Adobe Resurrects Flash Player On Linux (neowin.net)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Neowin: Four years ago, Adobe made a decision to stop updating the Flash Player package (NPAPI) on Linux, aside from delivering security patches. It has made an about turn on this decision in the last week and has said that it will keep it in sync with the modern release branch going forward. In its announcement, Adobe wrote: "In the past, we communicated that NPAPI Linux releases would stop in 2017. This is no longer the case and once we have performed sufficient testing and received community feedback, we will release both NPAPI and PPAPi Linux builds with their major version numbers in sync and on a regular basis." Although this is great news for Linux users who don't want to struggle to watch Flash content online, there also a few drawbacks. Adobe writes: "Because this change is primarily a security initiative, some features (like GPU 3D acceleration and premium video DRM) will not be fully implemented. If you require this functionality we recommend that you use the PPAPI version of Flash Player." You can download the new NPAPI binaries from the Adobe Labs download page.

Comments

Brains!

[Anonymous Coward]

Must feed...

Seriously? Thanks Adobe!

[Anonymous Coward]

You can download the new NPAPI binaries from the Adobe Labs download page.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Yeah.

Who wants this?

[ErikTheRed]

Adobe Flash is pretty much just an ongoing security vulnerability that lets people watch videos on obsolete web sites, occasionally used by companies that have such complete and utter contempt for the security of their customers that they use it as a shoddy shortcut in web development (looking at you, VMWare, ADP, and others).

Re:Who wants this?

[ZorinLynx]

>occasionally used by companies that have such complete and utter contempt for the security of their customers

Google is among them. Flash is required for Play Music.

It's one of those things that made my jaw drop when I noticed. You'd think Google would know better!

Re:Who wants this?

[Hognoxious]

knowing != caring.

Re:Who wants this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Google is so large and running so many "beta" projects they don't know what's going on outside of search, email, and youtube.

Re:Who wants this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably Adobe's marketing. They realized that while the Linux userbase is small comparatively, it's a bad idea to have any significant number of users to go long periods with no interactions with any of their products. (If you have a class of users that never touch your products, they're unlikely to do so in the future. Sort of like the struggles some American automakers have had getting people to even consider their cars after buying Japanese cars for so long.) Since the only brand-facing product they've got for Linux is the long-neglected, dying Flash plugin, they decided to try to revive it. It's a failing strategy, but it placated marketing.

Re:Who wants this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Irrelevant. Companies being 'large' is not a defense.

"Oh, your Honour, we're just too large to keep track of thing $x, so please don't charge us with violation $y."

I expect a company that becomes large, and attempts to use that scale to dominate marketplaces, and to use scale to reduce cost, to be just as diligent as a 10 man shop. To be just as organized, and to have just as much knowledge of what each of its members are doing.

Morality and legality are not set aside because 'Oops, we're big now, so whaddya gonna do?'

And all the above said?

Each division at Google should be taking care of this regardless.

Re:Who wants this?

[geek]

>occasionally used by companies that have such complete and utter contempt for the security of their customers

Google is among them. Flash is required for Play Music.

It's one of those things that made my jaw drop when I noticed. You'd think Google would know better!

Google doesn't have a choice. The music labels require the flash DRM to stream music. Google had an HTML5 option in the settings but its been greyed out for about a year because the labels had a hissy fit.

Re:Who wants this?

[bigfinger76]

And Adobe isn't on trial here. Flash is a terrible piece of software, but it's still legal.
So, overruled.

Re:Who wants this?

[somenickname]

Almost no one wants or cares about this. I've been Flash-free for several years now and it's very rare to run into any kind of issue. If you do run into a website that needs flash, treat it the same way you'd treat a website that requires you to turn off your ad blocker: Go somewhere else.

Re:Who wants this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Then it's more the fault of the labels relying on flash rather than HTML5.

Re:Who wants this?

[Anonymous Coward]

So Adobe's linux strategy is to attract potential new customers with shit ?
That's a great marketing campaign.

