Slashdot Mirror
Adobe Releases New 64-Bit Flash Plugin For Linux
TheDarkener writes "Adobe seems to have made an about face regarding their support for native 64-bit Linux support for Flash today, and released a new preview Flash plugin named 'Square.' This includes a native 64-bit version for Linux, which I have verified works on my Debian Lenny LTSP server by simply copying libflashplayer.so to /usr/lib/iceweasel/plugins — with sound (which I was never able to figure out with running the 32-bit version with nspluginwrapper and pulseaudio)."
The 64-bit plugin for Linux has never had hardware acceleration enabled. The 32-bit version does... maybe they've finally enabled it in this new version. I'll switch to this if that's the case... otherwise, I'm happy with my 32-bit plugin and smooth full screen video.
Well in fairness haven't linux users been waiting longer? Seems to me Microsoft haven't exactly been forging ahead when it comes to 64bit.
Yes exactly. I've been trying to use 64-bit Linux as my desktop for 5 years now. At first I went ahead and did the 64-bit thing and worked with the 32-bit chroot'ed firefox/nspluginwrapper what the hell ever. In the end I just had enough with it being a crappy work around and had to use 32-bit Linux on my desktop. I'm glad they are finally giving it attention again before not having 64-bit linux becomes too limiting.
All the meanwhile, I haven't heard Windows users gripe and complain much that flash doesn't work for them very well. Most don't even know what 64-bit even is.
Gnash works with youtube. Gnash development has picked up since Adobe dropped the 64bit support. And once you switch there is no reason to go back unless you enjoy your cpu melting and state of the art 0-days
Since PAE doesn't work too well in windows (releases meant for desktops at least) you'd expect more interest in switching to 64bit to get more than ~3.5GB usable memory. I guess people who install linux are more likely to experiment with new things to begin with so 64bit adoption is relatively high even if it doesn't really give so obvious benefits.
Huh? When I went to 32 to 64-bit Linux it was at least as easy as going from 32 to 64 bit Windows. The Flash Plugin was the only thing that became a PITA.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
When will they use the common installer system? Most software is simply available through some repository, but Adobe has to be different. Why can VLC be installed from a repository while they are not able to do so?
Tar.gz is not a good way. The manual dependency resolving is so outdated. The simple fact they made the same mistake again will cause me not to install it. The opensource version may not run as smoothly but it is easy to install.
Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
I refuse to use any of the universal package systems out there because they are all junk. Each distro maintainer is free to create a package that wraps the .tar.gz if they choose. That is what Debian/Ubuntu and Arch do.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
It is a pig. Playing videos with this uses about 5x the CPU and 35 watts more power as playing the same video with VLC (measured via a Kill-A-Watt). Details:
Running Ubuntu 10.04 on my Athlon II X4 635 in a 780G motherboard with on-board Radeon HD3200 graphics (using the Radeon driver), playing a 480p clip from Hulu scaled to 1080p full screenuses 220% CPU (eg, over two full cores). If I download the same video from hulu with get_flash_videos, I can play it in VLC with 35% CPU utilization (eg, less than 1/2 of a core). The VLC playback is smooth (as well as add and logo free), while the flashplayer playback is dropping frames.
Note that I tried both huludesktop and a chrome browser window, and got the same (terrible) performance.
Because there are lots of us who work at Adobe who have been very vocal internally about ensuring that Linux is a first class O/S and released at the same time as the other O/S's. That is why Linux is getting the 64 bit Flash Player. More and more of us are using Ubuntu and RHEL on the server (our enterprise ESB uses RHEL/(WebSphere || Weblogic || JBoss) as a reference implementation!). Now if we could only talk our bosses into CS5 for Linux.....
"Question everything, including this!" - http://technoracle.blogspot.com/
I installed Folding@home for precisely that reason. I used to do a "yes > /dev/null" but then thought I could donate those cycles for something useful.
You have more patience than me. I tried it, now that I have enough memory that there's actually a reason for it, but I had to throw in the towel very quickly. Got Flash to work, but only very poorly (in particular fullscreen video was useless). Thought I'd use it to host a 32-bit system to do the stuff that was most practical in that, but I quickly realized I wouldn't get 3d acceleration then.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.