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Adobe Makes Flash on GNU/Linux Chrome-Only
ekimd writes "Adobe has anounced their plans to abandon future updates of their Flash player for Linux. Partnering with Google, after the release of 11.2, 'the Flash Player browser plugin for Linux will only be available via the 'Pepper' API as part of the Google Chrome browser distribution and will no longer be available as a direct download from Adobe.' Viva la HTML 5!"
And it appears that Mozilla won't be implementing Pepper anytime soon.
Who the fuck put "GNU/Linux" in the title of this?
And nothing of value was lost. Here's to people moving to the free alternatives.
Don't worry, someone will write a firefox plugin to emulate pepper in javascript
So the loss is some video sites, games and an unstable plugin.
Also, even though Adobe will be providing security updates for five further years, it seems doubtful Flash will still be that used in five years.
Flash is on its deathbed anyway. Even Adobe realized that and is migrating everything to HTML5, even employing programmers to implement HTML5/CSS3 features in WebKit.
Adobe gives a 5 year migration period which is probably more that HTML5 needs to succeed widespread.
Mozilla are struggling to remain relevant in a post-webkit world. Not being "interested" in Pepper is really going to help.
It is BS like this from Adobe that will not make me shed a tear when Flash is eventually replaced.
Don't need no stinkin' Flash!
"And it appears that Mozilla won't be implementing Pepper anytime soon."
Why?
Your days are numbered, and the number is not particularly large.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Oh, sure, I'm sure some people will complain that their favorite game or whatever runs on Flash, and therefore it's a horrible and tragic loss.
But for some of us, it's a performance hog, a security risk, and a general nuisance. I've been avoiding the use of Flash whenever I can get away with it for over a decade. I associate it with annoying ads and ever-cookies more than I do anything useful. In fact, I'm not sure I can name a single site I use that makes use of Flash.
I look forward to the demise of Flash. Sorry that some of you will miss out of Super Duper Happy Fun Cow Clicker or whatever, but I personally will not mourn its loss.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Flash is on its deathbed anyway.
All the existing Flash animations and games on Weebl's Stuff, Homestar Runner, Kongregate, and Newgrounds are likely to keep SWF on life support for a very long time, be it through Adobe Flash Player or through Gnash.
An SWF player in JavaScript is more likely.
Hmm if google think that that way more people running Linux will use chrome. I'm sure they are for a nasty surprise. I predict more people returning to firefox them going to chrome over this.
rm -rf ~/.macromedia
....you do know that Adobe, not Google, makes Flash right?
Just ask them for the source code, why, we'll compile for lin ourselves. No Problem - Grin.
The purpose of existence is to make money.
Mozilla/Other browsers?
----> https://wiki.mozilla.org/NPAPI:Pepper
Mozilla is not interested in or working on Pepper at this time. See the Chrome Pepper pages.
Verdict: Google did it.
They've killed Kenny! Bastards!
"It feels like I'm at the Zoo when reading this thread - I'm frightened, but it's interesting" (c)
Is it a viable alternative against flash? According to http://gnashdev.org/ last version is 0.8.9 published in march 2011.
Chrom*'s the only browser to support PPAPI as of now.
Slowly? They're already worse, collecting data on everything you do in exchange for free half-baked products.
In the past I needed flash for two things: Piwik and (to a lesser extend) youtube. Piwik switched to HTML5 graphs about half a year ago IIRC , and youtube appears to play every video with a HTML5 player for a while now. Same goes for vimeo.
I have uninstalled flash in the moment Piwik made the switch (gnash did not work with Piwik btw). Being on AMD64 flash was a chore anyway, so since then browsing was suddenly faster and more stable.
I can only imagine people playing these advergames would miss flash, but it will probably only be a few months until these sites adapt and offer HTML5 versions.
For Flash Player releases after 11.2, the Flash Player browser plugin for Linux will only be available via the “Pepper” API as part of the Google Chrome browser distribution and will no longer be available as a direct download from Adobe.
Damn, what about chromium, then? Is quite annoying already having to install the Flash Player through an installer that fetches it from Adobe. Now we will have to use the proprietary bits of the browser, too? No way.
Partnering with Google, etc etc...
