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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)."
Did you even look at the page? There is a 64bit version for Windows!
If you look at the downloads, theres 64-bit for Windows, Mac, and Linux.
What would really interests me more is, if it has a suitable performance.
Right now I only use flash, if my room temperature drops to low.
How do I uncompress my MD5 archive?
The summary is just bollocks as usual, don't worry. It's not linux getting a 64 bit version, it's all the platforms flash was available on getting one. Both Mac OS and Windows got a 64 bit version today too.
Where the hell's the 64 bit version?!
Summation 2
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.
so you have to download a single file and save it in a directory? sounds like a lot less trouble than the windows equivalent with probably involves some crappy InstallShield-like program where you have to scroll to the end of a mile long EULA (pronounced e-Yoolah) and tick agree before you can continue. And most likely topped off with a mandatory system reboot
But I mean, misleading headline much? Why not say all OSes got 64-bit. Do they expect us to read the article or something? Honestly.
In a word, "yes". You can't expect your opinion to be taken seriously if you haven't at least tried to get your facts (however limited/speculative/subjective/fanciful they may be) from the article straight first.
The other half of the story is that there was a 64 bit flash plugin for Linux (which we only got some considerable length of time after Windoze users got theirs) which was unceremoniously dumped. To make matters worse, Gentoo went and blocked all old 64 bit versions at the same time because of "security issues". (as if the new version didn't have security issues!)
I installed the new player under Chrome and left the old 64-bit plugin in Firefox on this same machine. The old player stutters still. The new one doesn't.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
I know flash gets much hate around here....
Nah, not at all.
BTW, is the source code released? I want to add code that gives a fatal shock to developers and designers who use Flash.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
The word includes implies that it is not the only version. You merely made a false assumption based on a misinterpretation of what was actually in the summary. I agree the summaries are often wrong here, but in this case you are quite off base I'm afraid.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
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.
Right-click, Settings...
[x] Enable hardware acceleration
Looks promising!
To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
Even a random word generator would get things right more often than a Slashdot editor.
I disagree. This is what a random word generator got me:
Drawings can followed improved out sociable not. Earnestly so do instantly pretended.
True, it's close, but I still think the random word generator comes in second place.
Record low temperatures are reported in hell
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.
[quote]Windows 7 is the first consumer desktop OS which is readily available and accepted in 64 bit.[/quote]
From Wikipedia:
- Mac OS X v10.5 "Leopard" was released on October 26, 2007, [..] full support for 64-bit applications
- Windows 7 was released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009
Uh, you must be new if you're posting dumbass assertions and then making 'are you new' comments when you have your idiocy pointed out.
Trying being humble and accepting it.
I really don't think we should encourage this. Flashers are perverts, and that is all there is to it. Some well meaning people might think that giving them a square plugin (I assume they mean butt plug) will keep their mind off it for a while, but it will just lead to greater depravity.
With this new 64bit flash plugin hulu works via the browser no more need for the hulu desktop app.
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.
but, but... I want ARM version for my Pandora console!
#
#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
#
I've got a 64-bit Linux machine and Hulu has worked (mostly) fine for me, except for fullscreen transitions sometimes breaking. (Sometimes when I go fullscreen, the video appears BELOW all windows, not above them.)
I'll try the new version when I get back from a trip this weekend. :)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
First time I've ever seen Hulu actually work. The 64-bit Linux plugin works like a charm with Hulu!
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.
God I love Arch Linux
yaourt -S flashplugin-prerelease
I have never had fullscreen youtube even usable at 480 before, now I can run it fullscreen at 1080p and the controls are perfectly smooth and only using 70% CPU!!!
I never though this day would come. *sniff*
No, and I'm confused about what's going on here; Linux has had native 64-bit Flash since 2008... In fact, it was the *first* platform to get 64-bit flash.
So, what part of this is an "about face"?
