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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.
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
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.
It is BS like this from Adobe that will not make me shed a tear when Flash is eventually replaced.
"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.
Probably someone who wants to distinguish the GNU/Linux environment, which uses Linux for a kernel and X11 for graphics, from the Android environment, which uses Linux for a kernel but does not use X11.
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.
I said this in an earlier comment, but I've always found there is _just enough_ flash still out there for it to be a headache not to have it.
Flash video is no problem (alternate players, worst case you can just download it and play it out of browser) .. site navigation can be dealt with sometimes.. but there are still a select few sites that you need for whatever reason (banking, work) that are largely flash based. And unfortunately linux firefox users are not a big enough market to push these sites away from flash.
An SWF player in JavaScript is more likely.
Don't forget un-deletable supercookies!
<xml><I><am><so><damn>Web 2.0</damn></so></am></I></xml>
How does putting "GNU" before "Linux" indicate it runs X11? The X Window System isn't a GNU project, nor is it licensed under the GPL.
If you care enough and agree with RMS about the "GNU/Linux" naming issue, you shouldn't have been running Flash in the first place.
UnNetHack: NetHack Improved!
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.
Another Debubuntuian user at Geeknet detected. Generating dump.
"It feels like I'm at the Zoo when reading this thread - I'm frightened, but it's interesting" (c)
rm -rf ~/.macromedia
along with 75% of the web and any hope of pulling more users to use linux.
....you do know that Adobe, not Google, makes Flash right?
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)
Browsers have been deleting "un-deletable supercookies" those since Flash 10.3. Though the more visible effect is users deleting their Flash game save data without meaning to.
If your bank is using flash for account management you need to get a new bank.
So the loss is some video sites, games and an unstable plugin.
And ads.
They also should have supported ActiveX, right?
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.
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.
I don't think it really achieves that.
Anyone who sees GNU and thinks what you just said already knows the full story. Everyone else either rolls their eyes, or assumes it has something to do with the license (I've heard more than a few people say "oh, that's probably licensed under the GNU").
Lets not kid ourselves. At most, if anything it serves as a kind of acknowledgment for the RMS crowd.
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
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.
Guilty on both counts ;)
In casual conversation, I refer to the OS as "GNU" -- If it's just Android ... you must acquit.
HAL 7000, fewer features than the HAL 9000, but just as homicidal!
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.
I've never seen it used for actual management. I have seen it used for displaying graphs, calculators, and information "handbooks".
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.
What I don't get is the total cluelessness on display here. let me get this straight, you are FOR software freedom and FOSS, yes? So you boo the software that actually lets you install it royalty free, and even lets you make your own free clone called gnash, and in return you fricking CHEER having the web taken over by a "standard" that is run by a company that might as well have "Pay your $699 license fee you cock smoking teabaggers" as its motto? Did I miss a meeting? Was there an episode in the series i skipped?
HTML V5 is gonna be locked down tighter than a nun's thighs and is controlled by one of the most aggressive patent trolls there has ever been and THAT is good? Has everyone kinda had a senior moment and forgot that H.264 is patented up the ass and is controlled by a conglomeration that will happily sue your ass if you look at them funny? If anything everyone should be having a royal shitfit and refuse to have a damned thing to do with HTML V5 until it takes either WebM or Theora as the lowest common denominator. because as it is now frankly you're all about to get severely buttraped and you don't even see that train sized penis headed right at you. With Flash Adobe has never bitched, you want flash, gnash, whatever its cool. With H.264 if you don't break out the checkbook you ain't distributing shit, and what do you think will happen when the DRM hits? you DO know its coming yes? you don't think they are gonna let netflix show movies without it do you? What do you think happens then? I'll tell ya what then if you don't pay your license fee and set up some kind of secure path you'll be breaking DMCA if you have H.264 in your distro that's what.
So please think people, yes I use Windows but I sure as hell don't want Apple and MSFT and Google controlling the web between them, we've seen what corporate crap ends up with real player and WMV, lets not go back to that alright? The FOSS guys are the ones that run the web, yes? After all that's what you brag all the time, so do something! Refuse to support HTML V5 until a standard that anybody can use is the lowest common denominator. Because if you don't Apple and Google and MSFT will pay their $699 license fees and the rest of you will get to be locked out. Think folks, you are so blinded by hatred of flash you are laughing about beating the old dog down while a pack of lions are about to have you for dinner.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
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".
http://www.gnu.org/gnu/why-gnu-linux.html
Actually, I think they call it GNU/Linux because the userland utilities that come with the kernel (i.e. bash, ls, cp, tar, etc.) are all the GNU built variants, rather than, for example, the BSD variants.