Re: Who wants this?

[Anonymous Coward]

The NSA want this....

Re:Who wants this?

[Trogre]

Games. Flash games.

While the performance of Flash is not on par with native compiled code, it still outperforms AJAX/HTML5 solutions by orders of magnitude.

Of course, one still needs to change the rendering quality to Medium from the default High, since the over-zealous anti-aliasing always makes the result slower than it should be.

But yes, there's no need to use it for video any more, and there is DEFINITELY no need for it in site navigation (nor has there ever been).

Re: Who wants this?

[corychristison]

Spotify as well in their web player.

Re:Who wants this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Games. Flash games. While the performance of Flash is not on par with native compiled code, it still outperforms AJAX/HTML5 solutions by orders of magnitude.

I don't know where you got that idea from. HTML5 and WebGL are plenty fast enough. HTML5 games like HexGL and Ga.me have been around for a long time and work well. Even Disney uses WebGL a lot for their online games, like the Star Wars Aracde games.

Re:Who wants this?

[Anonymous Coward]

>occasionally used by companies that have such complete and utter contempt for the security of their customers

Google is among them. Flash is required for Play Music.

It's one of those things that made my jaw drop when I noticed. You'd think Google would know better!

Bull shit. That is one of the major reasons, I use Google Play Music, because it does NOT require flash. *Checks browser* Yup. Flash disabled.

Re:Who wants this?

[tepples]

The music labels require the flash DRM to stream music. Google had an HTML5 option in the settings but its been greyed out for about a year because the labels had a hissy fit.

Was this hissy fit prior to the availability of the Widevine CDM for HTML5 EME? (Google owns Widevine.)

Re:Who wants this?

[tepples]

What's the alternative to Dagobah, Albino Blacksheep, Newgrounds, and Weebl's Stuff? To which "somewhere else" do you refer?

Re:Who wants this?

[Anonymous Coward]

The HTML5 live video is still in development, hence using flash for this is not obselote just yet. Live video technology (and video technology at large) doesn't change in a year, two or even 5 but 10 to 20.

Re:Who wants this?

[Anonymous Coward]

The HTML5 live video is still in development

Live HTML5 video works fine. Try it on YouTube. Try it with WebRTC. I've included live HTML5 video in software I've written. It's not hard to implement. Flash really is obsolete.

Re:Who wants this?

[cheesybagel]

I thought Mozilla was going to remove NPAPI plugin functionality. As is Chrome if they did not do it already. Adobe regularly does interesting things like this. Releasing "new" software just when an API is going to get deprecated. (Carbon anyone?).

Re:Who wants this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your "but how will I watch my favorite turn-of-the-century Flash cartoons?" spiel is getting old. I don't see you complaining that you can't run NES software natively on current platforms, you emulate/virtualize or you keep the old hardware in service, that's how things are. Same for Flash cartoons, if you like them you'll always find a way to keep enjoying them, but the vast majority of the world out there doesn't care at all no matter how much you whine about it.

Re:Who wants this?

[Anonymous Coward]

No it isn't. I use Play Music on my phone and tablet all of the time and neither of them have ever had Flash installed.

Re:Who wants this?

[tepples]

I am aware of the possibility to run Flash Player in a VM. I was referring to somenickname's suggestion to "Go somewhere else" rather than doing so.

Re:Who wants this?

[Anonymous Coward]

So why do you keep complaining about it at every possible instance? It seems really arbitrary since there are other proprietary & obsolete things you don't complain about. If it's because those other things have been "adequately preserved" according to some random definition of that, maybe it's because there's not enough mainstream interest for this one, and whining endlessly about it isn't going to create the sort of interest you want, likely quite the opposite.

Re:Who wants this?

[somenickname]

I am aware of the possibility to run Flash Player in a VM. I was referring to somenickname's suggestion to "Go somewhere else" rather than doing so.

