Adobe Released 64-bit Flash For Linux

kai_hiwatari writes "Adobe has been taking quite a bashing from Linux supporters of late. First, there was the issue of them dropping AIR for Linux and then came the bashing because of the lack of updates on the experimental 64-bit Flash for Linux. Well, guess what! They have just released Flash 11 and it includes native 64-bit support for Linux as well. When they discontinued their experimental 64-bit Flash earlier this year, Adobe promised to release a 64-bit version of Flash for Linux when they release the next major version. They have kept that promise."

Comments

one word.

[Anonymous Coward]

Gnash

Re:one word.

[RobbieThe1st]

Sadly, no. I wish it'd work, but the last several taxing animations I've tried to play with it, well... the animation doesn't play at a constant rate and gets out of sync. On a 3.5ghz, quad-core proc.
Adpbe Flash Square 64-bit preview worked fine, though may have dropped a few frames(not that it was using much processing power...).

Re:one word.

[Akima]

Yeah - Gnash isn't quite there yet. It's coming along very slowly too. It's great what they've achieved so far though.

Re:one word.

[zwarte piet]

Duh, that's like 16 bits per core :)

Re:one word.

[Lord Lode]

Can I play all games on newgrounds.com in Gnash?

If not, there is some work to do on it ...

Re:one word.

[Ant P.]

Gnash can do youtube, 480p, barely keeping up. That's about all I use it for, everything else is broken on it.

Re:one word.

[DaVince21]

Maybe if it becomes faster than Flash, which it is far from. Unusable on my notebook, even moreso than Adobe's thing.

I hate flash.

[Anonymous Coward]

And I hate to say it, but I really appreciate Adobe treating Linux well.

Re:I hate flash.

[Frosty Piss]

...appreciate Adobe treating Linux well...

Because they released Flash? How about Photoshop and ImageReady for Linux?

That's the only reason I keep an XP machine...

GIMP is, well, GIMP, and not suitable for professional use.

Re:I hate flash.

[Anonymous Coward]

"GIMP is, well, GIMP, and not suitable for professional use."
          Really I doubt this. I heard the excuse that it didn't support color management. It does now and has for years. I heard the excuse that it didn't support sRGB and CMYK. It does now and has for years. I don't expect people to SWITCH to the Gimp if they are used to Photoshop, but I just don't think that is true any longer.

Re:I hate flash.

[Akima]

Incorrect! "Professionals" do use The GIMP.

I'm looking forward to their next major release which will introduce a spiffy new single window mode. I bet that will be appealing to lots of Photoshop users.

Re:I hate flash.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just plain plain faster to do things in Photoshop, and Photoshop is more powerful (try layer effects and vector masks, etc). This is from someone who used GIMP for years.

GIMP was fine for some uses, and it's not that GIMP isn't powerful - it's just that Photoshop is so much more powerful that I can do the same work (texturing, mostly), approximately, in one third the time.

If I'm just sketching or digital painting, though, the advantage isn't as large.

Re:I hate flash.

[bahstid]

As someone who does occasionally use GIMP for professional use, I'm afraid to inform you that its CMYK support is not what you think it is.... there is a CMYK colour picker and thats about it. So while its suitability for professional use might be debatable, its a fact that doesn't support CMYK properly and hasn't for years.

There is a plugin with rudimentary export support (Separate+) but doesn't really cover all bases, and the import plugin can only handle TIFFs.

Re:I hate flash.

[rvw]

...appreciate Adobe treating Linux well...

Because they released Flash? How about Photoshop and ImageReady for Linux?

That's the only reason I keep an XP machine...

You don't need a "machine" for that. A VM will do. I use Photoshop and Illustrator and Flash in a VirtualBox XP-VM since about a year, and it is no problem. Even a Pentium 4 can do this with enough RAM (3GB or more).

Re:I hate flash.

[TheRaven64]

I really appreciate Adobe treating Linux well

Yup, I'm really glad I can watch Flash on my i.MX515 (ARM) laptop that shipped with Ubuntu. Oh, I can't? Even though Adobe said when the i.MX515 was announced that they'd be providing a Flash player for it using the on-chip H.264 decoding engine for video playback, by the time it shipped?

Re:I hate flash.

[Pieroxy]

You don't need a "machine" for that. A VM will do.

Can you tell us what the "M" stand for in "VM"? Just for fun.

Re:I hate flash.

[LingNoi]

GIMP is, well, GIMP, and not suitable for professional use.

yeah, I guess that's why it's not be used in movie productions and stuff.. oh wait.. (no i won't google it for you)

Re:I hate flash.

[mwvdlee]

You still want ImageReady for Linux? It's been dropped since 2007 on all other platforms.

Photoshop for Linux would be great, I think version 2 or so was available on Unix, but they probably haven't maintained the code for it ;)

Re:I hate flash.

[larry bagina]

As a big women magazine photographer

You take pictures of fat women?

Re:I hate flash.

[stewbacca]

No, he photoshops fat women to look skinny.

Re:I hate flash.

[Vectormatic]

Out of curiosity, where did you get an arm based ubuntu laptop? Over here all you can find in terms of non-x86 laptops are the chinese sub $99 netbook knock-offs spawned by the eee-pc, running either windows CE or obscure linux versions.

Also, with Adobe's history of supporting linux, why the hell did you expect any sort of support for linux on a non-x86 platform at all?

Re:I hate flash.

[i_ate_god]

you mean he gimps them.

Re:I hate flash.

[TheRaven64]

Out of curiosity, where did you get an arm based ubuntu laptop?

Genesi makes them. They sent me a couple to get Objective-C working nicely on. It's quite a nice machine, although the fact that building LLVM takes about 5 hours makes development pretty slow.

Also, with Adobe's history of supporting linux, why the hell did you expect any sort of support for linux on a non-x86 platform at all?

How about their press releases when the i.MX515 was announced saying that they'd be supporting it?

Re:I hate flash.

[IrquiM]

In addition, most people claiming that "Gimp is not suitable for professional use" have never used Photoshop for professional use either. (Not saying all, but some of the most loudly ones for sure!) They're just repeating something they heared long time ago.

Re:I hate flash.

[neclimdul]

um... treating us well? We've only been waiting what, 6 years? Its not like an HTML based replacement was standardized and implemented across all browsers in roughly the same time... oh wait, that's not true either.

I don't even want flash installed on my browsers now. Its the land of ads and malware and battery drain. no thank you.

Re:I hate flash.

[deains]

All the talks about GIMP not suitable for professional use is bullshit and only by those who are afraid they need to learn something else than Photoshop and photoshop can not be used as meme to be repeated all days long "photoshop this and photoshop that, did you photoshop it?"

And why exactly would I bother spending hours of my time learning how to use GIMP? If it "does just perfect job as" Photoshop, then why don't I just use Photoshop? Unless there's an advantage for me to learn GIMP (and no, price is not one of them, I don't give a damn what it costs), I'm sterring well clear. It also needs to not run like a dog on my work's MacBook.

Re:I hate flash.

[GooberToo]

I can assure you, you are wrong. After all, people who don't do professional image work and do nothing but talk out their ass all day long have consistently told us GIMP can't do professional image work. Accordingly, its only reasonable you should ignore any and all professionals who do you GIMP for their work. Of course, there is the other side too, of ignorant elitists who insist the sky is whatever color Photoshop says it is and that color can only ever be perceived through Photoshop.

I'm really tired of morons telling us GIMP can't be used for professional image work. The reality is, people who say that are complete idiots. My father does professional image work too. He even has a copy of Photoshop. He continues to use GIMP. That's not to say he doesn't want to move to Photoshop, but for now remains with what he knows. The simple truth is, the ONLY reason he wants to move to Photoshop is because of its prevalence. You can't blame him, there are advantages to using popular tools. And of course, it doesn't help that so many morons constantly parrot GIMP is unusable despite the fact that many continue to use GIMP on a daily basis. Its a source of frustration people who don't carry a GIMP or opensource flag just don't care to wave.