This is mostly, I believe, to appease the rabid RMS fanbois.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
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.
Um... do you mean post-Gecko? Webkit is the engine used by Chrome (among others), not Mozilla.
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!
Odd. The only two sites I've run into in a long time that required flash -
Square-Enix has some sites. Oooh, "big" loss there.
Oracle's support site that they just recently replaced - and there was a flash-free alternative that they tried to avoid telling people about.
Many video sites now have non-flash based players (H.264) too.
Honestly, flash isn't the big needed thing it once was. Hopefully it continues to fade into oblivion.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
No... it's more like really only the rabid RMS fanbois call it that.
The rest of us call it "Linux". It's no more really called "Gnu/Linux", than the system I used at University was really called "Gnu/AIX" simply because of all the Gnu software that was installed... or Cygwin is called "Gnu/Cygwin", because of all the Gnu software that comes installed with it.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
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.
The same fuck that doesn't understand that the name should be "FireFox/Gnome/X11/GNU/Bash/Linux". I mean, if we're going to prefix userland names, we should atleast be thorough. Nevermind people in the real world just use "Linux". The "GNU" prefix adds nothing unless you explicitely mean Linux flavours that use the GNU code and excluding all other flavours of Linux. Which is not the case here.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Given we are talking about Flash (graphical application) and Linux (OS kernel), the posterior probability that one running GNU userland would use X11 (like xorg) is almost one. Licenses have nothing to do with that sentence.
`echo $[0x853204FA81]|tr 0-9 ionbsdeaml`@gmail.com
Guess you don't know about this:
"Luckily for those who run Linux, the H.264 codec (also known as the Advanced Video Codec, or AVC) has a successful and effective open-source implementation known as x264. In fact, the x264 Project won the Doom9 2005 codec comparison test (see the on-line Resources). x264 continues to make progress and improvements, and it remains an active project."
HTML V5 is gonna be locked down tighter than a nun's thighs and is controlled by one of the most aggressive patent trolls there has ever been and THAT is good? Has everyone kinda had a senior moment and forgot that H.264 is patented up the ass and is controlled by a conglomeration that will happily sue your ass if you look at them funny?
Well, most flash video is H.264 too, it's pretty hard to argue that HTML5/H.264 will be worse than Flash/H.264. Right now the alternatives to H.264 are as dead as Ogg Theora was to music but since everybody's blocking each other I assume the status quo will be maintained until the H.264 patents expire in the 2020s. You're pretending like this achieves something but I don't see how, except to continue promoting flash over HTML. You may notice that all the other players that now play YouTube videos dropped flash, but continue to use H.264. There's absolutely zero traction for moving away.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Oracle hasn't replaced that site yet -- the primary site is still Flash and you've now reminded me why this will be a big headache.
Honestly I read this and thought "WTF?!" I'm getting sick and tired of two steps forward and at least two steps back. I don't think Flash is great or anything, but we live in a world where people use it and I don't get to decide that I don't want to go to those sites.
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.
I call it Gnu/Linux because things that are new sound cooler. If someone forked the kernel and called it ImprovedLinux, I would use that instead.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
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.
According to the Gnu website, "Gnu" in this context is prounced with a hard G, and is not silent.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
That's the idea. "post-webkit" would mean "after everybody moved to webkit". There are still exceptions, but it seems like pretty much everybody who needs a third party web rendering engine these days uses webkit, relegating Gecko to being used only in Mozilla products. As an example: pretty much all smartphones use webkit. Windows Phone is the exception, but it has virtually no marketshare at this point (which is too bad, it's nice to code for).
Because it's terribly hard to know if Linux refers to the kernel or a generic distribution in the context of a story talking about a Flash plugin for Chrome.
The best term in this case would simply be "Desktop Linux".
Too bad x264 is one big pile of patent infringement if used in Slashdot's home country.
Rabid RMS fanbois [sic] ?
Well, the ones who I see here making a problem of the picked terminology are not precisely RMS fanboys.
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.
The thing was that it was Adobe that footed the bill for the H.264 licenses when it was flash based, not the browsers. And since Firefox is, essentially, a charity case, it'll be hit worse when the licence fee is shifted to them.
