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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[hrimhari]

Good luck with YouTube :)

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

[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.

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: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?

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.

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: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: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.

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: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: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: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.

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: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.

FreeBSD too?

[cpghost]

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

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).