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

[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

[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

[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

[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!

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.

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

[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

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.

Coming up in 6 months

[Rik Sweeney]

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

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: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.

Finally...

[neonux]

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

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: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.

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: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.

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.

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.