And, what I mean was, vote with your e-mails/visits. If a site that you really want to visit requires flash, send them an e-mail and tell them that you've taken your business to a competitor because Flash is too risky to use. Probably won't take too many e-mails before they start trying to get their shit together.

Re:Who wants this?

[short]

Google requires Flash for any adjustment of YouTube videos during their upload.

Re:Who wants this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep - like slapping your customer's face with a wet fish. It gets his attention (says the marketing genius).

Re:Who wants this?

[KozmoStevnNaut]

I though it was because they had moved everything to HTML5?

Re:Who wants this?

[olau]

Google Finance is also using Flash-based charts.

Re: Who wants this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or alternatively, he could just keep using Flash and happily carry on using those sites as they are. The "complaint" is directed at the people who insist no-one wants or should use Flash, not the people who made the content.

Re: Who wants this?

[Anonymous Coward]

He doesn't need to do that, because Flash player already exists. If you're insisting that people shouldn't use it, then you're the one who ought to provide the replacement.

Re:Who wants this?

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't get it. A few turds on Slashdot don't like Flash because reasons so nobody else should ever be allowed to use it or even like it! We were supposed to just wait forever while these know-nothing duhvelopers dragged their asses putting together a buggy, incomplete, and incompatible HTML spec to ram down our throats. Adobe's no saint to be sure but fuck most of its whiny detractors.

Re:Who wants this?

[Anonymous Coward]

let's hope the hammer and table the judge is using doesnt run "flash" else it might sound like "sustained!"

Re:Who wants this?

[short]

I never had that Flash crap from those Adobe turds on my machine. This is why I noticed the YouTube upload adjustments do not work. And the only reasons I have seen YouTube upload is that WebM/VP9 is boycotted by Apple to keep their sheeps paying for everything, including licenses for the MPEG idiocy - and obviously I refuse to host the MPEG shit myself on my servers.

Re:Who wants this?

[ChunderDownunder]

Several cleanroom implementations of flash exist. None of them work - they don't even get detected.

And I've written to website maintainers asking them to support Shumway to be put on the TODO list.

And for 'legacy' content, consider the educational sector which has course materials that don't receive funding to migrate to newer tech.

Re:Who wants this?

[Anonymous Coward]

There must be more to it than that, because HTML5 CDMs are now able to do that job without Flash (and have been for years). Flash is simply not required anymore for anything except legacy content that cannot be easily converted to modern technologies (and that's counting Adobe's own conversion tools, etc).

This is honestly sounding more like Google and Adobe wanting to make one last push to keep Flash relevant, because Flash is a useful way to upsell Chrome. After all, the NPAPI version of Flash is intentionally crippled and performs terribly, so it wouldn't be surprising if Google was driving this as a last-ditch effort to try to make PPAPI more relevant, and the competition less relevant.

There really isn't any other real justification for this anymore, save for discovering a terrible security flaw, yet being too lazy to truly fix Flash by making an HTML5 SWF parsing library for modern browsers. It reflects incredibly poorly on Adobe and Google that Mozilla was able to get Shumway as far as they did without much help from the Flash team, and only stopped because Adobe and Google said they wanted to kill Flash (only to effectively reneg on it now).

Re:Who wants this?

[slashkitty]

Luckly, they have non flash charts as well if you turn off flash.

Re:Who wants this?

[avandesande]

Nobody cares about that crap.

Re:Who wants this?

[avandesande]

The thing that made me get rid of flash was that sites like youtube would default to flash, and I was having so many playback issues I canned it.

Re:Who wants this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this the "requirement" for all browsers or just a workaround for those browsers that don't support audio playback in a flexible way?

Re:Who wants this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't know if I'm the only one but youtube acts in a very hit and miss kind of way for me. Sometimes I get messages that my browser doesnt support html5 when it does and I have to enable flash to see those videos. Those same videos can be seen If I play them in vlc (usually). I think there is some kind of attempt to force me to use flash, though I have also seen messages saying that youtube has dropped flash support. Having said that I never see video ads in youtube and that might be part of it (flash might collect more identifying information). There also seems to be a correlation to more controversial content not playing right in html5.