I've been doing rich client development in Flash ever since 2000 and to me the Flash Player for x86/Linux was a big selling point. True x-platform RTE with a huge amount of awesome features and a very good programming language with AS2 and AS3. A free cli compiler for all major platforms including Linux and an awesome workflow for building custom UIs with the Flash IDE.
I don't think there will be such a widespread and powerfull platform again in the future - it's a shame Adobe missed out on the whole touch revolution in the Flash dept. Just last year I bought my last stack of OReillys for Flex and AS development for a project I had. ... Guess that will have been my last. Just this morning I though of stashing them away to make room for my new C++ stack.
For me, one thing is for sure: As awesome as Flash was, it is the one and only proprietary platform and technology I will ever have invested significant time in. From here on out it's only truely OSI compliant FOSS technologies and PLs for me. That was also the main reason I didn't move into Unity3D when I was doing game development a while back.
Flash/AS it was a great 11 years. You will be missed.
My 2 cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I've just in the past couple months had to basically abandon firefox for day-to-day surfing. Memory bloat, instability and slowness are to blame. Yes I was updated, yes I had minimal addons. The constant update cycle which broke many other addons was semi-tolerable. Sad to say, but it is true - Chrome it is. But since all the major plugins I use are available in chrome, I can do just fine.
The one plugin I haven't been able to duplicate yet is something like "unplug" which snags embedded videos with ease.
The final straw was when gmail was locking up the browser for no reason. Java and flash were updated, ff was updated. Come on, man!
Flappinbooger isn't my real name
You have to ask yourself, who stands to gain from this? The answer is clearly Google.
I would not doubt money changed hands in this decision, or at the very least there is some corporate backscratching going on here.
What the summary largely skips over is that this plan to abandon Flash on Linux is scheduled to take place five years from now. Adobe is planning to provide updates to their Linux Flash player until then. After five years it's likely HTML5 and Gnash will be up to the task of handling everything people currently use Adobe flash for.
In Adobe's announcement regarding the end of mobile Flash support, they stated that they were conceding to HTML5 in the web browser and will be focusing on moving Flash to desktop platform application development. While I suppose it was subtly stated, the implication was that they intend to phase out Flash as a browser plug-in entirely. Linux/X11 was already the most difficult for them to implement and had the highest cost/benefit, so it makes perfect sense for it to be the first to go. I imagine Google wants to keep Legacy Flash for Chrome on Linux if for no other reason than to secure another leg up on the browser competition. Overall, Google probably would just assume Flash die off, but if they can get buy-in from Linux users and push WebM and Dart in the process, then it's worth the effort.
From the press release:
"Adobe will continue to provide security updates to non-Pepper distributions of Flash Player 11.2 on Linux for five years from its release."
If we believe the (mainstream) migration from Flash to HTML5 will be accomplished in that timeframe, I don't see this being a big issue for Firefox or other Linux browsers not using the Pepper API
In addition to the tons of legacy content that will never be converted (due to limitations in tools, or abandonment), there is a lot of new content for which HTML 5 in not appropriate.
For example, there are a lot of nice video streaming services out there, and they all have been forced to use some sort of DRM by content providers. While I refuse to accept DRM on products I buy, I don't have an issue with it for rental/subscription services as long as it is available on the platforms I use, which can be an issue even without DRM. With Silverlight DRM not being included in Moonlight, you already could not watch Netflix and some live sports, now with Flash being discontinued for Linux, there will be no way to watch Hulu Plus, Amazon Instant Video, or any of the streaming video provided by networks. This is a use of Flash that HTML5 will never replace, because of valid ideological differences in the purpose of open web standards.
I don't consider a tool that is used for 90% of commercial video streaming, with no migration path to other tools to be "on its deathbed".
And not a single fuck was given that day...
2 years ago, this would have been AN OUTRAGE! Now? Not so much. Just set your user agent to iPad, and a lot of video sites will work without Flash.