The myth (if not out right lie) is that professional image work is this one narrow field. That's completely untrue. The reality is, professional imagery is actually fairly diverse. Its true that GIMP is unsatisfactory for some in the field. Its also true GIMP is overkill for others. And of course, there is a large intersection between the two (GIMP and Photoshop) in which either can make a good showing.

At the end of the day, you have a small, small subset of people who actually require Photoshop. A large number of idiots and morons who ignorantly insist only Photoshop can work for them. A large number of people who use Photoshop because its popular and they ignorantly don't know any better. A small subset of people who use Photoshop because of the community. So on and so on... The reality is, GIMP is perfectly acceptable for a large number of Photoshop users.

Re:I hate flash.

[bsDaemon]

No, I'm pretty sure is the ice cream-related diabetes that gimped them. However, apparently he does GIMP them. The difference is subtle, yet profound :)

Re:I hate flash.

[nschubach]

The 'V' is the important part of the conversation though.

It's like the difference between having a virtual woman and a real woman... except the difference of usability of the computer application aspect is far more similar.

Re:I hate flash.

[VortexCortex]

It's like the difference between having a virtual woman and a real woman...

Implying that virtual women are LESS useful than real women? Clearly it depends on what you want that woman to do.

Re:I hate flash.

[croddy]

The best thing they could do for us is to crawl into a hole and quietly die. This is the year two thousand fucking eleven. Why does everyone's web browser still have some idiotic proprietary runtime plugged into it?

Re:I hate flash.

[h4rr4r]

Why can't you cross compile it?
I build code for really wimp arm machines, a z2 and my phone, compiling natively would take years.

Re:I hate flash.

[TheRaven64]

I probably could, but given that I'm working on the native toolchain that seems a bit counterproductive.

Re:I hate flash.

[centuren]

And I hate to say it, but I really appreciate Adobe treating Linux well.

As silly as it sounds to me to say it, but ditto, and, um, yay.

Love, hate, or don't care about Flash, it's nice to have the option.

Re:I hate flash.

[Runaway1956]

But - price IS one advantage. While you seem to declare the price as being negligible, price matters to a lot of people. Photoshop is costly!

Re:I hate flash.

[colinrichardday]

Okular is a document viewer; how does one create PDFs with it? One can convert LaTeX files to dvi to pdf, but some people might prefer making PDFs some other way.

Re:I hate flash.

[Trepidity]

Gimp being scriptable with Python is one thing I like about it. You can script Photoshop with some custom Adobe scripting language, but I already know Python, so prefer using a "standard" scripting language.

Re:I hate flash.

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

You're saying it has it? Can you share your experiences with us?

Re:I hate flash.

[Dog-Cow]

Because real people don't give a shit that you don't approve of their desire for Flash's functionality to be hosted in a web browser.

Re:I hate flash.

[UncleTogie]

Unless there's an advantage for me to learn GIMP (and no, price is not one of them, I don't give a damn what it costs), I'm sterring well clear.

Off the top of my head, I can think of a scenario:

Say you're at a client site and need to make some last-minute adjustments. As you were unaware of the need to change anything, you didn't bring any a laptop with you. You could d/l GIMP to one of their PCs right there onsite, make the mods needed, and wrap up the job without having to shuttle back and forth between your office....

Re:I hate flash.

[uglyduckling]

He was describing a professional. These days, if you're a designer and you don't take your laptop to site with you, you deserve to lose the job. Having said that, I have downloaded Gimp to friends' PCs to do quick (non-professional) things in the past when I would have used Photoshop at home.

Re:I hate flash.

[Frosty Piss]

Does the fact that I have been paid a decent hourly wage for years, at a job where I use the GIMP every day, have any impact on the (Adobe astroturf driven) belief that the GIMP "is not suitable for professional use"?

Posting as an "AC"? No, your comment has no impact at all, especially since you don't say what you do.
 
Knocking out throwaway wed graphics? Pre-print production? High-end photo retouching? . Pink ponies?

And, sorry if it offends your âoegroup-thinkâ, but preferring Photoshop over GIMP does not necessarily constitute âoeAstroturfâ unless youâ(TM)re a typical Slashdot sheeple.

Re:I hate flash.

[shutdown -p now]

On an unrelated note, can you share your experiences of what the battery life is on that ARM laptop? I've been pondering getting an ARM Linux netbook for myself, but the only advantage I can see in that is if it can survive for longer than Atom netbooks; and I haven't seen any first-hand reports on whether it does work that way or not.

Re:I hate flash.

[starofale]

LibreOffice can convert your documents/spreadsheets to PDFs.

Re:I hate flash.

[operator_error]

As a web-Dev, I must disagree. For the logos, backgrounds, textures and whatnot I am called to deal with, GIMP is perfectly adequate for the task. In fact since I work with Drupal hosted on Debian/LAMP servers, I dig on Ubuntu as the Power-Client (free!) because the OS is so similar when I work for clients (actual, paying clients).

What is not cool is having to stop work and having to ask the client paying for my time, to also fund a Photoshop purchase (even Elements which costs $/euro 100 at the local office supply store, but this takes time folks). Since Ubuntu offers GIMP along with native SSH/SFTP, (etc., etc.) I'm ready to work, and get paid.

And of course VMs run really well on a project too, and are extremely portable across hardware workstations, with excellent Developer snapshot facilities, but I digress.

Re:I hate flash.

[TheRaven64]

It lasts a good 5 hours in normal use, and it could probably manage 7 if I dimmed the screen and avoided processor-intensive things. It's also pretty light - under 1kg - which makes it a bit more portable than my main laptop. It's a bit underpowered for some of the things I do, but for light use it's fine. The battery pack is pretty small, so you could easily carry another one in a pocket if you needed 10+ hours. They claim 6 hours for the battery, which is pretty accurate if you're not using it very heavily, but not actively trying to conserve battery life either. Oh, and if the WiFi is off it probably lasts a bit longer too - I always use it with WiFi on and the screen brightness turned up.

Re:I hate flash.

[maxwell demon]

As a big women magazine photographer

You take pictures of fat women?

Big != fat. Also, he's obviously photographing magazines. :-)

Re:I hate flash.

[shutdown -p now]

That doesn't sound all that good, to be honest. There are many Atom netbooks that get 5, and some up to 7 in normal use. FWIW, 11" Macbook Air also gets 5 hours, though that is probably not a fair comparison due to it using SSD only.

I was really hoping for something like 8+ hours, comparable to tablets. It seems to me that mobile OSes like Android would get more out of the battery by suspending individual apps in background, but then a netbook should have a beefier battery to the first place, so it should more or less even out in the end.

Ah well, I guess I'll keep waiting for XDA folks to do a fully working Ubuntu port for Asus Transformer, then. It will be interesting to see what the battery life will be on that.

Re:I hate flash.

[maxwell demon]

And why exactly would I bother spending hours of my time learning how to use GIMP?

And why exactly would I bother spending hours of my time learning how to use Photoshop?

Re:I hate flash.

[TheRaven64]

Blame Canonical. They were paid to do a Linux port, and it sucks. It doesn't use half of the power saving features of the chip - it's constantly in the highest power state, and there are no drivers for most of the coprocessors, so most things are done in the most power-intensive way possible. If I'd shipped anything as crap as the Ubuntu release that they produced for the Efika, I'd be ashamed of myself - Canonical is on the list of companies I will never do business with as a result of that.

The MacBook Air gets slightly better battery life, but it's 10-20% heavier and costs ten times as much.

Re:I hate flash.

[rev0lt]

It depends on the kind of work you make. If you do mostly webgraphics, then shure, a VM is probably fine. If actually need to use the features of Photoshop and Illustrator, and/or work with hi-res graphics, it is an awful idea. SMP VM's are not that great, there is no OpenGL acceleration (Photoshop uses it if available), and usually the I/O is subpar. Not to mention, actual "professional" work often requires color management - which you can't do correctly on a VM. Btw, also if you use a 10-bit monitor, forget those gazillion colors - your VM will only use 8 bit/channel color depth, even if you have a top of the line graphics card.

Re:I hate flash.

