:Why no 32 bit browser?

[Anonymous Coward]

Right....because we are all still using 16bit apps too...

Re:Why no 32 bit browser?

[Walterk]

They don't do it by default as it's more prone to errors in the installation. However, OpenSuSE 11.0 does enable the 32 bit emulation for Firefox.

Re:Why no 32 bit browser?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it has something to do with dependencies and that on Linux you usually don't use self-contained packages.

Re:Why no 32 bit browser?

[F�an�ro]

Aren't most linux distros able to run 32 bit software on a 64 bit platform? IIRC that this was possible on ubuntu, so the libs should already be there

Re:Why no 32 bit browser?

[Anonymous Coward]

Note that 32-bit x86 code runs fairly significantly slower (5 to 10%) than 64-bit x86-64. So having a native 64-bit firefox is also a performance thing. This is NOT the usual situation for platforms that support both 32-bit and 64-bit stuff, BTW, usually 64-bit is the same speed or slower (due to pointer bloat). It's just that 32-bit x86 really, really sucked (mostly the tiny register file).

Re:Why no 32 bit browser?

[lp_bugman]

Because we need to move everything to 64bit. There is just no valid reason on staying on 32bit camp.
With your argument we should still be using Netscape 3 over wine.

Also most most linux distros come with Firefox 64bit preinstalled. So it make sence to use native (64bit) applications and plugins.

Re:Why no 32 bit browser?

[Hal_Porter]

You don't need to emulate x86 on x64, the processor has native support for the instructions. At least on Windows the kernel is 64 bit and the WOW layer just needs to sign extend pointers. You probably need 32 and 64 bit copies of some of the DLLs though.

Of course it's a question of priorities. 64 bit Windows would die if it couldn't run 32 bit binaries.

Re:Why no 32 bit browser?

[PitaBred]

Most distro's don't ship with closed source software in the first place, and the only reason to run a 32bit browser or the 32bit nspluginwrapper is to get flash, so there is no reason for including a 32bit compatibility layer for only closed-source software. There are some distros that make it very easy to install, like Ubuntu, but it's not default because it's against the basic ideology of open-source, and it's one more thing that people will complain of that "bloats" the system.

Re:Why no 32 bit browser?

[TeknoHog]

You don't need to emulate x86 on x64, the processor has native support for the instructions. At least on Windows the kernel is 64 bit and the WOW layer just needs to sign extend pointers. You probably need 32 and 64 bit copies of some of the DLLs though.

That's the problem, you need 32-bit versions of all libraries involved. Such as glibc, X libraries, GTK... That's a lot of extra packages to maintain just so that you can run one single closed binary.

Re:Why no 32 bit browser?

[m50d]

It would require a substantial amount of exceedingly tedious work on the part of the developer, and be prone to obscure bugs. It's not that there's any ideology actively against it - I'm sure if one of the dev team offered to sort it all out they'd gladly accept - it's just that no-one in their right mind would voluntarily accept such a job.

That said I'm surprised one of the big commercial distros (SUSE?) hasn't paid someone enough to do it.

Re:Why no 32 bit browser?

[baka_boy]

Shipping a 32-bit browser requires much more than distributing a different build. You also need 32-bit versions of all of the browser's runtime dependencies.

On my box, I see at least the following dependencies for Firefox 3:

lennon@tachikoma:~$ ldd /usr/lib/firefox-3.0.3/firefox
linux-vdso.so.1 => (0x00007fff2bbfe000)
libpthread.so.0 => /lib/libpthread.so.0 (0x00007fd923780000)
libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x00007fd92357c000)
libstdc++.so.6 => /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6 (0x00007fd923271000)
libm.so.6 => /lib/libm.so.6 (0x00007fd922ff0000)
libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x00007fd922de2000)
libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x00007fd922a80000)
/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00007fd92399c000)

So, you'd need 32-bit builds of pthread, libc, libgcc, libstdc++, etc., which implies pretty much a complete 32-bit runtime. I also suspect that GLib and Gtk+ should be in that list, which would further bloat the redundant set of libraries.

After a certain point, you should probably just run the browser inside a 32-bit virtual machine, hosted on a 64-bit OS, since you're already going to have to distribute about half a complete distro in runtime requirements.

Re:Why no 32 bit browser?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd agree but now days, browser will use all the ram they can. Thank you ajax.

Re:Why no 32 bit browser?

[IamTheRealMike]

Is this just one of these ideological things where the actual advantages for the user are disregarded?

Yes.

It's actually more about power than ideology. The key people behind Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora and the other major distros all fervently believe that they and they alone should be the gatekeepers of all software run by their users. They see no reason why somebody should be able to get software from somewhere other than them. Thus they see no reason why binary compatibility is needed or useful. Thus being binary compatible with 32 bit binaries is simply a waste of disk space (which is extremely cheap but logic doesn't play into this).

This position is moronic but ubiquitous in the Linux world. It leads to absolute frustration on the part of any developer who actually cares what bits make it into their users hands - the almighty Firefox/Debian smackdown is rooted in this problem. There have been many other problems though: proprietary software like video games or Google Earth rely on huge hacks to make their stuff work, upstream developers like Inkscape get tired of their users running versions of their software obsoleted months ago because no upgrade is available from their distro. It leads to bugs like this one, which boil down to "our packaging policies are too inflexible to give you the features you want". And so on.

It always fascinates me how much criticism Apple has received over their control over the iPhone app store and the arbitrary policies they impose on developers there, but when Linux distributors do exactly the same thing there is only stony silence. Software gets dropped, changed arbitrarily, held back to obsolete versions or denied entry into the repositories entirely, forcing bizarre hacks (try writing down the instructions for running a 3rd party loki installer some time!).

The lack of 32 bit support is just one facet of this ridiculous ideology.

Re:Why no 32 bit browser?

[Anders]

Linux distributions do not ship with a 32-bit browser or a comprehensive 32-bit emulation layer by default.