I believe atm the only way to view H.264 content in FF is through the use of a Microsoft developed plugin (and in this case, MS pays the bill), and that's Windows 7 only. And after the whole click-sniffing fiasco with their Bing Toolbar, I am really wary of installing anything browser-based from them.
It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for being subtle.
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)
It does indicate it's not Android, since it doesn't use glibc or the GNU core utilities.
Dilbert RSS feed
And the so-called GNU/Linux will go on---living its life as usual.
Exactly.
I really appreciate what the FSF has done in the past (gcc, glibc, etc.) but it's getting old. They are like some old guy who did something great 20 years ago and now insists that everybody should constantly thank him for it - in perpetuity.
What has the FSF done in the last 10 years? All the important projects from the last years (KDE, Open/Libreoffice, Mozilla, Linux) have nothing to do with GNU.
The label "GNU/Linux" was OK in the mid-90s, but not anymore.
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.
Probably someone who wants to distinguish the GNU/Linux environment, which uses Linux for a kernel and X11 for graphics
Or fb, or svgalib, or GGI, or DirectFB, or DRI, or Wayland. Er - it doesn't distinguish it that much, actually.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
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?
How does an existing implementation prevent a cease and desist order in the future?
If opportunity came disguised as temptation, one knock would be enough.
3^2 * 67^1 * 977^1
OK, then they majorly fixed up the non-flash site, because I don't have flash on this machine, and it is working wonderfully right now.
Well, their knowledge base search sucks, but honestly, that's always been less useful than a magic 8-ball.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
Too bad x264 is one big pile of patent infringement if used in Slashdot's home country.
Except the end user never pays. Internet broadcast for free is free, subscription or title-by-title services requires the content provider to pay license fees, that's how everyone manage to ship free-as-in-beer decoders. The reason Firefox has a bug up their ass about it is that the Internet doesn't get a truly free codec that way, not because they couldn't find a way to include a x264 decoder.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
regarding the "[sic]" - fanboi is used as a derogatory, typically emphasizing the particularly silly nature of the fanaticism in that case. From when I've seen it use, it's meant to be a bit meaner and condescending than just '"fanboy".
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
Flash? You probably aren't using a web browser to begin with. Well, Links, maybe. :)
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
Yes, but I was giving the logic of why those fanbois want to call it GNU/Linux, it has nothing to do with X11, and everything to do with the userland tools (I should have added GCC, since that's a big one).
I have to admit, for those tools I do find that I like the GNU variants better for the most part (a little less consistent with the switch to say 'use regular expressions' in tools such as grep/sed, which always seems to be the same across BSD tools, but otherwise more easy to use).
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
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.
In that case, it's a good thing I don't give a fuck about infringing patents.
An OS in much more than the kernel (i.e. Linux). In fact, you have to use a lot of GNU stuff to actually write, debug, compile, profile, etc. the kernel! Next time, try not to jump to a conclusion that easily, it makes you look silly.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Oh... come on! Don't get aggravated about such stuff. By getting
mad about terminology you derail the conversation and the more
pressing points:
Linux is about to loose a very useful exploit vector!?!?!?!?
This is exactly the behavior one would expect from a company
that named itself after mud... Ohh wait they did!
-- no sig today
x264 is an encoder. There are lots of free-as-in-speech decoders out there, such as ffmpeg.
I think a lot of people are getting confused about GNU. Most semi literate people
at some point hear about "the Linux operating system" and - while wrong that
might be - this is what catches on, in part also because it's simpler.
Anyway, I think every average /. reader did understand the headline. So why are
we still discussing this?
I want to discuss if it sucks to loose flash support this way!
Because apparently I want to do without it but a lot of people still depend on it.
-- no sig today
what I can't fathom is why the W3C - that's the guys who will have the last say on html5 right? -
hasn't already just selected the ogg codecs for the new spec?
I mean, ogg is FOSS right? The codecs, afaik, are up to the tasks. Why can't they just make the
decision? It's not like there are other competing and simultaneously legally viable solutions.
-- no sig today
Er... no, OSX uses BSD userland.
The GNU/Linux naming issue has nothing whatsoever to do with the use of proprietary blobs, even though your completely uneducated opinion is widely held. Read "Free as in Freedom" before trying to express yourself on the subject.