Re:Who wants this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing, because those sites are stuck in the 90s. That's like asking what the alternative to those Geoshitties sites with ripped off GIF animations, auto playing sounds and blink tags are.

There is a very reason those types of things are dead.

Maybe creative suite is coming?

[Anonymous Coward]

I really can't imagine any reason why they would do this unless they were possibly planning to start porting creative suite to Linux, or some of their other apps.

Yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

new binaries for - doh - Windoze and Mac

Re:Yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

https://fpdownload.macromedia.... - There ya go, buddy. And here's a tissue to clean your glasses with, too.

it is not resurrected.

[Anonymous Coward]

it is undead.

Dead for four years???

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the zombie-Flash apocalypse! I'm not ready! My HTML5 tags are not ready!

King Henry II asked the right question.

[sehlat]

Will no one rid me of this turbulent program?

Too little, too late

[Lisandro]

Flash is dying and i cannot wait to witness its rotten, fly-ridden corpse.

Re:Too little, too late

[Carewolf]

Flash is dying and i cannot wait to witness its rotten, fly-ridden corpse.

I would rather not see that, the miasma puts me in a bad mood. Would be better if it just vanished as if it had never existed. Then again EME and its CDM plugins that has replaced Flash for encrypted media are not much of an improvement.

Re:Too little, too late

[Gort65]

Flash is dying and i cannot wait to witness its rotten, fly-ridden corpse.

Again and again and again and again and again and...

Re:Too little, too late

[hairyfeet]

Mark my words in 5 years you will be crying for Flash to come back, because it will be replaced by a DRM infested mess that will only run on "security approved" OSes, aka the absolute latest products from the big 3...Linux? It won't be playing shit, neither will Windows 7/8/8.1, it'll be Win 10, Google ChromeOS/Android (insert newest number) and the newest iOS/OSX.

I'd be 100% in agreement with you IF it'd be replaced by something better...it won't, it'll be a corporate love letter to the big 3 OSes and big media and will be worse than Flash in EVERY way, DRM, memory, CPU, bandwidth, because that isn't the point, the point is to give the corps what they wanted out of Flash...lock in and DRM...enjoy.

Re:Too little, too late

[bloodhawk]

It has been a rotten, fly-ridden corpse for years. Sadly they just won't bury the bastard and let us rid the world of its sad stench.

Re:Too little, too late

[Anonymous Coward]

Mark my words in 5 years you will be crying for Flash to come back

Unlikely. I haven't had Flash installed for years and I haven't missed it. Your predictions are paranoid, overblown, and don't correspond with the practical realities.

Re:Too little, too late

[tepples]

Unless you're of the opinion "digital restrictions management should not exist, and therefore rentals and subscriptions should not exist", how is CDM "not much of an improvement" over Flash Player? The CDM is a much smaller piece of code with a much smaller scope than the entirety of Flash Player. It also runs in a sandbox that can only do a few things, such as receive encrypted data from the browser and send decrypted and decoded video to the operating system.

Re:Too little, too late

[Anonymous Coward]

In a sane world, "DRM should not exist" doesn't imply "subscriptions and rentals should not exist". DRM as a requirement is completely arbitrary, an artificial, manufactured restriction. We're not living in a sane world, but that doesn't mean that things couldn't be done in a different way.

Re:Too little, too late

[exomondo]

Not to mention the fact that CDM is exclusively for delivering non-free DRM content where Flash was a non-free software platform used to deliver both free and non-free content. It really only existed to compensate for the deficiencies of HTML, but with HTML5 we have pretty much everything Flash could do and more but as an added bonus it is compatmentalized so if you're opposed to non-free content and software then all you have to do is remove the CDM.

Re:Too little, too late

[donaldm]

Flash is dying and i cannot wait to witness its rotten, fly-ridden corpse.