Why don't they anyway?

One reason would be that it also requires 32-bit libraries, and that is a mess to maintain.

Re:Why no 32 bit browser?

[greg1104]

Ubuntu has documented the list of 32-bit libraries you need for their distribution, with a whole procedure laid out on their community documentation for how to use a 32-bit Firefox on a 64-bit platform. I found that to be a little weird in regards to getting the Firefox profiles for the two installs to work the way I wanted to, but the actual 32-bit Firefox + 32-bit Flash 9 worked fine as an additional option to the default 64-bit Firefox.

Re:Why no 32 bit browser?

[SonOfSengaya]

Check out this: http://swiftweasel.tuxfamily.org/

For the debian based distros there is a package called swiftweasel32 which is exactly what you described.

Re:Why no 32 bit browser?

[drspliff]

I don't know why most Linux distros seem to have gone down the '64bit only' road by default as it really makes no sense why you should want even the most mundane piece of software running as 64bit when there are no advantages and it never even comes close to the 32bit restrictions.

In Solaris land where we've had 64bit kernels as default for many more years almost all the applications are 32bit, and the only exceptions are your specialty apps (like databases, large financial apps, java app servers etc.) running as 64bit.

It still strikes me as really strange why anybody would want their web bowser or that buggy cpu-hog Flash running as a 64bit app...

Re:Why no 32 bit browser?

[Anonymous Coward]

That quote is not quite accurate. On fedora x86_64, at least, you can get a full 32 bit firefox and all dependencies quite easily:

# yum install firefox.i386

Re:Why no 32 bit browser?

[Hal_Porter]

It depends who is more important really, doesn't it? Microsoft goes through the pain because supporting binaries is something they have to do in a new OS otherwise people won't upgrade to it. Actually the whole OS is architected so that most 32 bit stuff just thunks through to 64 bit code so the amount of duplication is probably quite small.

The Linux world makes acid comments about closed binaries and does not. Users don't pay for uprades, so it doesn't matter how inconvenient the upgrade to 64 bit is. Of course that means they end up blaming Adobe for not porting to 64 bit whereas the Windows world doesn't much care, but then again flash is an evil closed binary too so Adobe deserve it.

Linux Hater ranted about this, in his inimitable style.
http://linuxhaters.blogspot.com/2008/07/my-browser-needs-16-exabytes.html

What's funny about this is that even now they've done it people are complaining that flash is still a closed binary, they haven't released a debug version and don't support Sparc64 or Itanium and what they really should do is to release the source code.

At last!!!!

[Wowsers]

I was one of many that put my name to asking for a 64 bit version. Now if only there was a 64 bit Skype and that ever elusive 64 bit browser plug-in for the 64 bit Sun Java.

Will be downloading the 64 bit Flash to test it out, hopefully it is easier than playing around with nspluginwrapper to get the 32 bit version working, and with a lot less processor power being eaten up just to run a Flash video.

Re:At last!!!!

[coolsnowmen]

...and with a lot less processor power being eaten up just to run a Flash video.

here is to hoping, but flash video still is twice as cpu intensive on my 32bit machines than any other video player.

Re:At last!!!!

[Wowsers]

I wouldn't ordinarily reply to my own posting, but I just tried the plug-in. CPU use seems so far to be the same as the 32 bit version, so maybe need a bit of tweaking by Adobe. In Firefox it's identified in about:plugins as "Shockwave Flash 10.0 d20", does not mention it as 64 bit.

I suspect I could now get rid of nspluginwrapper, but will test more to see how the plug-in reacts (if it crashes).

A quick hopefully useful notice for some users. On first test I had no sound playback. I actually found that the sound that was routing through the speakers was now being sent to the USB headset. Now that I use Pulse to route the audio instead of ALSA only, using "Pulse volume control" I was able to re-route the audio from the headset back to the main speakers.

Re:At last!!!!

[RAMMS EIN]

``I was one of many that put my name to asking for a 64 bit version. Now if only there was a 64 bit Skype and that ever elusive 64 bit browser plug-in for the 64 bit Sun Java.''

If these had been open source, there would probably have been stable and full-featured 64-bit versions for some time now.

Re:At last!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

By the way it would have been nice if they fixed their 32 bits player first ...

For me playing a flash video on my 32 bit machine under 'nux is more like 4 times more cpu intensive than a divx, and at least 2 times more than under windows.If we make a comparison with same quality encoding, that must be more like 8 times more than divx in vlc/mplayer/whatever since all theses streaming sites have such a low quality encoding.

Opening 6 videos in different tabs on Firefox makes my computer puke under 'nux. How is that friggin possible !

It's about accessibility

[r7]

Linux users asked, and adobe listened. Great stuff.

Would be, except that we've been asking for several _years_ now. Isn't this kind of crap (releasing software for some OS and some architectures while ignoring others) why we need open source in the first place?

Looking forward, what assurance do we have that security issues will be addressed any better, or upgrades, or new features? We have none of course.

We would all be better off if A) youtube and other Flash sites made their content available in MP4 and other ISO standardized formats, and B) if Adobe published the Flash spec so others could develop better writers and viewers.

Yes we know that Adobe has to make a profit on their product to fund further development, but they don't have to do so using the same tie-in and lock-in that got MS sued for anti-trust.

Re:It's about accessibility

[m50d]

We would all be better off if A) youtube and other Flash sites made their content available in MP4 and other ISO standardized formats,

They don't do that because they'd have to pay licensing fees.

I feel youtube is the single greatest example of the failure of OSS. The fact that they went with flash shows they were willing to avoid what were up until then the "standard" ways of doing streaming video - MS, Real and Apple's server setups - and indeed willing to put a fair bit of work into getting a royalty-free solution. There should have been an OSS solution already there - theora streaming (sure, it needs a plugin, but so does flash) integrated directly into one of those big CRMs, and it should have been there before youtube started - all the pieces were there, it just needed someone to care enough to integrate them. But noone did.