[colinrichardday]

Fair enough, but is it easier to generate PDFs in such a manner than using Acrobat? How does one use Acrobat to generate PDFs? Is it pretty much like using a word processor?

Re:I hate flash.

[UnknownSoldier]

> I'm really tired of morons telling us GIMP can't be used for professional image work. The reality is, people who say that are complete idiots.

Why don't we examine the facts before spouting your ignorance ...

So what _stable_ version of GIMP supports layer groups and reads PSDs that uses them?

I'm still waiting for Layer Styles in GIMP. Maybe you can tell me what version of GIMP can read my PSDs that uses them please?

Maybe _you're_ the idiot who doesn't understand why GIMP is not (yet) a replacement for Photoshop. GIMP can do _some_ things Photoshop an, but it is NOT YET a 100% replacement for professional work. Anyone who says otherwise is talking out of their ass based on _lack_ of _experience_.

Re:I hate flash.

[Pigskin-Referee]

Because they released Flash? How about Photoshop and ImageReady for Linux?

That's the only reason I keep an XP machine...

GIMP is, well, GIMP, and not suitable for professional use.

The problem is probably purely economic. They can charge Window's users for Photoshop, etc. I know, because I use PhotoShop; its price is certainly in-line with the features it offers. However, the *.nix & *BSD communities with demand that it be released sans cost. That is just not economically feasible.

Re:I hate flash.

[Pigskin-Referee]

But - price IS one advantage. While you seem to declare the price as being negligible, price matters to a lot of people. Photoshop is costly!

The only individuals who care about price are new-fascists / socialists. They all expect something for nothing, yet they will gladly pay $50+ for a carton of cigarettes. Any true professional will purchase only the best equipment to complete their project.

Tell me, would you use cardiac surgeon "A" because he/she charges less than surgeon "B" although "B" is a world renowned doctor and "A" is a country bumpkin?

Re:I hate flash.

[Runaway1956]

I'll go with the country bumpkin, thank you very much. I've seen exactly three doctors in the past decade. One, a country bumpkin from Peru, one a country bumpkin from Viet Nam, and the third a little gray lady from Arkansas.

Ooops - I miscounted. Make that four doctors. The Peruvian guy has a partner in his clinic, who happens to be another country bumpkin from Arkansas.

I should also mention that a lot of country bumpkins who work at the various hospitals in Little Rock, Arkansas, are very good in their fields. Neurosurgeons, burn specialist, cancer, bone, skin - you name it. I don't need world renowned. Even if I could afford it, I don't want it. Just give me good, down to earth doctors like I already have, and I'll be happy.

I give especially high marks to both the neurosurgeons and the burn specialists, who have both saved the lives of family members who would have died from the same problems 100 years ago, and probably would have died 50 years ago, and their chances of survival merely 25 years ago would have been questionable.

You're probably not interested in those little details I've thrown in - but in my eyes, they justify my faith in those country bumpkins that you are so happy to put down.

And, in the end, we'll all have to check out of this little drama that we call life one day. I'd rather do so right here in Rural Arkansas, than in some ultra-sterile laboratory, among strangers.

Re:I hate flash.

[Pigskin-Referee]

You have in a rather convoluted fashion answered my question. You are not interested in the "best" or "highest quality" but rather in what you perceive as adequate or readily available. You conveniently ignored the "price" factor I had based my original question on. I would agree with you if I was buying a car for instance. I really don't need a Royals Royce so I would not spend the money on one. However, in most situations, I buy the best available product I can afford.

I am not sure where you get your definition for "country bumpkin" from. This is the one I consider the most commonly understood meaning:

A person, usually from a rural area, the south or small town; who speaks or behaves in a manner that indicates a lack of understanding of the ever changing, modern world. Country bumpkins tend to speak in terms of social overtones indicative of pre-civil rights America and characteristically speak in offensive terms without knowledge of doing so. A bumpkin is more ignorant than uneducated, though most are probably uneducated. Either way, educated or not, country bumpkins are necessarily ignorant. Country bumpkins come in every ethnicity and in both genders. People who practice southern "good ole boy" politics are country bumpkins.

People who still say "colored" when referring to African Americans or say "heya, heya,... heya, heya" when referring to Native Americans are country bumpkins.

"Did you hear that country bumpkin call the people on the nearby reservation, 'injuns'?"

Re:I hate flash.

[Runaway1956]

Ho-hum. Yes, here in Rural America, we are aware of your biased misconceptions in the cities. Your brand of bumpkins are a rare breed, indeed. My kind of country bumpkins are found all over America. My kind make excellent doctors, lawyers, engineers, and more.

I think what you're really looking for in your analogy, is a snake oil salesman.

Re:I hate flash.

[Pigskin-Referee]

There is a requirement, although rarely enforced, that states that before making an assumption you should first investigate the issue. Why you have come to the totally incorrect assumption that I live in a city is an example of your inability to properly analyses facts. Yes, I have been in NY City, as well as at least LA, San Francisco, Chicago and a few other smaller communities. Then again, I was a US Marine and got to visit a great many cities in the world.

The fact is that I presently live in NC, in an extremely small town, less than 400, although I still do maintain a residency in NY. I move here, not because I hate cities; actually I love them. The depth of culture and facilities available totally overshadow anything a small rural area could provide. However, cities do not provide me with the privacy I have come to desire. I have a large track of land and no one within sight of my home. The affords me the opportunity to avoid coming in contact with an ignoramus like you. Your very signature line regarding "piss" and "subway" exemplify your prejudicial nature, not to mention its basic gross inaccuracy.

By the way, if you are going to use an all inclusive statement such as "we" like you did in your opening remark, you had better be prepared to qualify it.

You stated:
Ho-hum. Yes, here in Rural America, we are aware of your biased misconceptions in the cities.

Your use of "we" is grossly inaccurate and offensive to us who are capable of independent thought.

Re:I hate flash.

[Runaway1956]

ROFLMAO

Yes, "we" in rural America are aware of a lot of things. Sorry, but if you were hoping to be accepted as a "good old boy", I think you missed. But, don't feel to badly - I'm not one either.

Re:I hate flash.

[croddy]

This may come as a surprise to you, but people who unthinkingly and uncaringly consume whatever shitware is shoveled at them don't have opinions that matter when it comes to the future of technology. If you can't fix the shitstorm, we've been served up, then please, get the fuck out of the way so the rest of us can get it sorted. Got it?

Re:I hate flash.

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Thanks for taking the time to answer. Quick question: In GIMP, can you have it auto-generate a drop-shadow or glow?

Also, have you run across any tools or effects not present in Photoshop?

Re:I hate flash.

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Thank you. :)

Too bad

[Anonymous Coward]

it comes with flash.

released?

[arth1]

One could argue that it has not been released if one has to apply to a pre-release program to get it.

Re:released?

[bunratty]

I just downloaded it from http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer11.html without applying to any program. But anyway, I was using a beta version of Flash 10.3 for 64-bit Linux before, and this is just a new beta version.

Re:released?

[arth1]

I just downloaded it from http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer11.html without applying to any program

That's because you downloaded a beta version.
To get the release version, you have to apply to a pre-release program, which means it isn't really released, now is it?

Re:released?

[bunratty]

A beta release is a release. Perhaps you're thinking only the final release or a stable release is a release. Alphas and betas are referred to as releases.

Re:released?

[arth1]

Check your own link. They're not. They're referred to as alphas or betas, never just an unqualified "release". Scroll down to the #Release subsection of the link you posted, and you'll find what a release means.

(Also, logically, there would be no RC after the beta if the beta was considered a release...)

Re:released?

[nbetcher]

I just downloaded it from http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer11.html without applying to any program

That's because you downloaded a beta version.
To get the release version, you have to apply to a pre-release program, which means it isn't really released, now is it?

And yet the release date on the aforementioned URL is July 13th, 2011. Last I checked today was July 13th, 2011. *checks again* Yup, still July 13th, 2011.

Re:released?

[Xtravar]

So... I just installed this and it makes Firefox freeze-up. I had to revert to that old alpha... anyone else having this problem?

Re:released?

[punkrockguy318]

Can someone please mirror ? The server appears to be down but I'd like to give the latest 64 bit binary they have a shot.