In a typical Slashdot display of sensationalism, the headline reads "Adobe makes flash on Linux Chrome-Only" but they've announced nothing of the sort. Adobe is switching Flash from the increasingly outdated and cumbersone Netscape plugin API to the new PPAPI (Pepper). There is nothing stopping Mozilla from implementing this API. And that's probably what's going to happen. I'd be surprised if there isn't already a team working on it.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
Wallaby is interesting, but it works with FLA, not SWF: the authoring format, not the distribution format. That's great for works that are still updated and maintained, but there's a lot of orphan content out there that will also need to be played.
Now if they would only abandon it on windows.
Flash support for Linux has always been pretty bad. Most people switched to a 64-bit distro years ago, but Adobe has only supported flash on 64-bits Linux for 6 months... Sure there was a beta version available some time before, but security holes where not fixed in a very timely manner for the beta, so it was mostly useless. In fact things are just going back to normal.
I fully agree that Flash dying out will be a nice thing. Too bad it is not necessarily replaced by HTML5 / h264 but Silverlight on sites I watch.
Before anyone suggests the Novell Moonlight : it works fine on bubblemark, yes, but the DRM and other crap included when watching online TV usually just makes it crash under linux.
Adobe is not planning to abandon Flash, or at least those plans have not yet been made. And that's part of what this is about. Flash is being re-targeted at high end gaming and video as well as application development for the various mobile and desktop stores. Dropping off platforms that consume a lot of development resources makes it easier for them to advance the platform more quickly for their goal areas. Apple made ubiquity on the web an impossible goal for browser plugins. Without that incentive, your best bet is to offer really competitive functionality.
As for all you people who rejoice at the idea of any technology dying, I'm sorry, but you're fools. Flash and other technologies are nothing but another choice for developers. Good developers will only use Flash when it is the best tool for the job (and there absolutely are places where it is). When you take away options for good developers, certain genres of software go down in quality or disappear entirely. Bad developers will write crap no matter what technology you put in front of them, and taking away the tool that they know best is only going to make them write bigger crap until they figure it out.
Sort of. Google has access to the Flash source, and the Flash shipping in Chrome is modified from stock flash; it has different version numbers and carries various patches Google has made but not (yet, possibly) upstreamed.
And http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3621263 (from a Google employee) makes it pretty clear that Google is involved in helping maintain Pepper Flash.
And since PPAPI is an open API with a BSD-licensed reference implementation, whose fault is that?
Chrome is the only browser to support PPAPI because Mozilla doesn't want to implement it, not because Google is preventing them from doing so.
The rest of us call it "Linux".
Which brings in the "well technically Android is Linux too" pedants. What's the precise term for the software stack on top of Linux that is more commonly used on desktop and laptop PCs?
Cygwin is called "Gnu/Cygwin",
The G in Cygwin stands for GNU.
Bottom line: upgrade or die. You are in an end of life cycle for Flash.
If the owner of copyright in a work available only in an end-of-life format cannot be reached for permission to upgrade the format, why should such work become unavailable to the public?
You've been warned.
A lot of these authors aren't even in the scene anymore to hear the warning.
existing Flash animations and games
The games will become apps for Chrome or your mobile device
Key word: existing. How do I translate someone's no longer maintained SWF file into an app for Chrome?
and the animations are already on YouTube
H.264 eats through the viewer's monthly download cap ten times faster than the equivalent SWF.
Adobe removed their AIR packages from their repo's even though leaving the old v2.6 AIR was still relevant and useful for a lot of users. One could easily view this as being somewhat vindictive against Linux users because it couldn't have costed them anything just to leave the old version sitting in the repo. I imagine that they will also remove flash from their adobe yum repo making any installation potentially too difficult for many users and makes it harder **even if you want to use an old version of an OS**. They did leave a 32bit binary installtion but that fails in so many ways with complex dependencies.
e.g. I've had to use an old version of Fedora in a virtualbox just to use Balsamiq (the funky wireframe screen builder tool). I spoke to the people at balsamiq telling them about this dependency and they basically said that Adobe won't listen to them (I guess they are too small - but a bit stupid to deliver their product on someone elses platform that they have no control over)
And the so-called GNU/Linux will go on---living its life as usual.
tepples was referring to actively maintained sites (Weebl's Stuff, Homestar Runner, Kongregate, and Newgrounds).