"DRM is like the Ford Pinto: it's a smooth ride, right up the point at which it explodes and ruins your day."-C.Doctorow
last time I tried youtube's html5 beta (with Opera next 11.1 & Firefox Aurora 5) the:
movie would not seek,
sound would not adjust,
play button only started playback,
the resize button only worked 3 times
and a kitten died right in front of my window!
-- no sig today
Reading the replies to this, it is easy to see who the "fanboys" are. Although "anti-fanboy" would be more accurate. The venom against RMS is way more extreme, and mindless, than any of his defenders in the thread.
So are you arguing in favor of having just one widely used engine, with no competition at all?
Yes. But freedom of speech also implies freedom of deliberate wrong pronunciation :-P
-- no sig today
Standards are mainly supposed to codify existing practice, not introduce new practices. W3C's choice means nothing unless browser makers actually support the choice.
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.
would be if Adobe completely open sourced Flash, but 'cold dead hands', yadda-yadda.
I wasn't arguing in favour of anything. I was simply explaining what the poster meant by "post-webkit". I was relaying fact, not giving an opinion (except for where I said "it's nice to code for" in relation to WP7). I made no arguments for or against either webkit or gecko.
Quite correct - the OS is far more than the kernel: it's the community. That grew round Linux not the FSF, which is why I hate some self-important wannabes shoving "gnu" infront of everything. Linux without gnu would have another compiler and still be running the BSD libc and tools. Gnu without linux would still be in deserved obscurity, completely unhurd of.
Red to red, black to black. Switch it on, but stand well back.
Oracle hasn't replaced that site yet -- the primary site is still Flash and you've now reminded me why this will be a big headache.
Seconded. Oracle's central support portal still holds on to that flash-based dashboard. By my estimation, they were appeared to have this in development at a time when flash had the highest penetration, but by the time they finally released it (2009), the world had moved on to AJAX-based interfaces. If they had just held on a bit longer in their dev-cycle, they may have caught that wave and avoided flash altogether.
Notably, a good percentage of the Oracle Support population are linux-oriented, so maybe this is a good opportunity for Oracle (and other *nix-centric organizations) to speed up the development of their next-gen web portal.
HTML V5 is gonna be locked down tighter than a nun's thighs...
In the interest of accuracy, there is a fair amount of flash content out there that appears to indicate that nun's thighs are not particularly tightly locked down.
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?
I keep running into local businesses, especially restaurants, that had some designer build the entire site in Flash because it looked cool and they want to make a statement. And then I can't look up their hours or menu ahead of time. With hours you can at least call them, but that assumes you can get at the phone number -- and sometimes *that's* behind Flash as well. Hooray for third-party directories like Yelp.
Debian GNU/Linux is Debian's official name. That's what they want to be called, and Debian's what I run, so I call it that.
Thanks for the explanation. English is not my mothertongue (pretty obvious). But I used to thought that fanboy, with "y", already empasized the silly nature and fanatism, and it was already derogatory.
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 ]
Maybe it has something to do with the fact that Apple is a member of the w3c and a member of the group that controls h264?
this may be a surprise to you but the majority of linux distros have either firefox or chromium installed and not google chrome. the former does not support the api, and the latter is chrome with all the google extra's ripped out. like the built in pdf reader, built in flash plugin(you have to use the external one they are discontinuing.), and depending on version the 2d acceleration.
"The "GNU" prefix adds nothing unless you explicitely mean Linux flavours that use the GNU code and excluding all other flavours of Linux. Which is not the case here."
Um which linux flavors are those that don't use GNU code?
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?
There are plenty of reasons to criticize RMS, but come on, that isn't one of them.
I have no problems with "Gah-noo" just like the proper pronunciation of the town in Virginia is "Byoo-nah Vista" and it's "Am-ah-rill-o" Texas.
It's just a name. Like the operating system called "Linux".
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
This is so funny. I read the commentary on this topic on Hacker News this morning and it was all about how Adobe is clueless, how Flash needs to die and what Google's motives are the whole Chrome thing and the Pepper dealie. I figured I'd see more of the same here, but the whole discussion has veered off, once again, into beating a dead gnu.
Not that it isn't entertaining. :-)
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Mozilla are struggling to remain relevant in a post-webkit world. Not being "interested" in Pepper is really going to help.