Re:released?

[rootatwc]

No they are not..if they were,then where is the point of calling release candidates the way we call them?? Hint: Cause it means alpha and beta where not releases^^

Re:released?

[bunratty]

I've looked at the section and can't find what you're referring to. Can you show where it states that the term "release" means only a final release?

Re:released?

[bunratty]

Because any release can have a release candidate. A final release can have a release candidate, and likewise a beta release can have a release candidate. It's called a candidate because it's not guaranteed to be the ultimate release of that version. To give one example, Opera had a release candidate of Opera 10.5 beta. It was a release candidate because it was not guaranteed to be the final release of Opera 10.5 beta.

Re:released?

[bunratty]

It works great for me. It identifies itself as version 10.3 d162 instead of version 11, but it fixes the sound problem the old version was having.

Re:released?

[X0563511]

That's odd. Am I the only one seeing the word "release" in the term "beta release"?

Just because you deign not to say the word, doesn't mean it is not there. A release is a release, the 'stable / beta / etc...' part is just a qualifier.

Only a beta so far

[nzac]

http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer11.html
Still looks good though should should be nicer than the preview.

Re:Only a beta so far

[the_humeister]

I only ever used it to watch videos, but it so far works just as well as the prior release (running 64-bit Debian 6.0).

Oh, "great"

[Anonymous Coward]

It is buggy as hell.
Testing it now.

Fun thing is, "OMG FLASH LETS PUT FLASH IN OUR SITES" and make user experience WORSE.
KISS principle.

Protip: drop Flash.

Re:Oh, "great"

[justforgetme]

I'll drink to that one!

If I had mod points You sir would be tasting some of my mod uberness right now! :-)

Re:Oh, "great"

[Alex Belits]

It is buggy as hell.

That's perfectly normal -- it's buggy as hell on other operating systems and hardware platforms, too.

Re:Oh, "great"

[Robert Zenz]

Protip: drop Flash.

Real professionals never considered Flash in the first place...but there are two problems to this:

* Mist webdesigners out there are not "professionals".

* Clients: "I want it all flashy and shiny and moving and stuff and really loud sound so that we get their attention..."

Re:Oh, "great"

[muckracer]

> "OMG FLASH LETS PUT FLASH IN OUR SITES" and make user
> experience WORSE.

Actually this applies to more than just the use of Flash. My computers have gotten exponentially faster, same with the connection, the browser promise 20 and more percent more speed with each major release....and yet tons of farking pages load slower and slower. Woe you if you try to scroll before the whole damn thing actually loaded its crap. Then it jumps all over the place and whatnot. Even clicking on a story and then going Back reloads the page again with a similar waiting period. There are sites (for example, some news sites) I hardly use anymore specifically because of abysmal performance issues. I can see the advantage of correlating and aggregating information from various sources and using dynamic techniques to display them. And yet, there's a very distinct point of diminishing and then reversing 'benefits'. Too bad most site developers haven't gotten that yet and still think, the more pictures move around, flip up and down, advertisements scroll along with user scrolling and various other completely annoying stuff, incl. soundtrack, the 'more exciting' the site. It's bullshit and the blink-tag craze all over. KEEP IT SIMPLE AND USEFUL, YOU MORONS!

Re:Oh, "great"

[ClaraBow]

Could it be that a lot of these websites are being created with content management systems by designers who think they are programmers? It's seems to me that most cites aren't handed-coded anymore. Am I wrong here?

Re:Oh, "great"

[morgauxo]

For the second problem there is javascript. For the first.. well that one is tough.

Re:Oh, "great"

[elashish14]

NoScript works great for that. My first machine is 5 and a half years old and the other is a netbook, but they're still pretty good for loading webpages if you block most of the scripts scripts and Flash. When I try to watch TV shows online though, then they start to struggle. I do my best to use external players if possible (e.g. stream it through mplayer instead of the native Flash player).

I should note that /. sometimes gets really laggy without NoScript. It can completely crash Firefox if I autoscroll sometimes

Re:Oh, "great"

[ColdWetDog]

> "OMG FLASH LETS PUT FLASH IN OUR SITES" and make user > experience WORSE.

Actually this applies to more than just the use of Flash. My computers have gotten exponentially faster, same with the connection, the browser promise 20 and more percent more speed with each major release....and yet tons of farking pages load slower and slower. Woe you if you try to scroll before the whole damn thing actually loaded its crap. Then it jumps all over the place and whatnot. Even clicking on a story and then going Back reloads the page again with a similar waiting period. There are sites (for example, some news sites) I hardly use anymore specifically because of abysmal performance issues. I can see the advantage of correlating and aggregating information from various sources and using dynamic techniques to display them. And yet, there's a very distinct point of diminishing and then reversing 'benefits'. Too bad most site developers haven't gotten that yet and still think, the more pictures move around, flip up and down, advertisements scroll along with user scrolling and various other completely annoying stuff, incl. soundtrack, the 'more exciting' the site. It's bullshit and the blink-tag craze all over. KEEP IT SIMPLE AND USEFUL, YOU MORONS!

Sounds like you've been hanging out on Slashdot again, sonny.

Re:Oh, "great"

[muckracer]

> Sounds like you've been hanging out on Slashdot again, sonny.

Actually yes...I am not excluding /. from my little rant.

Re:Oh, "great"

[gaspar ilom]

>Real professionals never considered Flash in the first place

Wait, so what's youtube? You think all those PhD engineers at Google aren't "professional?"

Real professionals examine the landscape of platforms and runtimes, and make compromises.

Re:Oh, "great"

[Robert Zenz]

Wait, so what's youtube? You think all those PhD engineers at Google aren't "professional?"

No, but I think they have now the possibility to migrate away from it.

Not available @ adobe.com

[Anonymous Coward]

I just went to Adobe and it ain't there. Only version 9.x for Linux 32-bit...

Where is a link to actual Adobe source for this??? After some looking around, a Beta release,

http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer11.html

Why isn't this linked in the summary??

Better article please

[Anonymous Coward]

Good news. It's nice to see that Adobe is supporting Flash on Linux.

Having said that something seems fishy with the summary/article.

Adobe has been taking quite a bashing from Linux supporters of late. First, there was the issue of them dropping AIR for Linux and then came the bashing because of the lack of updates on the experimental 64-bit Flash for Linux.

Reads like a troll...

They have kept that promise.

...or a shill.

Re:Better article please

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Good news. It's nice to see that Adobe is supporting Flash on Linux.

Having said that something seems fishy with the summary/article.

Adobe has been taking quite a bashing from Linux supporters of late. First, there was the issue of them dropping AIR for Linux and then came the bashing because of the lack of updates on the experimental 64-bit Flash for Linux.

Reads like a troll...

They have kept that promise.

...or a shill.

Not a serious issue, we can just go back to bashing them for sucking at software quality, which is the usual approach on the platforms they purport to support.

Re:Better article please

[hairyfeet]

Or you could, here's just a thought, I'm throwing this out there...be happy that they continue to support your OS when so many don't? After all sales of Linux machines isn't exactly setting the world on fire compared to OSX and Win 7 and there are a hell of a lot of companies out there that simply don't care that you exist. Adobe has been pretty damned good about keeping flash support for Linux, so shouldn't you just be happy? would it really kill the Linux community to say "hey thanks for continuing to support us Adobe, we appreciate it?"

The consistent bad attitude really doesn't help your cause you know. If you want big companies to acknowledge you and support you at least being a little nice to the ones that already do couldn't hurt. i mean you'll take code that is a mangled mess (LibreOffice) or programs that are a decade behind on features (gimp) and act like it is the second coming, but when a company offers you tech that makes the majority of the world's videos play on your machines you act like the CEO took a big dump on your plate. Not smart when you are such a teeny tiny niche

And before someone says "But Adobe isn't FOSS herp derp" you know what? Who gives a shit! would you rather have nothing but Gnash? Last I heard it is FOSS but 4 versions behind and runs like ass. And this is of course not pointing out the decaying elephant in the room which is most companies will NEVER open their software because with so many patent trolls out there it could bury the company in lawsuits for a decade with nothing to show but a "Gee thanks but ur code is shit LOL!" from the community.

so would it REALLY kill ya to be even just a tiny bit grateful for a company spending their resources supporting you? And as for Air...nothing of value was lost. hell I'm primarily a Windows guy and I have found exactly ONE thing that used Air, the GOG Downloader, and not only did you not need Air as you could just use your browser but the GOG team have already said they are writing a new one which doesn't use Air. So what is there to complain about? That someone supports you? Yep that is really worth having a shitfit over, having support might ruin your geek cred!