Re:It's about accessibility

[r7]

We would all be better off if A) youtube and other Flash sites made their content available in MP4 and other ISO standardized formats

They don't do that because they'd have to pay licensing fees.

What are you talking about. There are no licensing fees for MP4 or any of the ISO standardized codecs.

Youtube continues to offer Flash and no other formats because Adobe made them a deal they couldn't refuse. Other streaming video sites offer standardized, open formats, without licensing fees because Adobe hasn't (yet) made them similar offers. No different from MS buying AV vendors and canceling their Mac and Linux products, or IBM buying Lotus and canceling their SunOS products.

This most surely is why we need open source.

Re:It's about accessibility

[mvdwege]

There are no licensing fees for MP4 or any of the ISO standardized codecs.

I hate to do this, but...BZZZT! Wrong!!. Straight from the horse's mouth, the MPEG LA:

"To align with the real-world flow of MPEG-4 commerce, reasonable royalties are apportioned throughout the MPEG-4 Visual value chain."

So yes, you do have to pay license fees on the patents used in MP4.

Mart

Obligatory coral cache mirror

[rufus t firefly]

Direct download: http://download.macromedia.com.nyud.net/pub/labs/flashplayer10/libflashplayer-10.0.d20.7.linux-x86_64.so.tar.gz

One more reason to bitch!

[ypctx]

Proper graphics drivers from ATI and NVidia (with a proper compositing X server, that is).

Currently I can choose between perfect 2D + no 3D vs. perfect 3D + sluggish 2D vs. compiz + blinking video + bad 3D. Somehow not a reason to switch from Linux though.

And since I'm in the requesting mode, a Flash and Skype for iPhone would be nice, thanks!

Re:One more reason to bitch!

[Enderandrew]

ATI's OSS drivers give 3D and good 2D support. Their binary drivers have been improving as well.

Nvidia's new driver has great OpenGL performance, greatly improved 2D (XRender) performance, and great compiz performance.

I can't find any complaints with Nvidia's latest driver.

Re:One more reason to bitch!

[ypctx]

I can't use ATI's OSS drivers for my HD 3850, if you mean the radeon or radeonhd drivers. RadeonHD is getting there though. NVidia world I don't know much, but I've seen a lot of forum posts where people complained.

doinitrite?

[BrainInAJar]

Is it just me, or does it just seem that if you need a 64-bit address space for your web browser, you're doing something totally wrong

Re:doinitrite?

[rufus t firefly]

Is it just me, or does it just seem that if you need a 64-bit address space for your web browser, you're doing something totally wrong

I think the point is (at least on a 64 bit architecture) that running a single 32 bit program on your system means that you need another set of 32 bit libraries to support it... Better to run a system with a homogeneous architecture.

Re:doinitrite?

[BrainInAJar]

nonsense, disk is cheap and having a couple extra libs around doesn't impact it that much

Re:doinitrite?

[kanazir]

Like running KDE 64-bit and using konqueror?

Re:doinitrite?

[NeoBrain]

It's not about needing a 64-bit address space, it's more about
1) not needing to install a 32 bit Firefox PLUS the huge dependency list of it for 32 bit compatibility libs. Just takes away HDD space AND also much more RAM as the OS has to load each library twice (once the native 64 bit library and once the 32 bit compatibility lib)
2) not needing to install that ndispluginwrapper which is slow, unstable and actually not supported at all
3) not needing to use gnash or swfdec or something, they may work with most of the websites out there, but some just don't, now one finally gets /full/ Flash compatibility
4) eh... well, just about the same reason why I don't have any Windows applications running on Linux? Just seems senseless to run 32 bit apps in a 64 bit environment!
5) 64 Bit applications also run faster as they can depend on thinks like SSE to be implemented on ALL 64 bit processors.

Re:doinitrite?

[robthebloke]

yes. However I'd prefer to run native 64bit software on my 64bit OS rather than relying on a 32bit emulation layer. Windows 64bit users don't really have any problems running a 32bit browser with 32bit flash with WOW; but the story is different on linux since the 32bit flash doesn't operate very well with 64bit browsers...

And bear in mind it's not just additional memory space you get with 64bit systems - It's the doubled CPU register count that I'm personally interested in....

Re:doinitrite?

[BrainInAJar]

"4) eh... well, just about the same reason why I don't have any Windows applications running on Linux? Just seems senseless to run 32 bit apps in a 64 bit environment!"

why waste the ram and memory bandwidth on a 64 bit app if you don't need it?

"5) 64 Bit applications also run faster as they can depend on thinks like SSE to be implemented on ALL 64 bit processors."

They can also be slower because you have to push twice as much info across the bus. 64-bit on x86 is occasionally faster. On other architectures it's almost always slower.

Re:doinitrite?

[Anonymous Coward]

"It's the doubled CPU register count that I'm personally interested in...."

for a web browser?

Re:doinitrite?

[NeoBrain]

for faster execution speed and application performance in general?

Re:doinitrite?

[HeronBlademaster]

Having to support two versions of libraries on a single system is a logistical nightmare in many cases (think: clueless users, businesses, etc), at least when you're trying to keep things as bug-free as possible.

Re:doinitrite?

[ShadowRangerRIT]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but there are other advantages to x86-64 architectures beyond merely extending the address space. Examples:

• Better security: Native NX bit support; extremely important for anything network facing
• Better multimedia performance: You can count on a minimal level of SSE support
• Additional general purpose registers (admittedly not a big deal on browsers)

Re:doinitrite?

[Anonymous Coward]

Solaris manages it just fine *shrug*

Re:doinitrite?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it just me, or does it just seem that if you need a 64-bit address space for your web browser, you're doing something totally wrong

You haven't seen the memory leaks with firefox, have you? /ducks

Re:doinitrite?

[jonaskoelker]

640 sextomegaseptohectodekakilooctohectooctodekasextum *gasp* comma something bytes ought to be enough for everyone.