Struggling maybe, but still very relevant, and still ahead of Chrome in market share, depending on whose numbers you believe. In my opinion Mozilla foundation should be busy migrating to a GPLed fork of Webkit if they wish to be sure of staying relevant.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
Putting politics and licenses aside, I do think FSF would still be around but in a weaker position without linux. The big problem of FSF is in seeking to do things the perfect way, favoring idealism over pragmatism. Hurd suffered from trying to do too much. That's good for a very long term goal or if you're research oriented but it leaves lots of room for others to come in and do something that just works while you're still planning out a design. Which is what Linux and BSD did for open operating systems. In some ways it's a bit analogous to Multics vs Unix.
I see similar things in other FSF software, sometimes a resistance to doing things a different way and a fork arises, or a desire to do things the perfect way, etc. Look at the FSF Hello World program. Is it a tutorial of how to do things the FSF way or is it an ironic parody of the FSF project infrastructure? I think they could do with more of a pragmatic approach in a lot of cases.
Good old Oracle. They are always on the cutting edge... of 10 years ago.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
The real problem is that ultimately it was not Linux that decided to call itself GNU or GNU/Linux, but it was Stallman who decided this. That's what made it controversial because it felt like he was co-opting it. Sure he had a lot of good reasons for his decision but it lacked tact and grace.
Right now the term GNU/Linux versus Linux serves as a positive correlation between those who want to make a political statement versus those who are talking about the technology.
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.
As far as I know though they are planning to replace it (I believe they sent out a downtime memo) so that ought to be gone well before 5 years from now.
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 :(
Right now the term GNU/Linux versus Linux serves as a positive correlation between those who want to make a political statement versus those who are talking about the technology.
While I agree some (probably most) people use this rationale, I tend to use GNU/Linux to refer to the full OS because it is actually the correct term. As Confucius said, the first step towards wisdom is calling things by their right names.
`echo $[0x853204FA81]|tr 0-9 ionbsdeaml`@gmail.com
Flash video is H.264.
Facebook is the new AOL
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.
That's why I call it Unix. There are some BSD systems with nearly as must FSF software but RMS doesn't proclaim them GNU/BSD.
Even the reasons given by RMS were not "it's mostly GNU software, so let's just call it GNU". Instead his reasons were quite a lot about not diluting The Message now that corporate people were taking notice of Linux.
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.
Apparently the HTML version has already been upgraded: http://supporthtml.oracle.com/ -- apparently an all-HTML version will replace the entire portal in not so long (which may or may not be this one at the supporthtml page, but I know that is not what the HTML version looked like a month ago).
One, it's Ogg Vorbis. Theora was for video. And two, Ogg is still alive and kicking thanks to the fact that Android's built-in music player handles it just fine.
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie
You're right -- they changed the HTML site a lot and it will ultimately replace the Flash site. You still have to specifically go to it right now (the main site just fails with no Flash).
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.
Or people who actually understand what Unix is. Unix (that is, the Single UNIX Specification; note capitalisation) has two things which a compliant implementation must provide:
Linux only provides part of the first bit, and GNU provides the rest. It is fairly accurate to say that Linux by itself does not implement Unix, but GNU + Linux does.
(I say "more or less" because there's a little bit of non-GNU in the standard userland, such as some BSD. Most of it is GNU, though.)
For the record, I'm agnostic about "Linux" vs "GNU/Linux", because SUS frankly isn't that important for the kind of users that Linux is trying to attract. Mac OS X is SUS compliant, but only a small proportion of Mac end users know this, or understand what it means, or give a crap. It's only important for developers like us, though for us it's very important. Nonetheless, it's technically correct to call GNU/Linux the base OS.
Were the BSD XCU suite ported to Linux, I'd be just as happy to call that base OS BSD/Linux or something.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
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
Care to point them out? FreeBSD is in the process of eliminating all GNU software from base (from memory, there's not a hell of a lot left after CLANG has fully replaced GCC, and it can already build the base system and most ports).
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
X11 = MIT, Firefox = Mozilla license and FVWM appears to be dual-licensed under BSD and GPLv2. All of these will build just fine on say, Solaris. BSD licensed libc++ for FreeBSD is 98% done, also.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
They can select whatever they like as the new spec - that ship has sailed. Everyone owns devices that generate h.264.
I for one am not going to go to the trouble of trans-coding all video I have ever captured into codec that works on none of my devices and has inferior compression.