Re:Better article please

[DerPflanz]

Thank you Adobe, and all the other companies that support Linux versions of their software.

You're right! It didn't kill me. I completely agree with you.

Re:Better article please

[Alex Belits]

hairyfeet is hard at work, shilling for Microsoft even in threads about the articles praising Microsoft's greatest friends.

Re:Better article please

[StripedCow]

would you rather have nothing but Gnash?

Well, I'd rather have that all websites are written in plain HTML, instead of this proprietary, ill-supported software, that integrates badly with my browser and steals my focus all the time.

But for the time being, I'm glad that they have support for Linux now.

Re:Better article please

[sproketboy]

I wish I had mod points.

Re:Better article please

[Hatta]

would you rather have nothing but Gnash?

I'd rather have HTML5. Make no mistake, this isn't Adobe catering to Linux users because they're nice. Their biggest niche, streaming video, is in trouble. Flash could be made obsolete overnight if web designers decide to switch to HTML5. If you're designing a web site on a 64 bit Linux workstation, what technology are you going to use to stream video?

Re:Better article please

[hairyfeet]

Oh I agree completely that the best solution would be one that would work on any modern browser, be it mobile or desktop. The problem is HTML V5 not only isn't ratified yet as a proper standard but thanks to the split with MSFT and Apple on one side with H.26X and FOSS on the other with Theora and WebM it most likely never will. Then there is the problem of there not being the easy to use tools to "design" in HTML V5 like there is in flash. hell my mom could make whiz bang website crap in flash, it is drag and drop simple. There are too many website "designers" that couldn't code HTML V5 if their lives depended on it and as long as you can use flash so easily they won't be switching.

But that brings up another can of worms, and that is FOSS vs performance and I'm sorry, but WebM and Theora just don't cut it compared to H.264, not on bandwidth usage, not on picture quality at the same file sizes, it just doesn't. You can't expect the world to take half ass just because its free, and the added costs of bandwidth because of the inefficient Theora and WebM codecs just won't fly. It is similar to Vorbis ealier, where years after MP3 became the de facto standard along comes Vorbis with serious problems and no real benefits other than being FOSS. but the majority of the planet don't care about licenses, they can about how well it works, and the current king is H.264 because it gives the best quality and file size for the buck.

but it doesn't matter in the end if we were having a nice discussion about needlepoint, because just as the republican party has been taken over by the batshit wing so too has Linux and FOSS seemingly been taken over by the crazies. Alex will follow me for months spouting "Ur a M$ Ninja!" with the only proof being the voices in his head, while the other loonies go "yeah he pointed out their is driver issues, he must be a ninja on the M$ payroll!" making the whole community look like they are off their meds. it is a shame too because other than the serious driver issue I'd be hard pressed to find fault with Linux, it has nice GUIs, the hardware acceleration is coming along, it is low system requirements, so other than that it is great. Of course when you are dealing with customers whose PCs shit themselves every 6 months when the updates roll around and the only answer you get from the community when you point this out is either PNGs of trollface or the "ur a M$ Ninja!" craziness that is similar to saying other than the whole shooting thing the President had a nice trip to Dallas in 63.

Re:Better article please

[king neckbeard]

They put just enough work in to keep a really serious effort into alternatives at bay. I don't see a reason to be grateful for that, as it's in their best interest to do so. I was actually quite pleased when the first 64 bit plugin came out, but when they abandoned it, I lost all hope in Adobe. That, and what is apparently their only GNU/Linux dev spending half of his time writing in his blog bitching.

Re:Better article please

[ColdWetDog]

Careful. Look at his UID. He must have disconnected his bed alarm and made it out to the computer again.

Re:Better article please

[ColdWetDog]

Now, I think you should take a breather and get a nice relaxing cup of tea.

Re:Better article please

[wertigon]

A sore thumb has been hit.

Protip; when you write a wall of text for this kind of attack you only validate it. In other word, you kind sir just pwned yourself.

Now laugh at your own stupidity and have a beer/cola/whatever! It's on the house! :D

Re:Finally...

[arth1]

The main problem with using 32-bit wrapped Flash player on Linux wasn't primarily the glitches or performance, but that unlike Windows, most Linux flavors don't force install 32-bit libraries.
If you have a 64-bit system, you have a 64-bit system, not necessarily a hybrid 32/64 system as in the Windows world. So installing just the 32-bit flash meant installing all the 32-bit compatibility libraries too, and see a huge chunk of memory go up in smoke just for a single plugin.

All the benefits that Flash enjoys

[oheso]

... on other platforms. *crash!*

Do Not Want

[Anonymous Coward]

Good, so I can go download and install Flash, a piece of crappy proprietary software, which allows my web browser to download flash animations, which is more crappy proprietary software, which run automatically, without my permission, on any website where they are listed, so that they can annoy me.

I hate flash. It always has an active zero-day exploit available. It's often credited for being one of the main sources of Windows infections. It's responsible for many of the advertisements on the Internet, and all of the most annoying advertisements (like the ones with sound).

Re:Do Not Want

[atomicbutterfly]

Then install an Ad-Block. This will eliminate the vast majority of ads in the first place (including the annoying ones and most of the ones that are likely to be exploited), leaving it for the more useful stuff like YouTube.

Stop whining like you're a geek without the ability to take control of things.

Re:Do Not Want

[rainmouse]

Good, so I can go download and install Flash, a piece of crappy proprietary software, which allows my web browser to download flash animations, which is more crappy proprietary software, which run automatically, without my permission, on any website where they are listed, so that they can annoy me.

This endless tedious simpering is what makes me wonder that any company continues to support Linux at all. What is the alternative? HTML 5? That will likely have all the same problems but with the added risk of getting sued left and right as the HTML 5 patent war begins.

Re:Finally

[deek]

Hurrah, they fixed that?! The audio noise was caused by a memcpy issue with flash player and the glibc libs. Linus actually wrote a LD_PRELOAD replacement for memcpy which fixed it. I've been using that for the last few months. Search for linusmemcpy.c if you're interested.

ah...

[Frosty-B-Bad]

When the linux community asked for software I don't think they knew what they were in for. Cheers mates, you can crash your browser like the rest of us.

Re:ah...

[arth1]

Cheers mates, you can crash your browser like the rest of us.

Actually, it's just the plugin that crashes, not the browser. You need Adobe Reader to crash the entire browser :)

Re:ah...

[UltraZelda64]

Actually, it's just the plugin that crashes, not the browser. You need Adobe Reader to crash the entire browser :)

Depends. Doesn't the version of Iceweasel in the latest Debian stable release (3.5.16 in Squeeze) not support out-of-process plugins? I thought this feature didn't make its way into Firefox until 3.6.something.

Re:ah...

[timeOday]

On my Linux box, Flash intermittently freezes the entire OS solid. Can't even log in remotely. Granted, that's a sign of some more fundamental issue, which I haven't been able to track down. Personally I think it's the NVidia driver. The OSS driver is useless without vdpau. I've swapped out the PSU and graphics card, and run CPU and video benchmarks for hours on end. Yet it only locks up when my son watches youtube, and then occasionally. Real fun.

Re:ah...

[Mashiki]

You know I keep hearing this stuff about flash causing crashes and all that. And I've yet to see it happen on any of my home machines in the last oh 6 years ever since flash was rebuilt from the ground up. Seems like 'nix nuts are just as bad on flash as they are on anything related to MS.

Re:ah...