You realise that we will have to get a twelve gauge shotgun for when it rises again and the smell will be terrible.

Incineration is the only way to be sure.

Re:Too little, too late

[Billly Gates]

Flash doesn't work on phone or Android which is where the market is heading. HTML 5 and now AMD and intel accelerated VP 9 and h.265 support means better battery life and performance.

You are a fellow IT geek who supports desktop users like myself and we both seen what a nightmare plugins like Java and Flash can be when never updated with drive thru installs.

The problem I do not like about flash is it is an executable. Flashscript was used so people could make IE 6 look cutting edge as a workaround for corporate clients and grandma last decade. It is not sandboxed unless my knowledge is outdated?

Flash was awesome back in the day and saved us from MS attempt at using .WMV files to monopolize the internet and force us to stay on IE. It became codec indepedent but those days 15 years ago are over with. It is time to move forward. Yes DRM is not going away. Without DRM products won't be made. Why do you think the PC is dying as a game platform? Piracy! Steam is saving it somewhat thanks to it's own DRM. But if people steal you work why bother?

Re:Too little, too late

[jopsen]

So you don't use spotify or any other music streaming service... Or google play? or other online streaming services.

Re:Too little, too late

[Lisandro]

In 5 years we'll likely do the same we do now: use HTML5.

Re:Too little, too late

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never used a music streaming service. I don't know why I would want to. I've ripped all my CDs to Ogg Vorbis, so my music library is already portable.
I've never used Google Play for anything, but I know it doesn't require Flash.
The only online streaming services I use are Netflix, Youtube, and Amazon Video.
The point has already been made that Widevine is a lot better than Flash in every way.

Re:Too little, too late

[Zontar The Mindless]

It is trivial to obtain and install Flash for Android devices. Use the Bing, Bill!

NUKE IT FROM ORBIT, it's the only way to be sure

[Anonymous Coward]

Die in a fire! Die! Die! Die!

For fuck's sake

[Chewbacon]

Why won't you JUST DIE?

Re:For fuck's sake

[Anonymous Coward]

This. -PCP

Re:For fuck's sake

[aralin]

MOD UP! Please!

Re:For fuck's sake

[Anonymous Coward]

Why won't you JUST DIE?

RE: WINDOWS 95, SCO UNIX, JACK VALENTI, ORRIN HATCH, SONNY BONO, WINDOWS ME, JAVA, PACKARD BELL, IE 1-10, AOL, BONZI BUDDY, FARK, EBAY, COMCAST, FLASH

Re:For fuck's sake

[NoPane]

Ha! 'Tis only a flesh wound ...

Re:For fuck's sake

[TractorBarry]

Nay sire, 'tis only a flash wound !

Adobe who?

[Groo Wanderer]

Given their attitude, horrific user 'support', painful and extortionist pricing, repeatedly screwing over of entire platforms, and other customer indignities, I am Beyond caring about them. The world has moved on, no one cares about this dying platform any more.

While I was slightly interested in new updates, the fact that they removed the two features that would be useful to me on the builds I need shattered that faint hope. I should have known better than to expect functionality much less quality from Adobe. All this seems to be is that someone figured out it was less work, and therefore cheaper, to keep up with Linux builds than to update a years old code base that no one remembers how to patch. It isn't largesse, it is CYA on security

I would say I told you so, but when they announced a pullback on platforms ~4-5 years ago I did tell them so. All my friends there laughed and said I didn't have a clue. Within six months they had all quit. Within 2 years, Flash was walking dead, everyone with a stake in the market had solidified the alternatives and it was just a matter of time. Now they are trying to spin cost savings as a step in the right direction. The corpse is rotting but still managing to do PR, let it die the lonely death it deservers. Nothing to see here, move along.

Doesn't Linux Chrome have an integrated player?

[ehack]

Doesn't Linux Chrome have an integrated Flash player?

Re:Doesn't Linux Chrome have an integrated player?