Re:doinitrite?

[HeronBlademaster]

Try being an IT guy at a small software shop filled with semi-competent developers. Some of them use 64-bit Vista, some of them use 32-bit XP. I'm extremely tired of the differences and unique bugs for each version of software. For instance, I was informed this morning that TortoiseSVN (64-bit) seems to be hanging on one machine. 32-bit Tortoise doesn't even run on 64-bit Windows - so I'm stuck.

Re:doinitrite?

[Anonymous Coward]

Today, maybe. Tomorrow, probably not.

Re:doinitrite?

[Ilgaz]

They are x86 users. On x86, you get bonus registers etc. and commands. It is not like PPC or other CPUs, the x86 gets huge difference by going pure 64bit. I mean the performance etc.

So ideally your kernel, OS, frameworks and apps should be all 64bit to gain performance or something.

It is also one of the reasons why PPC-64 won't likely get Snow Leopard since PPC doesn't have such bonus stuff. If one sits and compiles "pure 64bit" Safari running on 64bit Kernel, it may actually run slower on PPC64 and it is not actually a bug or failure, it is the way CPU designed. Actually needing software such as Mathematica comes in 64bit and runs way better than 32 bit version on PPC64 of course.

Re:doinitrite?

[Ilgaz]

OS X Leopard (non Snow, the stable one) has fixed the problem. You just right click 64bit supporting software such as XCode 3 and click "Information", unclick "Run in 32bit" to run it on 64bit Mode. No weird -x64 ending files, no SET commands, no registry changes, nothing.

The pure 64bit Leopard (10.6, snow) will be looking like that too. No chaos, just a clever way of hiding things from user (and showing to nerd when asked).

Is it bigger? Well, everyone bitches about space of "Universal binary" (yea, lets abandon PPC!) and "Languages" but the space is actually 2 DVD rip images and nothing else.

Re:doinitrite?

[Anders]

nonsense, disk is cheap and having a couple extra libs around doesn't impact it that much

Well, you also need to keep the extra library in memory, rather than sharing the 64 bit version. So that takes some extra RAM.

Of course, RAM is also cheap. Which is why we buy lots of it. And when you have more than 1GB of RAM, 64 bit performs better. So there.

Re:doinitrite?

[Lightn]

32-bit Tortoise doesn't even run on 64-bit Windows - so I'm stuck.

It may not show up in the 64-bit explorer shell, but it does install and run. I believe a lot of people install both so that they can see TSVN options in the open dialog of their 32-bit apps.

Re:doinitrite?

[Cajun Hell]

Need, schmeed. A 64-bit environment is what people have. What should they do, run their flash plugin inside a 386 emulator?

one more time

[doom]

The complaint is not directed at Adobe, but against the idiots that are happily destroying the open nature of the web by embracing a closed product.

If you think it's impossible for anyone to make any money with software based on open standards, then you haven't been paying any attention to the development of the web.

If you don't get the problem that closed architectures are vulnerable to manipulation by the agencies that own the architectures, then you need some history lessons (start by searching for "Microsoft").

But this is all a fucking waste of breath, I'm afraid. On the one hand, you have an abstract argument about the long-term advantages of open architectures, and on the other, you have "look at the fonnny kittens!".

The web is doomed. Oh well, it's been an interesting few decades.

Re:one more time

[Tatsh]

I agree. I hate that classes teach Flash, and students have no idea of the implications of using such a closed standard (just because it works on Windows easily).

I greatly discourage making full-sites with Flash. For right now, we are kind of stuck with Flash FLV for video (unless you want to use Cortado, which works pretty great IMO, Java-based audio/video player; Wikipedia uses it).

I also agree with you that it can be such a waste of breath. No one who uses Windows and then goes into a 'Flash class' thinking it is the way to develop sites ('the best sites out there use Flash,' they think) understands the real problems. Adobe wants to keep developers embracing Flash instead of finding other solutions. I am glad most sites are replacing old Flash-based solutions with Ajax, but now we need more. Search SVG Tetris on Google and play using Firefox. It is a Javascript-based SVG game that works as fast or faster than Flash. With this as an example, and if Microsoft would actually support SVG completely and natively, Flash games can easily be replaced. Video/audio content can be replaced with the Cortado player or using embedded OGG/OGM/Theora (which you can use VLC's plug-in, mplayer's plugin (what I use), and a number of others). Currently, even most WMV files will work with Mplayer's plugin, so I do not see what is the problem with embedded video directly as opposed to an FLV.

In the case that Microsoft refuses to support SVG, will the community make an open-source plugin for IE? I would generally think not, but it would get the word out to a great number of people that Flash is out, SVG is in.

Re:one more time

[thtrgremlin]

I think the better will survive (open standards) and the past won't die off without a fight. As far as proprietary software goes, I don't understand the consumer defense. I guess I can appreciate that it must be people actually listening to the argument, so for that I am grateful, even if they don't agree. But as a fan of the words of Lessig, I do not see how anyone other than a monstrosity of a producer could be a fan of the mono-directional production model, where one group creates, and a near mutually exclusive group consumes in many respects.

There are a lot of people that don't code. Uhh.. MOST is an understatement. It is hard for those people to think about the impacts of what goes on behind the supply lines when they have no control in either situation. I know what the numbers say, and I know that the Linux community doesn't nearly have the need for numbers like Microsoft needs in order to leverage the market. Everyone I know that really uses computers uses Linux in some way, dual boot, NAS, programming, web server, whatever. Not many of them uses it exclusively.

I hope the web is not doomed, but I totally feel where you are coming from. The good may feel deep underground, but it is there, no matter the country you live in.

Re:one more time

[Enderandrew]

Are you forced to use Flash to design a webpage? No.

Can you use Flash on Mac OS X and Linux? Yes.

There is still choice here. Choice equates to freedom. You can use it or not as you see fit. "Freedom" is not removing all proprietary software and forcing people into one specific "GNU-or- nothing" dichotomy. Do you understand how that isn't freedom?