Even if a site is actively maintained, each individual work on the site may not be. Do Kongregate and Newgrounds require authors to submit the FLA, or do they accept submissions of only the SWF? If the latter, then I'd figure automated conversion is less likely to work.
create a mpeg4 file in 1/10th the time.
And 10 times the space. I have tried rendering SWF as video and compressing the video, and that's roughly what happened to the file size. Internet connections still have monthly caps.
it's not like they will take away the already installed plugins. They just said no more updates
There will be five more years of security updates according to the article. But after that, think back to when Oracle said no more updates for sun-java on Linux, and a security bug was found in the last available version of sun-java. Canonical had to remove sun-java from computers on which it had been installed in order to defend Ubuntu users from exploits of that bug. Besides, consider that 64-bit operating systems already can't run 16-bit applications; how will existing SWFs run once the PC operating systems' ABIs have evolved past the final version of Flash Player?
Slowly? They're already worse, collecting data on everything you do in exchange for free half-baked products.
At least they're not not collecting data on everything you do in exchange for free unbaked products.
The HTML 5 spec does not dictate that H.264 video be used for the tag. In fact, the W3C state that web browsers are free to implement whatever video codecs they choose, and actually recommend they support a free and open codec.
Whilst I share your concern on the use of H.264 with regard to free and open access to all, this has nothing to do with HTML 5 in the slightest. The codec issue has been with us for years, regardless of platform or delivery method. Your rant should be directed at browser and web developers instead.
I'd go as far to say HTML5 is pretty much the only hope you have for a free and open codec to become widely adopted, in that it does not discriminate between formats. Only web developers (the encoders) and web browsers (the decoders) do that, so we should go bitch at them.
I couldn't give two shits about Flash support other than YouTube videos.
Plain and simple. I don't play any of those stupid flash games, the only thing I ever need flash for is previewing videos and music.
And if I can't see them under Linux because Adobe drops support, I'll just go to the raw torrents to do my previewing and prelistening. YouTube audio quality sucks in too many cases, and the only reason I use it for prelistening to music at all is it's handy.
And if Google thinks that I'll use Chrome just to be able to access YouTube videos, think again. I'll just stop using YouTube if they don't support MY BROWSER. (And it doesn't matter WHAT browser that is -- they can check the visitation stats the same as any other web hosting services if they want to know what browser I use.)
You see, most of the YouTube's I see I watch because I clicked on them elsewhere, not because I searched for them by name at the YouTube site. So if support for YouTube video is dropped from the browser I use for day to day surfing, that just chokes off YouTube visits, because there is no right-click-open-in-chrome option in any browser I've ever seen.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Try Pencl as a replacement for Balsamiq
pencil.evolus.vn
would be if Adobe completely open sourced Flash, but 'cold dead hands', yadda-yadda.
Google seems to be quietly trying to subvert Linux by locking developer interest into Android and Chrome only. This move by Adobe to support only Google seems to be a continuation of a disturbing pattern of unfairness incited by that advertising giant as it moves to cement its dominance of the Internet.
And you have to pay Adobe an ass ton of money to generate Flash content - the viewer may be free, but the authoring tools certainly are not. With HTML5 I can generate my own content without needing any expensive proprietary tools.
The free tools for HTML5 compare to Flex SDK, not Flash CS series. The authoring tool for SVG or Canvas animations that compares to Flash CS series is Adobe Edge, which will probably end up priced near Flash CS series.
Being that I am just an individual without any profit motive, I will never be sued by these ass clowns
When you decide that you want to start using your skills to feed your family, then you might end up starting to have a profit motive and end up putting yourself at risk for being sued.
Now with HTML5, I just stroll on over to a website with my open source web browser, and open source codecs, and everything works all dandy like
So how does an HTML5 web site (ask the user for permission to) access the computer's microphone and camera? How well does an HTML5 web site work on an HTML4 browser, such as Internet Explorer for Windows XP?
Seeing how PPAPI is a superset of NPAPI, and I don't need anything more out of Flash than it provides today, it stands to reason somebody is already working on an NSAPI plugin that implements PPAPI and fudges defaults for the difference in their feature sets.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
There is nothing stopping Mozilla from implementing this API. And that's probably what's going to happen. I'd be surprised if there isn't already a team working on it.