The average end user doesn't even know or care, they just want their video to work. h.264 is what it is encoded in on the original device/video tools, so whatever they play it with had damn well better support that.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Exactly. .gif was patented as well, and all browsers continue to support it.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Android "handling it just fine" doesn't mean it's alive. 99.999% of all audio out there is still either MP3 or AAC.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Hey, that gnu is not dead ... yet. Don't flog it until it is. :-)
It's been a pleasure giving you something to smile about in the morning. :)
UnNetHack: NetHack Improved!
Be assured that I know quite well that my statement was rather generalizing, that there are even more reasons to dislike Flash than only that it is non-free software and that not everybody using"GNU/Linux" is a RMS fanboy.
Still, I think it is much more likely that somebody who explicitly put a "GNU/" in front of "Linux" when TFA only refers to "Linux" is an passionate free software advocate and then it's rather unusual to be running flash at all. Especially considering that nowadays there is almost no need for running flash anymore.
BTW, linking to a complete book instead of a paragraph or at least a chapter within it would make it much more probable that somebody would get the info you've been trying to convey.
UnNetHack: NetHack Improved!
The same fuck that doesn't understand that the name should be "FireFox/Gnome/X11/GNU/Bash/Linux".
Bash is the GNU implementation of the Bourne shell. And the name Gnome comes from "GNU Object Model Environment". Perhaps GNU is responsible for more than you realise?
Need to type accents and special characters in Windows? Use FrKeys
here I happen to agree with RMS just because it describes it unambiguously and is shorter than saying "NonAndroidNonCrazyEmbeddedNonObscurePetProjectLinuxDistribution".
I will still run evil software as I don't want to run crappy graphics drivers that turn my hardware into a pile of shit, and lose streamed video and occasional audio, dialing the web back to 1994.
To an extent, but it I've seen it refer to people who have good reasons, and just go to far. With an 'i' it usually means they are just raving loons.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
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.
TurboTax online. When I did my taxes on it, it was almost entirely flash-based.
yeah .. that's the part where I was just too lazy to find the correct parts, although, to be fair, the issue is raised a couple of times in the book.
Chapter 10 - Gnu/Linux
Over time, however, Stallman began to sense that there was an underlying lack of awareness of the GNU Project and its objectives when reading Linux developers' emails.
"We discovered that the people who considered themselves Linux users didn't care about the GNU Project," Stallman says. "They said, `Why should I bother doing these things? I don't care about the GNU Project. It's working for me. It's working for us Linux users, and nothing else matters to us.' And that was quite surprising given that people were essentially using a variant of the GNU system, and they cared so little. They cared less than anybody else about GNU."
or, in a slightly more ambiguous way, in CHAPTER 5 - SMALL PUDDLE OF FREEDOM
Accepting the show's Linus Torvalds Award for Community Service-an award named after Linux creator Linus Torvalds-on behalf of the Free Software Foundation, Stallman wisecracks, "Giving the Linus Torvalds Award to the Free Software Foundation is a bit like giving the Han Solo Award to the Rebel Alliance."
"DRM is like the Ford Pinto: it's a smooth ride, right up the point at which it explodes and ruins your day."-C.Doctorow
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.
And when a couple of the distro heads get thrown in PMITA prison how will you feel about patents then? They WILL add DRM to H.264 because no way in hell they are letting netflix broadcast in the clear and once they do that, no matter how trivial and lame the crypto is, that's DMCA and that's a $300,000 fine or 3 years in jail PER INFRINGEMENT.
What you are gonna end up with is Google TiVoing Android "For security reasons and to protect the app market" and nobody will be able to distribute a version of linux that can play shit in any country that has signed Berne which is pretty much the entire west . Dude why do you think Google has done backflips to keep GPL V3 out of Android? Because they can see the writing on the wall and once they got a look at the code for WebM I'm sure they realized it infringes up the wazoo which is why they won't back anybody that uses it.
Mark my words friend you reap what you sow and the FOSS community is gonna get a big dose of "be careful what you wish for" because you are gonna hand the web to the big three, Apple, Google, and MSFT, and all three will lock the living hell out of it. BTW they are already working on H.265 which has even MORE patents than the last one so good luck thinking you can wait until the patents expire because by then the big three will just move to the next one. mark my words when the ONLY things you can enjoy web media on are approved devices and OSes you'll look back on flash with fondness, because at least you could distribute it without risking someone kicking down your door in a raid.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
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.