Re:one more time

[witekr]

But the problem is that it's usually quite a pain to develop a game (or any other real-time application) using the over-hacked, buggy collection of plugins and Javascript frameworks that work differently in every single browser. Even when using the most successful Javascript frameworks that compensate for browser inconsistencies, developers commonly run into absurd bugs and problems and spend much effort working around them. Flash, for the most part, runs 100% identically whether it's running on FF3/IE6/IE7/IE Mobile/Safari/Opera/etc.. There are a few minor inconsistencies dealing with embedding and HTTP requests, but in general a developer can sleep easy and focus on his code instead of dealing with the horrible mess of browser and OS problems. Actionscript 3 is also a great language to work with. It allows relative beginners to use the integrated graphics, sound, and animation facilities, while providing a good OOP and Event architecture that lets you create complex structured applications and games. There are 3d engines built using classes that allow access to lower level rendering -- try doing something on the level of Away3d with JS?

Re:one more time

[mixmatch]

According to this article, and several other things I've read, IE8 will not include support for SVG. If it is supported by IE9, we are looking at a minimum of 2-3 years before it is available on all major browsers. Add another year for browser penetration. Unless SVG is added as an update to IE8, it will not be a viable solution for web-based vector graphics in the near future. Fortunately, vector design programs like Adobe Illustrator and Inkscape support SVG rather well, so its not likely to disappear in oblivion before being widely implemented.

Re:one more time

[doom]

IE8 will not include support for SVG. If it is supported by IE9, we are looking at a minimum of 2-3 years before it is available on all major browsers. Add another year for browser penetration.

That's a point... but then it might just speed the adoption of Firefox on Windows.

Re:one more time

[mixmatch]

>

That's a point... but then it might just speed the adoption of Firefox on Windows.

I can only hope so!

Bleeding edge?!?!

[tom17]

FTA:

"bleeding edge type of processor known as a 64-bit CPU"

Since when is a processor architecture that has been available for years, and is the architecture of almost any computer you can buy right now, classed as "Bleeding Edge"

Bleedin 'ell

Re:Bleeding edge?!?!

[k33l0r]

I think you need to look up 'Sarcasm' on Wikipedia.

Re:Bleeding edge?!?!

[tom17]

I thought "naah that article was not like that" But upon reading it again, I concur.

My sarcasm must have been broken yesterday.

Sparc Support

[Anonymous Coward]

You did notice there were sparc64 binaries right?

IAFT!

[neowolf]

After 2+ years of asking Adobe to finally acknowledge that people actually use 64-bit machines- they finally got it!

Something not clear from the download site or the article- the install instructions are here:

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/releasenotes_64bit.html

I was giddy with excitement just to be able to wipe npviewer/nspluginwrapper from my system, hopefully forever.

And- I think it says a lot (despite what others seem to feel) that Adobe chose to do this for Linux first!

it just works

[bluefrogcs]

ripped out the 32 wrapper + 32bit flash plugin for ff3 .. dropped in the 64bit .. everything worked

Google Apps 3.0

[argent]

Is it just me, or does it just seem that if you need a 64-bit address space for your web browser, you're doing something totally wrong

They're just trying to stay ahead of Google.

The Daily Show started to

[Anonymous Coward]

I have 64-bit Ubuntu 8.10 and removing flashplugin-nonfree and installing this new 64-bit version to /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/ just worked. Even The Daily Show and Colbert Report work now.

Third-Party LSO Access

[Anonymous Coward]

As expected, the 64-bit version allows, by default, third-party access to the Local Shared Objects (i.e. flash cookies).

To prevent this, use the python utility s2x (http://osflash.org/s2x) to edit the settings.sol file and change the appropriate boolean value to false.

On Linux, the settings.sol is located within the ~/.macromedia directory.

Why I bitch.

[pallmall1]

Considering the fact that Flash is essentially mandatory for many websites...

That's the crux of the issue -- web support on 64-bit systems. Adobe Flash has it, Sun Java does not.

By ignoring Bug 4502695 for over 5 years (and over 800 votes), Sun has just given the 64-bit webspace to Adobe. Why should anyone wait another year to see if a 64-bit java plugin is actually released when Flash has a 64-bit plugin now?

Way to go, Sun. You've killed JavaFX before it even got started, and strangled the attempts to resurrect the applet and web-start apps.

That's just bitchin'.

Re:Why I bitch.

[SanityInAnarchy]

I'm fairly sure I have a working 64-bit Java plugin, via OpenJDK. At least a few simple applets work, and I'm fairly sure I don't have a 32-bit Java on this machine.

Re:Why I bitch.

[dwarfking]

I don't recall this being an issue for JNLP (webstart) applications since those are not run in the browser. They are a specific mime type that triggers the external JVM console to run the code as an external application. They are not limited by the browser's plugin the way applets are, only by the version of the JVM installed on the machine.

Re:Why I bitch.

[pallmall1]

I'm fairly sure I have a working 64-bit Java plugin, via OpenJDK.

You mean, sometimes working. How's JavaFX and webstart working for you?

Re:Why I bitch.

[pallmall1]

I don't recall this being an issue for JNLP (webstart) applications since those are not run in the browser.

Please follow and read the links in my original post.

Re:Why I bitch.

[cowwoc2001]

I have both Applets and Webstart working under Windows using a 64-bit JVM.

Re:Why I bitch.

[kabloom]

I'm fairly sure I have a working 64-bit Java plugin, via OpenJDK.

You mean IcedTea, which uses the open source gcjwebplugin. None of Sun's involvement whatsoever.

Re:Why I bitch.

[SanityInAnarchy]

I actually have neither of these installed. Whatever it is seems to be somewhat native to Konqueror.

Looking at my package manager, I do see OpenJDK, but not much else Java-related -- I see IcedTea and gcj, but neither are installed. Perhaps it's something native to Konqueror?