Not yet.
On the other hand, given the huge add-on ecosystem around Firefox, a community add-on which adds pepper support to Firefox anytime soon wouldn't surprise me at all. I don't know though if add-ons have access to enough low-level stuff to be able to provide a propper Pepper support.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
True, we would all be better off without evil/proprietary Flash, however this stunt still smacks of collusion with Adobe to advance an anti-copyleft agenda against the Mozilla project and, to me, fails the don't be evil test with flying colors. Looking forward to an official position statement from Google's Open Source Programs droid. Without such, I can only presume evil is afoot.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
You need some upmod lovin, Mr anon-who-gets-it. But note: Google is just lining up right behind Apple.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
There are only a few sites that I like that require Flash. Unfortunately, Amazon is one of them for on-Demand Videos. Before that, Netflix went with SilverLight, which is not supported in Linux (Moonlight Mono is not the answer). Video-on-demand options are becoming limited in linux :(
this is only on linux the platform even less people than that which use flash care about. this isn't even news...its like hearing about which celeb is prego today type news.
I run Linux, and have to use Chrome watch YouTube videos because Firefox (particularly recent versions) plays videos with short freezes every 10 seconds or so. Just like all the other constant freezes in the Firefox UI (typing, scrolling, clicking), particularly after it's been running for a while. Seems like it's regularly doing all this synchronous garbage collection.
I'm slowly migrating my browsing from Firefox to Chrome, so the loss of Flash on Firefox is not much of a concern.
You do realise that all the software you name is almost certainly relying on glibc or GNU libstdc++ to run on your Linux computer, right? Sure, those could be replaced, but they haven't been.
Because they work fine and there is no compelling reason to do so, not because the GNU utilities are just soooooo damn good that nobody could possibly ever want to replace them.
oh cool a new video ... crash!
or
oh cool a new video ... why the fuck does this look like its running my my 300MHz powermac with its PCI radieon 7000?
The first RMS renaming attempt was LiGnuX (pronounced lick nuts?) which recieved the contempt it deserved, but he just kept on pushing the point for years with everyone that will listen and it gets called gnu/linux by anyone that didn't know better, wanted to avoid an argument with newbies, or though GNU was cool enough to be thrown the bone of pretended ownership. I think it was fairly pointless for anything other than ego inflation because everyone that would really care about what GNU did know about it anyway.
I still remain pissed off because for years when RMS was asked any serious question about linux the reply would be "never hurd of it - haha", then he shifted to pretending to own it overnight. I remain convinced that we've just been given a peek into petty and grubby MIT staffroom politics that escaped onto the net.
You may not like them, but that in no way makes your statements valid. PPAPI is BSD licensed, and so usable everywhere a browser vendor chooses to use it.
NaCl on the other hand allows for native binaries using (effectively) the same APIs available to JavaScript, in compliance with W3C standards. In other words, if it's safe to run JavaScript from some web site, it's safe to run NaCl from some web site. The only difference is that it will run faster. It also isn't locked into a particular CPU: the eventual goal is to support llvm bitcode as the intermediary:
http://www.chromium.org/nativeclient/pnacl/building-and-testing-portable-native-client
You should like that last one: if successful, it will rip away the monopoly control from vendor-locked in App stores by standardizing the ability to run code that isn't controllable by a single party.
-- Terry
That is a very early draft proposal, and there is a lot of strong opposition to it, even from people within the companies that proposed it! And to top that off, the content providers don't think it is strong enough.
So the chances that it is adopted by the browsers are slim, and the chances that the media companies embrace it is even slimmer.
Well this seems as good a time as any to ask if there's a tool similar to Flashblock for HTML5. I'd be using HTML5 at YouTube already except for the fact that YouTube plays videos automatically (whether I like it or not) and I use Flashblock to prevent YouTube from doing that. But that only works for Flash Video it seems, not HTML5 Video.
I call for an Anti-Trust investigation of the Google and Adobe deal. As it is that pretty much a moot point if anybody is requiring flash to use their site they don't deserve our traffic anyway.
data caps are only relevant for mobile internet
And satellite Internet. Outside the service area of cable or DSL, it's either dial-up or satellite.