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

I hate flash.

[Anonymous Coward]

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

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.

[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.

[larry bagina]

As a big women magazine photographer

You take pictures of fat women?

Re:I hate flash.

[i_ate_god]

you mean he gimps them.

Too bad

[Anonymous Coward]

it comes with flash.

Only a beta so far

[nzac]

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

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"

[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"

[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"

[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: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.

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.

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: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.

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: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!

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: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.

"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.

Re:Adobe Reader 64-bit for Linux

[MurukeshM]

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

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.

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:one word.

[zwarte piet]

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

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: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: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?

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?

Awesome!

[Kamiza Ikioi]

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