Again -- I have no idea which applets are working and which aren't, but at least some are.

For what it's worth, I do see an IcedTea plugin which depends on OpenJDK, but not on GCJ. And if that ends up being what works best, I don't really see how it changes the argument -- Java is 64-bit capable now, Flash is just catching up.

Re:Why I bitch.

[dwarfking]

I stand corrected. I hadn't realized it wasn't working because I have been using a 32 bit build of Firefox to support applets with JDK1.6 so that is why JNLP was working for me.

Re:Why I bitch.

[sdiz]

Which part of "State 10-Fix Delivered" you don't understand?
Java have 64-bit support already.

The main reason for no java applet on web is the infamous slow startup time/hang.

Re:Why I bitch.

[kabloom]

Konqueror has its own built-in java support. It talks to the JVM using a different method that doesn't rely on Sun being nice and building a web plugin.

Yes. The IcedTea web plugin talks to OpenJDK (not GCJ), but that wasn't Sun's doing. That's the GCJ plugin ported over to OpenJDK.

You're right Java in the browser is 64-bit capable now, but that's not in any way due to Sun's generosity.

Re:Why I bitch.

[SanityInAnarchy]

that's not in any way due to Sun's generosity.

I suspect having the source code to the JDK helped -- and that was Sun's generosity.

I wonder if it would've taken so many years if Flash had been open?

Re:Why I bitch.

[ewanm89]

As Sun gets closer and closer to releasing openjdk based java7 we are getting closer and closer to full 64bit java support.

Actually, it's just a few small sections of java (javafx and 3d apis) that aren't on 64bit yet. The whole computer science department at the university I attend is already doing all development on official machines on 64bit openjdk build.

Gentoo users rejoice!

[Lord Kestrel]

You can finally emerge -C www-client/mozilla-firefox-bin. You can then emerge www-client/mozilla-firefox with -O5 -funroll-loops, and it'll be so much faster. /obligatory Gentoo poast

(And yes, I'll be unmerging -bin if this works. I just hope the 64-bit version of flash isn't as flaky as the 32-bit version)

Re:Gentoo users rejoice!

[k33l0r]

I could, if Gnome didn't have dependencies on FF 2.x...

flash on linux

[Anonymous Coward]

has always sucked, and in all likelyhood will always suck, 32 or 64 bit. Nice of you to step up and stick your tongue up their ass though.

Re:flash on linux

[Just Some Guy]

has always sucked, and in all likelyhood will always suck, 32 or 64 bit.

Your opinion (and mine) of Flash doesn't matter. The important part is that a major software developer just told the world that Linux is a good platform for testing and to support. Even if I'm indifferent to Flash outside of Youtube, I can be excited about Adobe's announcement.

Missing tag

[Anonymous Coward]

Where is the huge NO THANKS tag when you need it? I need a no thanks tag in like 48pt font for this.

Ubiquity of flash

[DrYak]

Out of interest, what do you consider the smallest possible user base that any concession should be made with regard to support?

Given that flash is starting to get ubiquitous, any online-capable platform is going to need it badly soon. Restricting a (closed) technology to only a couple of most widespread platform is really bad.
If we exit the world of desktop computers the most widespread CPU are embedable RISCs such as ARM and MIPS. Yet, none of them can currently get even a free-as-in-beer plugin downloadable from adobe's website.
Thus embed platforms (such as PDAs, MID) have either to count on gnash (lots of F/LOSS BusyBox/Linux based PDA & Smartphone projects) or do without flash at all (iPhone currently).

There are lots of other possible creative usage for other machines. But, by lacking flash some of them will suddenly be not so useful for experiencing the web.

That's why the whole flash thing was a bad idea to begin with. In an open system as the internet, where everything is documented and free to get re-implemented, where everything was built in this open way, suddenly there comes a new "standart" which will only run on a couple of processors, preventing anything else to use it and stoping any creative use of it.

How much effort should be put into supporting either Sparc or Itanic, or indeed any other minority platform?

Well not much is asked from Adobe. Just help the open source enough to have a descent open source implementation.
That should be that much difficult, taking into account that adobe makes no money on the free-as-in-beer plugin, instead their main income comes from the creation suites.
Adobe has done it in the past (PDF is a published standard, with numerous alternative implementation existing - Adobe makes money on the Acrobat suite).
Concurrent of flash have done it (Silverlight vs. Moonlight)

And I'm not just talking about closed source apps here, I'm also talking about open source projects and the stance they take, and the whole range of possible support options

Usually, after the first couple of ports have revealed all the hidden platform dependent bugs, lots of additional posts come almost "for free", generally only a recompile away.

In addition, we don't expect the Gnash developers to maintain port for every fucking platform under the sun.
Gnash is free/libre opensource software. If the developers don't have the resources to port the application themselves, others are open to do it.

In fact that's what's happening : gnash is mainly developed on x86 and x86_64 architecture, but that hasn't stopped other enthusiasts to port it to PS3 (MIPS).

Flash is getting popular. As long as there's some interest for some platform there are bound to be enough interested developers (for that platform) to port it instead of gnash's own developers.

Popular game engines on portable device is a nice example :
ScummVM is available on a dozen of hardware platforms, some not even POSIX compatible. Not all of them are maintained by the main ScummVM developer. But the popularity of ScummVM and the coolness to be able to plas scumm-based (mostly LucasArt) games on whatever pocketable machine you have has nonetheless attracted enough motivated people to port it to a wide array of machines.
Same goes for several other game engine (Doom and Duke3D are nice examples. Usually its the second thing that get ported to any new hardware platform, right after Linux).
Given the rising popularity of flash, Gnash will probably follow the same trend... ...as long as gnash is compatible enough to flash.
And for that, cooperation from Adobe will help immensely.

Re:Ubiquity of flash

[bioglaze]

Flash format specification is available on an open enough licence to be used for making an open source player.

Re:Ubiquity of flash

[Anonymous Coward]

> That's why the whole flash thing was a bad idea to begin with.