[RobbieThe1st]

I've run into the same problem, but running the latest beta driver it seems to be partially solvesd: The screen freezes for about 15-30 seconds, then continues. Probably the HW/driver restarting when a watchdog times out.
Still, it's better than locking up the machine permanately.

Re:ah...

[nzac]

Anyone who runs Debian should accept that they will always have crap browser options unless they install their own. Stable is a year behind at release and Sid follows alphas and betas and therefore testing is an out of date beta I would think. If the made sid follow the releases then it would be all good.

Re:ah...

[Randle_Revar]

Debian is in the right and MoFo is wrong on that whole issue, but that doesn't keep me from using the mozilla.org versions of FF and SM. IW et al are too many version behind, and they never have betas or nightlies.

Re:ah...

[IrquiM]

Personnaly, I think it's the distribution. Works perfectly fine on Slackware 13.37 with any of the NVIDIA drivers..

Re:ah...

[marcosdumay]

Flashblock to the rescue. With it you can crash your browser only when needed.

Re:ah...

[nschubach]

I've been running flash on my 64-bit Debian Intel/Intel laptop for 3(?) years now and only recently I had it completely lock up the system when I went to drop flash out of full screen watching a Zero Punctuation video.

Re:ah...

[h4rr4r]

Can you get to the terminals or is it really locked up?
I sometimes have it lock the X session but I can still get to tty1, so I restart GDM when it happens.

Piece of crap.... so huge improvement

[dlgeek]

On my TV box (Atom D510 with NVidia GT218 (ION)), mplayer or xbmc can play 720p and even 1080p content on fullscreen to my 1080p tv over HDMI without breaking a sweat).

The new flash can render hulu in the tiny window no problem, but is incredibly jerky and flickery in full screen mode. There are noticible segments that are out of sync with each other, the overlays (hulu logo, player controls, etc) are flashing on and off and drawing incorrectly.

Sadly, that's a HUGE improvement over the v10 release which couldn't even draw in windowed mode and fullscreen was about 0.5 fps.

Re:Piece of crap.... so huge improvement

[dlgeek]

I did,do you really think MESA can get 1080p decoding and rendering on an ATOM CPU?

Re:Piece of crap.... so huge improvement

[The Master Control P]

I have them installed, 260.19.29. For shits'n'giggles I downloaded some of the 4K videos on Youtube as a test...

mplayer can very nearly play 4096x2560 to fullscreen (2560x1600) using a single Athlon II core and a GeForce-240 (video is smooth, but audio eventually breaks up). Flash can almost get a smooth framerate on 480x360 windows on youtube, and the fullscreen button would be better termed the talking slideshow button.

Not to say that native is necessarily better... kde's dragon player is so horribly slow it makes Flash player look like mplayer. This may not directly be dragon's fault... in my experience, everything Qt4 touches is instantly covered in a thick layer of cold molasses and resin.

Re:Piece of crap.... so huge improvement

[snowgirl]

The out of sync stuff is just Hulu. Don't worry about that. My Win7 experience is the same.

Re:Piece of crap.... so huge improvement

[Anonymous Coward]

For whatever reason, hulu has not yet updated their flash app to utilize the new accelerated video playback architecture (stage). Try 1080p on youtube and you will see it works quite well. There is a request thread on the hulu boards to add stage support but it seems to be relatively ignored by hulu so far.

/usr/lib/kde4

[porl]

not sure if it is just the debian/ubuntu 64 bit package but it failed to install with an error that /usr/lib/kde4 was not found. as i'm not running it, it was not surprising it was missing, but i had to create the directory for the package to install properly. obviously this can be worked around by manually extracting the tar and working from that, but i prefer using the deb packages.

hope this helps someone.

Re:/usr/lib/kde4

[the_humeister]

If you're using a Firefox-based browser (ie Iceweasel on Debian), then just uncompress the tarball and move libflashplayer.so into ~/.mozilla/plugins and you're done.

Re:As the solaris user...

[Kev Vance]

As a Solaris user, I guess I just don't get it. Why EXACTLY do you need a 64bit version of flash? Have they removed the ability in linux of running 32bit binaries on a 64bit system?

It's nice not to have to maintain an extra userland just for one program. If I upgrade JACK and the wire protocol changes, Flash can't make sound until I go find the latest 32-bit libs.

64-bit...

[gstrickler]

Exploits and crashes are now up to 80% faster.

FreeBSD still not supported

[koinu]

Linux plugin would work through emulation on FreeBSD, but I am not interested in Flash, and Linux neither. I hope everyone migrates to HTML5 instead of installing some weird closed-source plugins. You never know what's inside and a browser is a nice application to have spyware attached to it.

So in the meantime, I'm running my PC without Flash support since about 10 years. It would be nice for some people using FreeBSD to have Flash, but even then, I would not install it, I think.

Re:FreeBSD still not supported

[koinu]

I cannot complain about the quality of FreeBSD, I have had the least problems with this distribution. The lack of an official Flash plugin is not a problem for me, but I noticed that there are some people crying about it in forums and mailing lists.

Proprietary software is evil in generic applications like browsers, yes. Someone said here on Slashdot: having plugins in your browser is like the year 1995. I like this statement. It's funny and it's true.

Fact is, Adobe cannot write portable software, or else it would be a matter of providing a few compiler switches to support a further OS.

Re:FreeBSD still not supported

[koinu]

Yes, but if you escape the browser's sandbox. The software is actually _broken_ and needs a fix.

When you think about Flash plugin... it's already on your system and ready to infect everything. And this is how it works... it won't get fixed, but it's the concept of a browser plugin.

Re:FreeBSD still not supported

[Trilkk]

FreeBSD i386 has a pretty good Linux emulation, and I've been using Linux flash via nspluginwrapper on my machine until recently.

Now recently, with latest FreeBSD drivers from nvidia, the flash images start playing on every black pixel on my screen that's on the same relative screen position as the video. This happens on every desktop. If I put youtube on, then go into another desktop to do coding, the video happily keeps playing in my black-background terminal.

The bug is so bizarre I wouldn't know where to begin with it. If it persists with FreeBSD 8.3, it's time to start looking for a solution. As-is, downloadhelper and greasemonkey will do.

strange sound bug fixed

[Errtu76]

Nice, it seems to have fixed this problem. Even though the main problem was actually in glibc.

Re:strange sound bug fixed

[yuhong]

It wasn't glibc's fault. It was another example of a program depending on undocumented behavior of an API.

Flash-Aid

[tdarklighter]

You can install the Flash-Aid add-on in Firefox - makes the installation a little easier and also checks for updates.

64-bit *what*?

[jgrahn]

It's really weird to see "64-bit" applied to Linux in this way, as if it was Windows. Linux runs well on various 64-bit CPUs, but I bet Adobe cannot be bothered to recompile for more than one of them ...

Re:64-bit *what*?

[atomicbutterfly]

From what I understand, the Flash platform is so damn complicated with integrated JIT compilers and other tech within the plugin, that simply running a 64-bit compiler on the codebase isn't quite that simple as the code was never designed to work in 64-bit architectures. Most code should, assuming it's well designed and the developers weren't taking shortcuts by assuming the lengths of various types, but we're talking about Adobe here.

Re:64-bit *what*?

[dbIII]

but we're talking about Adobe here.

Ah yes, PDF "encryption" by ROT13 (cereal box code wheel set to m->a) and putting a guy in jail that came to the USA to give a lecture on such a "trade secret".

Re:64-bit *what*?

[Curate]

Actually, m->a is part of ROT14, which is a relatively recent advancement in encryption. ROT14 is widely considered to be more secure than ROT13, in that it has suffered fewer known attacks, I consider this to be more due to "security by obscurity" than any genuine improvement.

Re:Finally...

[atomicbutterfly]

The main problem with using 32-bit wrapped Flash player on Linux wasn't primarily the glitches or performance, but that unlike Windows, most Linux flavors don't force install 32-bit libraries.
If you have a 64-bit system, you have a 64-bit system, not necessarily a hybrid 32/64 system as in the Windows world. So installing just the 32-bit flash meant installing all the 32-bit compatibility libraries too, and see a huge chunk of memory go up in smoke just for a single plugin.