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/
The last new version of 64-bit flash was not released for Linux. This meant that if you wanted to run 64-bit flash in Linux you were stuck with several security holes that were already patched for everyone else. Most of us were stuck using awkward 32-bit wrappers to run flash in 64-bit Linux.
I have been using the old 64 bit beta at work with debian lenny and a chrooted 32 bit version at home with sidux (now called aptosid) 64bit without a problem- But I am not a heavy user of youtube maybe I was lucky.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
I must be one of the few that have had no issues with 64-bit Linux and Flash. Been running 64 bit flash version 10.0 r42 for nearly a year now. No browser crashes, no flash freezes. Works a charm.
Of course, I've downloaded this latest version and installed it. Wouldn't be a linux geek if I didn't live somewhat on the edge. So far, works well.
That this is getting released so shortly after Gnash 0.8.8, which now plays all Youtube content ? I installed the latest Gnash on my 64 bit Linux and it works great. I don't think it's worth my effort to try this the Adobe version now.
When did you last try? I had some troubles with debian/ubuntu early on, but I can't remember how long it's been since I had ANY 64-bit issues (except for some really old binary linux game I tried to run about 18 months ago, which needed an extra 32bit library sourced and installed).
Honestly, this whole article surprises me, because the 64-bit linux support is so good now, I thought flash WAS ported. If not, the wrappers work very well indeed.
You may wish to try Minefield, (4.0 beta) if you can stomach using a beta. I've actually been using the nightlies for months and they're generally stable. You may want to try a release beta, however. (4.0b6 is good). There are 64-bit linux, Mac, and Windows versions.
Keep in mind that it's a beta, though and not intended for general consumption quite yet.
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html
Because I hate Flash, I have a separate Firefox profile specifically for using the plugin. (Yes, there are other ways to block flash, but that isn't helpful if you're trying to find which of 200 tabs started autoplaying on startup)
No issues here, either. It helps to use a manually-installed Flash, rather than relying on the Ubuntu repositories.
My blog
Linux is used a lot by visual effects companies (for workstations as well as for storage/rendering). They also tend to use Win/OS X for things like Photoshop; they would love CS5 on Linux.
Actually, I've met a lot of people who would love to switch to Linux, but are kept away by one critical app; usually it's Photoshop or some game. Adobe may not make as much as they do for Win/OS X, but there would be sales.
Saying "I'll probably get modded down for this" in a post is the best way to get it modded up.
On 64 bit Linux, I've always found the least hassle thing to do is just uninstall 64 bit Firefox and install 32 bit Firefox. Then I get my 64 bit OS for everything else and who really need a 64 bit browser.
Pity it's only x86-64.
Guess that's the problem with closed source.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
As opposed to all those mythical Itanium systems we home users have?
Why Adobe chooses to not even say what version number they are releasing is beyond understanding....
But it is: 10.2.161.22
I was running an older Linux 64bit (I think it was 64 bit) version inside flashplayer-plugin-10.1.53.64-1mdv2010.1.rpm and it worked, but it crashed/froze often, requiring me to restart Firefox every few days (or more). This new version seems to run fine, but only time will tell if it is reliable.
He does have a point, actually. The kernel code had to be 64-bit clean before it could be ported to the AMD64 architecture. I assume most of that work was done when Linus had that Alpha box. Therefore, Linux was indeed going "64 bit" back in 1993, although AMD64 support itself was not done until 2004.
Windows NT also had an Alpha version as well, and I'm sure that was available mid 90s. I guess that the code for this eventually made its way into the modern Windows 64 bit OS. Microsoft were never very big on 64 bit until fairly recently though, so that probably explains why there has been a general lack of interest in 64 bit from third parties.
Linux has been much easier to use on 64 bit systems. I always assumed it was because of the open source nature of Linux. People are willing to port code for fun, while proprietary software houses have to rely on saleability before putting in the work, therefore meshing itself in a chicken/egg scenario.
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.
Thank you.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)