Of course it was. That's obvious to anyone even remotely familiar with the initial design goals of the Web. And yet Flash use has consistently grown over the years.

Adobe supplied the product that website developers clearly wanted. The fact that those developers were massive idiots who simply could not understand that the Web was neither TV nor print is irrelevant. Adobe simply did what any capitalistic company would do, and took advantage of the situation. If they hadn't someone else would have. Sun tried the same thing with Java (and thankfully failed).

Re:Ubiquity of flash

[andreyvul]

PS3 doesn't use MIPS, it uses PowerPC.
PS2 uses MIPS.

Re:Ubiquity of flash

[Jeffrey Baker]

There is Flash Player on SPARC, on Super-H, and on ARM. So basically your entire argument is wrong.

Re:Ubiquity of flash

[cbhacking]

While I'm not quite sure where Nokia acquired it, the N800 and N810 (and possibly other PDAs/phones) have Adobe Flash. These are ARM devices running a Debian-based Linux distro, and ship with Adobe Flash 9 as of a few months ago (last I checked was before Flash 10 was available). It's not a "lite" version, either - it can play games, watch movies, and handle purely Flash-based sites like Pandora. The limited RAM and CPU (400MHz IIRC) makes them decidedly sub-optimal for heavy Flash use, but they certainly can do it (to the point where installing AdBlock Plus is a necessity for sane browsing).

I'm sure Adobe would be willing to provide Flash to other device manufacturers, and quite possibly other OSes (Windows Mobile or mobile OS X - Android should be easy since it's based on Linux). The more market penetration Flash has, the better for them.

Re:Ubiquity of flash

[badkarmadayaccount]

Uhhh, the PS3 Cell is a POWER core with 7 SPEs, last I checked...

Didn't work for me

[Thaelon]

I just installed it after hunting around for installation instructions for a few minutes. (WTG adobe.)

It showed up in my plugins window, but it doesn't work. Firefox doesn't even render the space they should take up correctly, it just collapses the elements.

It just quietly fails to function.

Oh well, back to 9 for me.

Re:Didn't work for me

[maugle]

I'm assuming that, before coming to Slashdot to complain, you filed a bug report on this piece of alpha software, right?

Re:Didn't work for me

[Anonymous Coward]

I loaded it on my Fedora9 system here and it seems to be functioning just fine.

Re:Didn't work for me

[Thaelon]

I actually attempted to, but couldn't locate their bug tracking system. It wasn't linked anywhere on the alpha release page I looked at.

For that matter, neither were the installation instructions.

If they sincerely want people to help out, they could make it a lot easier. If not, they can continue as they are and receive help from fewer people. It's their decision really.

Summary is wrong: Debugger *is* planned

[mad.frog]

From the blog of Tinic Uro, the engineer who did the bulk of the work:

http://www.kaourantin.net/2008/11/64-bits.html

A debugger version of the 64-bit version is not available yet. When we release it ActionScript 2 debugging will not work due the obsolete protocol which depends on 32bit pointers. ActionScript 3 debugging will be supported.

mod parent redundent

[Nick Ives]

I realise this post is a little redundant too what with the post below but this one really needs the attention of todays' mods. How people can get away with posting stuff that's so obviously wrong and still get modded up?

Grr!

Some distros have x86 emulation

[massysett]

The statement "Linux distributions do not ship with a 32-bit browser or a comprehensive 32-bit emulation layer" was overbroad. Gentoo does a very good job of this. I used to use amd64 Gentoo and a 32-bit Firefox with Flash, with no nspluginwrapper, no chroot, no problem.

http://www.gentoo-portage.com/Search?search=emul-linux-x86

Also I recall reading a review of 64-bit Mandriva which stated that it had a 32-bit Firefox and Flash. Some distributors put some work into this; apparently the author uses a distro that ignores this issue.

FreeBSD too?

[cpghost]

What about us FreeBSD users, you (Adobe) insensitive clods?

Re:FreeBSD too?

[badkarmadayaccount]

It doesn't run fine on the 2.6.16 linux abi, I take it?

Re:FreeBSD too?

[nova_ostrich]

They demoed a 64-bit BSD version live on stage at a recent Flash conference. It may be coming soon.

Flash specification

[DrYak]

Sorry, I only discovered the May 2008 release of spec only now.
I was only aware of the specs they published since Flash 8 which were licensed under terms forbidding to re-implement a flashplayer (more or less SWF-compilers where the only thing authorized).

I hope this will speed up the development of Gnash.

Re:Flash specification

[MaryBethP]

On the contrary, what the specs provide was something Gnash devs figured out 5 years ago. Gnash devs still have to reverse engineer swf in a clean-room environment, and still can't install any of the Adobe tools. Here's an article by Bruce Byfield regarding the Open Screen Initiative: http://openmedianow.org/?q=node/21

I have been using an Alternate solution for months

[KozmoKramer]

If you have a 64 bit version of Linux, and flash = no workie, you can;

Install WINE, then install the windows version of Firefox, then install the windows version of Flash. It works perfectly! This is of course only a temporary solution until the final 64 bit version has been perfected.

Shockwave Director

[ceka]

What about whole Shockwave?

The flash player is a much simplified subset of the whole shockwave, so for pages that require application/x-director there is still nothing for Linux, not even 32bit...

soo..

[Anonymous Coward]

that's what Duke Nukem Forever production team was waiting for.. oh well flash game is better than nothin'..

Specs

[Anonymous Coward]

Release the source, or at least an open API/documentation/something, and then let us do the work.

You mean the specs that have just been updated and aren't under any restrictions any more?

And the source for the VM that has been available for quite a while as well?

When you're done adding a renderer and so on, you'll probably need the compiler, too.

To be fair, it lacks the old VM, which the proprietary player contains for backwards compatibility, and some closed third-party codecs.