Not only that, but the 32-bit libraries are only loaded into memory upon the first instance of running 32-bit code. This means that if your current session has only used 64-bit binaries and you go to a page using the 32-bit Flash plugin, your browser will stall for several seconds while all the necessary libs are brought into memory (assuming you aren't using an SSD of course).

Webcam

[pmontra]

Did they also fix webcam support? Sites like ustream don't work because flash keeps supporting an old video for linux standard and not the new one, which is years old.

Can't find installer for my 64-bit Linux system

[Karellen]

Anyone know where they put the ia64 binaries?

Control panel?

[MasterPatricko]

The tarball contents have changed relative to previous releases:
  libflashplayer.so
  usr/bin/flash-player-properties
  usr/share/pixmaps/flash-player-properties.png
  usr/share/kde4/services/kcm_adobe_flash_player.desktop
  usr/share/applications/flash-player-properties.desktop
  usr/share/icons/hicolor/32x32/apps/flash-player-properties.png
  usr/share/icons/hicolor/22x22/apps/flash-player-properties.png
  usr/share/icons/hicolor/24x24/apps/flash-player-properties.png
  usr/share/icons/hicolor/16x16/apps/flash-player-properties.png
  usr/share/icons/hicolor/48x48/apps/flash-player-properties.png
  usr/lib/kde4/kcm_adobe_flash_player.so

Looks like it provides some sort of control panel now, and attempts to integrate into KDE's SystemSettings. All you really need is to copy libflashplayer.so into /usr/lib64/browser-plugins though (openSUSE).

Re:As the solaris user...

[RobbieThe1st]

You don't get progress without getting rid of old crap, else people continue to use it and you get loads of legacy cruft - see the Win32 API for a good example.

I, personally, expect that when I run "apt-get update; apt-get upgrade" everything will be upgraded so it's compatible. Which usually happens unless you're running unstable/untested sources.

As far as 64-bit browser goes, I want it because it fits better with the rest of the OS, and means I don't need compatibility libraries running. If I had to make the choice between flash and 64-bit browser... well, good bye flash. I'd probably try gnash.

"Problem" in flash exposed by glibc changes

[Sits]

The problem was that Flash was using overlapping memory areas on memcpy. This was a hidden problem in Flash but it was exposed by a glibc change on certain architectures (as noted at length in the bug you linked to). The glibc change was not wrong as far as the spec goes but it was definitely unhelpful to end users. In the end, the glibc devs made a change that means the different memcpy only kicks in for programs linked against newer versions glibc which seems a defensible stance.

Looking forward to 64bit exploits

[maweki]

We 64bit users have been denied official 64bit Flash exploits. We had to rely on the experimental exploit-support or the 32bit exploits. I've been waiting very long for this and I am glad, Adobe lives up to its promise, to release security holes for 64bit Linux in the same reliable manner they did for 32bit Linux and Windows. Thank you.

Under construction from scratch

[dbIII]

Several competing aims with sound drivers mean that sound on linux intermittantly sucks in recent times. The simple bog standard stuff became shareware so had to be removed to a separate download and isn't keeping up with new hardware anyway so newer software has abandoned that as well. The other stuff aims for full desktop integration and network capability with a lot of moving targets instead of just having a virtual device for the applications to pipe sound to - all those shiny feaures tend to make the various implementations fragile.
In short, sound sucks in linux for a lot of people but a lot of extra things you can do with it are under construction. The libraries are changing a lot, and frequently, to suck less but they tend to break a lot of things along the way. Upgrading things in batches tends to work and bring sound back when you find there is a new application where sound does not work. A stable API really depends on people being confident that it is a good API and it appears it isn't at that point yet for pulseaudio and perhaps some others.

Re:Adobe Reader 64-bit for Linux

[MurukeshM]

Oh root..Do you really want that crap? What about evince or okular?

It doesn't really solve the problem

[shtrom]

I still can't read any Flash animation on my PPC-based Linux machines.

Separate player for YouTube

[jones_supa]

You know, it would be cool if there simply was a dedicated YouTube player for desktop Linux too. There is one for iPad and my Android phone has one too. They know that Flash sucks in performance so they skip it completely. It works great.

I wonder how easy/hard would it be to figure out the Flash video streaming protocol and glue it in to some movie player? I already remember Totem and VLC implementing a YouTube player but I never have got them to work that well...

And it only took them 8 years!

[Bollie]

If you look at the timeline of the amd64 architecture: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86-64#History_of_AMD64

Then it only took 8 years to make a 64-bit port from the date of the first available amd64 machine. If you take into account the date of the first full spec released to the public, it's almost 11 years.

Now if only complex software like the Linux Kernel could be ported in shorter time....

Re:And it only took them 8 years!

[thsths]

Yes, it is a bit lame. My first 64bit system is long dead and replaced (Athlon64 - decent performance, but it was just not cost effective to upgrade from 1GB of DDR RAM), and I am considering doing the same with my second one now. Ubuntu/amd64 has been reasonably usable since about LTS 6.06, and even flash kind of worked with a wrapper.

In the mean time, Adobe *still has not released* a 64bit plugin. No surprise here, you do not expect slashdot stories to be accurate even in the main point of the story.

Re:As the solaris user...

[smash]

No, you get progress without breaking compatibility, if you architect things in an extensible way in the first place. See: FreeBSD.

Re:The alternative

[dltaylor]

Wrong way 'round. The "web" hinders my enjoyment of Linux (the Internet, pre-web, was really quite useful and enjoyable).

Back when I could use SunOS/Solaris, Unix System 5.[34], and Linux (bsd, too, but I was rarely on such a system) to access the Internet, I could communicate with individuals, share data with communities, and acquire information, without having to fight my way through web sites designed for mouth-breathers who not only don't know that Flash is a major back door into their system, but only have a couple of sexual references for the term "back door" anyway, and no capability to understand what what it might mean in a computer context.

Here's to hoping this sparks more discussion.

[Irick]

As people have pointed out, this is only a beta release, however, maybe the dialog in the Linux community will turn to evaluating the impact of this plugin on the viability of the Linux desktop. Personally I just see this as lip service to try and keep interest in Flash, which has mostly fallen out of media attention. Something tells me this will never see a finalized release, though I could be wrong. I will always personally doubt Adobe's commitment to maintaining a truly cross platform solution until we see development tools under Linux and until that day I will always advocate dropping it like three month old turkey bacon.

VLC

[DrYak]

in the latest versions of VLC it now works out of the box. Just paste the URL to a youtube video and it works. What would be now still needed is an interface for the rest of youtube's functionnality (searches,playlists,etc.) the mobile version of the web site would be a nice starting point.

Re:The alternative

[Whiteox]

From what I can remember from the early days, flash=animation and not moving pictures. Somewhere along the line *.flv became a defacto standard?
Why? What possible benefit does flv have over other compressed forms of video?

Superiority of multi-platform

[DrYak]

Now if only complex software like the Linux Kernel could be ported in shorter time....

Seriously, this fact clearly shows the superiority of multiplatform open software. GNU/Linux has been running on lots of different and varied architecture for ages.
At the time when x86-64 arch was developped,Linux and GNU devs where already used to 64bits bi-arch platfroms. Adding support for amd64 cpu mainly consisted of slapping it's spec over the work already done for sparc64 and the likes. If I remember correctly, the kernel was already running successfully on hardware simulators, even *before* the hardware hit the market. I remember installing 64bit ports of distros (Suse) in the weeks after buying my CPU.

meanwhile, in closed source wintel monoculture world, flash has made so much x86 assumptions and short cuts, that even if it's a simple plugin with a complexity a fraction that of even the linux kernel, it tok them a decade to get proper 64-bits support. And ARM support is still problematic and not widely available (though in the recent past, it starts to pop-up too).

Windows has the same problem. On one hand microsoft finally promised ARM ports, but on the other hand they only want to support one reference platform because there is too much wild variation). Meanwhile, Linux' support of ARM might be a mess (not much consolidation. Each hw manufacturer droping in their own monolithic platform specific driver instead). Still,it works on ARM (as mostly illustrated with the Android User space)

Re:Superiority of multi-platform

[ewanm89]

The Linux kernel s used as the tech preview and dev platform by several CPU manufacturers, whether it be IBM and the CELL processor, AMD and its 64bit architecture, or Intel and their TPM previews.