ARM Platform

[Anonymous Coward]

Now try it on Arm Linux, Linux/MIPS, Linux/PPC, or one of the many other branches that make up the complete Linux platform.

They're working on an optimized ARM port.

Re:ARM Platform

[CarpetShark]

Better than nothing, but personally, I think not much better. This will be because some phone use arm, so it's a strategic platform for THEM, and they choose to grace us with one more binary. What we need are open tools so they can be ported to all the same archs that our open OS's are ported to.

Re:ARM Platform

[Anonymous Coward]

Better than nothing, but personally, I think not much better. This will be because some phone use arm, so it's a strategic platform for THEM, and they choose to grace us with one more binary. What we need are open tools so they can be ported to all the same archs that our open OS's are ported to.

The specs are open, and since a year or so ago, without restrictions. The VM is even Open Source, as Tamarin.

I doubt we'll ever see them opensourcing the whole player, because it probably has licensed third-party code all over the place.

seems to work fine

[riffraff]

I just installed it and tried a couple of sites that use flash. Seems to work well so far...

flash is a rootkit

[Anonymous Coward]

64 bit flashplayer for linux is a rootkit designed for the government to get control and infiltrate citizens computers! Install grsecurity to prevent this.

The Year

[thetsguy]

This is the year of 64 bit Flash for Linux.

[Citation needed]

[DrYak]

No I mean seriously :
[link needed]

The official adobe website only provide a couple of installer for classic desktop platforms (Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, Solaris). The Linux is Intel only.

By diggind on the "labs" website, I may also find version for 64 bits linux and maybe for Brew and Windows Mobile.
And that's it. If I want to have flash on my OpenMoko, Gnash is the only way to go. Same for PS3 Linux.

If an Asian hardware maker want to incorporate flash in a web-enabled set-top box, a x86 chip (Via, Atom, ...) is obligatory. No way to use a RISC (say MIPS) + special accelerator (some EM8xxx from Sigma Designs).

There was yesterday an announcement about a collaboration between ARM and Adobe to provide more and better ports.

But it is still only a couple of additional ports which only add a specific set of additional platform.
Not something as generic as an open source implementation, which could be easily ported to whatever platform some developer could dream off, all without needing any effort from Adobe.
Compare with PDFs : Adobe produce a couple of (crappy) implementations for a few key platforms. For the rest, there are countless opensource implementations to reuse (XDF/Poppler, Ghostscript, etc.).

Re:[Citation needed]

[Jeffrey Baker]

I don't have a link. Flash is the basis of the Sonos Controller, which has a Super-H CPU. SPARC Flash Player can be downloaded from Adobe's own website. ARM Flash Player comes installed on the Nokia N800.

Rejoice!

[www.blogLinux.org]

There's already flash for 64-bit systems. It's called use-32-bit-browser-with-flash. Now that the 64-bit will be released, milliseconds of waiting on 5% of the sites I visit will be shaved off by me using the 64-bit version instead of the 32-bit.

Of course by the time those milliseconds add up to the amount of time it took to download it in the first place, we will be living in a time much like Disney's Tron except mixed with Dark City.

Thanks for all your work Adobe! You've put so much time into shaving mere milliseconds from the bottom end of my internet usage!

PS can you add some features to Adobe Reader? I have some files I need correlated and also I was thinking you should add some anti-spyware features. Wait is that cyclic? Also, if you don't add even more features to Adobe Reader (just make it an OS already please), I will let out the truth. The sad messed up truth about how you have been tricking the american public. You know. Yes I'm talking about Photoshop and Dreamweaver. Guess what world? They are exactly the same as they were 8 or so years ago! Suprise, bitches! They just move the features around to confuse you and charge you again.

Back to the original argument

[DrYak]

Ok, now back to the original argument :
which, exactly, of these qualifies as an implementation, free-as-in-beer to download and build whatever out of it you may want to ?

Which, exactly am I supposed to install on my OpenMoko ?

Say I want to build the humorously often cited "internet-enable fridge". I want people to be able to ordrer their groceries from the fidge's interface. But the online grocery store runs on flash (bad idea), which flash should I install on my MIPS based system ?

Currently flash is in the same state as Skype. Yes, there are a couple of implementation that you can download. Yes, there are even a couple more specially built-for binaries used in a couple of embed device. But it's not a "feel free to slap it on whatever piece of hardware you can dream of" situation.

Whereas the "other" web standard, the one which is actually a real documented and multiple time implemented standard - HTML&HTTP, etc...
Is really free to be used wherever you want.
There are OS solutions for 8bits 6502 CPU that can browse HTTP pages.
For Zeus' sake there are even people managing to cram a web server inside a PIC.
That's a versatile technology you can put on anything you can think of.

Meanwhile, with Adobe you're just limited to the couple of platform that they conceded to support.
No way to be creative.

For an idea of scale just look how many device can run a Linux kernel, or Perl scripting engine.

mod parent up

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes Konqueror somehow just needs the location of java and not any sort of plugin. It works nicely for me.

say wha?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't tell if this is sarcasm or serious. Either way it's funny.

Finally

[FireFleur]

I don't care if others have said it already, finally. That's about the only thing required to go to a complete 64bit system for, and I have had AMD64 systems for years, all running 32bit because of Adobe.

The day webdesigners took over

[Monzo]

What is wrong with a text-only website?

From the Adobe site: "Create and deliver rich interactive content." Well, I am generally annoyed by the [Homer Simpson's voice]"Oh look at me, I am flashing and making sounds"[/Homer's voice] that is done by a lot of websites.

Most of the time, advertisements are presented in flash and any advertisement can be seen on a 64-bit OS too, without too much hassle, yippie!!

I have been using the internet since 1996 and there are a handfull of sites that make use of Flash to create a rich and interactive environment. The rest of the websites using flash are in my opinion made by design-over-content idiots who consider a 30-60 second message saying "loading..." a good price for seeing the latest car prices and specifications (for example).

The day webdesigners took over from people who had something to inform the world about is a sad day indeed...