Oh grow up FFS

[Viol8]

People like you are what give true FOSS and Linux users like me a bad name. I'm ashamed to be associated with idiots who drop the microsoft line everytime they disagree with something. Its the slashdot equivalent of godwins law. Pathetic.

Really?

[ewanm89]

So, during most of that discontinued time, square didn't exist? It was only for about a month where there was no support. When they moved from flash 10 based preview to flash 11 based preview and and added 64bit windows support to it too. Now mozilla can build us some nice 64bit firefox releases for windows and I'll be really happy.

Solved my PulseAudio issues

[Damnshock]

Update to 11 beta from 10.3 and...et voilà! Pulseaudio and flash not respect each other! :)

Now I just want them to fix the freezing image problem when switching to fullscreen...

Thanks, but no thanks!

[Boltronics]

My laptop uses an AMD E-350, running Debian Testing 64-bit. This works fine for 1920x1080 video on an external LCD... provided it makes use of the built-in hardware-decoder. The official Flash Player doesn't do that.

My solution? A VA-API-patched mplayer, gnome-mplayer, a few GreaseMonkey scripts and the gecko-mediaplayer plugin take care of most web videos I watch perfectly (including basically anything on YouTube), and the remaining Flash content is taken care of by a combination of the Gnash plugin and the NoFlash Firefox Add-on.

Even Gnash offers VA-API support these days, although I haven't looked into getting it working. Flash Player would be a big step backwards - even if I did want to run proprietary browser plugins (which I don't).

Re:Thanks, but no thanks!

[ReinoutS]

Nice, but do you have a link to a HOWTO for your setup for mere mortals?

Re:Thanks, but no thanks!

[Boltronics]

Some of it's on my blog.

http://systemsaviour.com/?p=339

sound quality

[characterZer0]

It seems to have fixed the buzzing in the audio on a lot of live feeds that I experienced on the last 64-bit plugin (but not on the 32-bit one).

Re:Finally...

[MachineShedFred]

see a huge chunk of memory go up in smoke just for a single plugin.

So it's just like Flash on every other platform then?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Thanks yo!

[motang]

The combination with FF 4 and flash square beta 2 was really good I loved it, it was the first time it actually worked. But looks like this newer version with FF 5 is also working well, thanks Adobe.

Awesome!

[Kamiza Ikioi]

I always wanted vulnerabilities in my otherwise secure 64bit systems!

Where you'd expect -

[Benanov]

Next to the PPC64 ones.

Re:Adobe Reader 64-bit for Linux

[nschubach]

I have to be fair here... evince and/or xpdf haven't impressed me for PDF readers. Yes, they work... but the interfaces need some love (mainly xpdf, but evince has it's quirks.) It only started to matter to me though since I'm buying a house and my agent insists on sending me papers to sign in PDF format. Otherwise the only use I have for PDF is pen/paper sheets for the rare game nights.

Re:Finally

[gazbo]

I was using the same workaround. Just installed the new flash .so, and no longer need to. THANK FUCK. I was definitely with Linus that whatever the specification of memcpy, if your optimisations break a ubiquitous piece of software it's a regression. But it's also a good thing that Adobe fixed their broken code, of course.

I also had issues where periodically Flash would bring my system to a crawl - I've not seen anyone else mention that problem, but fingers crossed this'll solve that too.

Re:As the solaris user...

[marcosdumay]

If you architect everything in an extensible way in the first place you'll get death by overengineering.

Of course, that doesn't excuse the Linux sound system(s).

Re:Adobe Reader 64-bit for Linux

[HappyHead]

Agreed. Adobe's PDF reader is the worst one currently available on nearly every system I've seen it on. How can they so totally screw up the viewer for a technology they're the primary creator/developer of?

Day Late, Dollar Short (HTML5)

[tomweeks]

They're just trying to hang onto any/all install-base they can now. The iPhone (with all of it's problems (and zealots)) actually HELPED the effort of moving the world away from flash and to the W3 HTML5 standard. Thank you Apple! :) IMHO, Flash is now just another example of legacy, greed-ware.
Open Source..
        Open Standards..
              Open Life.

Tweeks

That's too bad.

[therealkevinkretz]

I liked having the unavailability of Flash on more and more common platforms as a reason to suggest to web sites not to use it. Guess I'll focus on lack of usability on mobile devices.

Adobe programmers

[Skapare]

Wow, so Adobe programming skillz are moving forward, I see. Maybe in another decade they'll learn something about security.

Should 32bit installations become deprecated?

[Marrow]

It seems like many/most machines shipped these days would benefit from 64bit installations over 32bit. Are we reaching a point where 64bit installations will be the defacto standard and 32bit will be "special" for older hardware?
I am referring to Linux installs of course.

Re:Should 32bit installations become deprecated?

[thsths]

32bit Linux has a huge advantage over 32bit Windows: it easily supports more than 4 GB of RAM. PAE has been working for years, and it is standard on most Linux distributions now.

At the same time 64bit Linux still struggles with library paths, and until the fat elf format comes along, I do not see a proper solution to that.

That being said, 64bit Linux works perfectly fine, as long as you do not need some troublesome third party 32bit binary to work.

Thanks, but....

[MikeUW]

Thanks Adobe, but...fullscreen Flash is still completely unusable on my quad-core machine with 1gb dedicated video.

It Works!

[nssy]

Works fine for me on Debian 6. I can finally watch 1080p on a browser without it freezing.

Crap. Period.

[NorthWay]

Flash is the biggest piece of crap I have on this OpenSUSE system of mine. It is the only thing that can freeze my machine flat out (mouse moving, but NOTHING responding, even keyboard and X kill shortcut). Fullscreen watching on YouTube is a 35% chance to tear my hair out. 11 will hopefully be a better version. Hopefully.

Re:Adobe Reader 64-bit for Linux

[MurukeshM]

Agreed, it does need polish,but not the horror that Foxit inflicts on us.. But one of Evince's features (open a copy), is incredibly useful when reading text books or long journal articles. Handy enough for me to keep both it and one other PDF viewer (supporting tabs),like Chrome or Foxit around.

Air

[__aazsst3756]

"them dropping AIR for Linux"... Should that not read many legions of Linux admins rejoiced when Adobe dropped Air support? Who wants to mess with a platform on a platform?

html 5

[__aazsst3756]

On devices that don't support flash, youtube uses html 5, but default to flash for everyone else. Too bad they didn't just go html for everyone.

Linux botnets?!

[m1ndcrash]

In Adobe we trust... (proud botnet owner)

Depends on your software

[Sits]

64 bit support from open source software has been ready for a few years in terms on the Linux distributions. Someone who has been only using open source stuff will tell you "it's been ready for years! How could you not know?".

Most Linux 64 bit problems stem from closed source pieces. Things like closed drivers, closed browser plugins, closed source communications software, closed source software for reading certain documents, closed source electronics software, certain enterprise software etc. Those sometimes come in 32 bit only versions necessitating the need for 32 bit versions libraries to be available (in addition to the 64 bit libraries that were already installed). People will tell you different things on this depending on how early they made the 64 bit switch, which distro they were using, how much of this software they had to get working etc. Responses range from "it was easy to install the 32 bit libraries - they only take up 100Mbytes extra" to "it was a nightmare having to set up a 32 bit chroot" or "I couldn't get my device to work because there was no driver available".

If you don't have 4Gbytes or more of memory don't stress that you're not 64 bit - you're not missing much. If you DO have 4GBytes or more memory, it sounds like you are serious user who really should face the (lessening) growing pains of 64 bit so as to better utilise their machine.

Now if only we could use it...

[srees]

If only there were a unified, simple way to install it. I spent hours yesterday trying to get flash on a 32 bit FF5 in a 64 bit system. Read every friggin' article and how-to I could find, just in case I was being retarded. Finally gave up. Screw it. Can live without it.