[Anonymous Coward]

still a plugin afaict

It's essentially how debian can add flash to Chromium

Re:Doesn't Linux Chrome have an integrated player?

[Zombie Ryushu]

Its not integrated, its just only Pepper Flash Compatible.

Re:Doesn't Linux Chrome have an integrated player?

[gantry]

The stable version of Chrome for Fedora includes the PPAPI Flash plugin. The same is probably true for the builds for other Linux distros.

head shot!

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on, everyone knows how to kill a zombie by now.
And stay dead!

WebGL or GTFO

[Anonymous Coward]

As a dedicated Linux user and gamer all I can say is that I really don't care about this. Flash and NPAPI are both dying (thank god) and there isn't anythying Adobe can do to keep that from happening. Their best bet if to follow in Unity's footsteps and compile to JS/WebGl.

Bye Bye Adobe

[Anonymous Coward]

Flash is finally going away! Though I still have it installed, Firefox has been blocking it and I haven't been enabling it for many months. And I haven't missed it a bit.

Acrobat? Nah, I'm good with all the available free PDF tools. Photoshop, well you're pricing yourself out of that market, especially with teh "Creative Cloud" bundled ransomware. SO thanks anyway Adobe, I've got options now, and I don't choose you.

Bye Bye.

Re:Bye Bye Adobe

[AvitarX]

20/month priced out of the market for professional photo editing? I'm skeptical.

Acrobat is pretty solid too, and I hate the new interface, but they continue to augment the editing capabilities.

I know the tools aren't for everyone, but acrobat + illustrator for editing PDFs is worth well over 50/month, as a bonus I get indesign and Photoshop too.

I'm not convinced there's anything that really replaces indesign in the market at all, aside from content aware delete, there's nothing photoshop offers me as a novice I can't get elsewhere, but acrobat and indesign for sure.

Re:Bye Bye Adobe

[jedidiah]

Clearly Adobe needed to squeeze more blood from all of their turnips or otherwise they would not have instigated this.

Re:Bye Bye Adobe

[AvitarX]

It worked for where I work.

It was going to take 2 years for the subscription to cost more than purchasing upgrades, and kept us current.

$600/year vs $800/every 18 months to stay current, enough where I worked we didn't stay current and paid closer to $1200 every three years. It was constant frustration trying to get the budget for the upgrades.

The creative cloud made things current, and was able to be sold as not costing more for quite while.

I think the real reason they switched is that small businesses purchases rather than pirated when it was cheaper than internet instead of thousands of dollars up front though ($1800 if memory serves).

Re:Bye Bye Adobe

[Anonymous Coward]

Clearly Adobe needed to squeeze more blood from all of their turnips or otherwise they would not have instigated this.

Or, much more rationally, they decided that maintaining rolling releases on subscription over supporting multiple releases on perpetual is more cost effective for them and their customers.

Re:Bye Bye Adobe

[sanf780]

I always thought the real reason for Adobe to switch to a subscription model is to make regular income a reality. As you told us, the upgrade cycle happened every 18 months. Companies then decided if it was worth updating or not, as not every version has a killer feature. So, many people decided to upgrade every 36 months. Income spikes happening every 18 and 36 months look fairly bad to investors.

Non professional people like me do not like subscription software - paying for things that I am not using is something I try to avoid.

Re: Bye Bye Adobe

[Anonymous Coward]

The legimitely free Photoshop CS 2 is all a man needs.

Re:Bye Bye Adobe

[Anonymous Coward]

Switch to Gimp, it's free! Every professional is doing it! I mean, linux color calibration still sucks ass and there's no future in sight to fix this problem, but still! It's amazing!

Re:Bye Bye Adobe

[AvitarX]

For us the expense spike sucked too.

Also, it's only around now that it's starting to cut is more than even our delayed upgrade cycle.

And I'm not saying it reduces piracy, but hypothetically the ability to virtually no cost add someone for a season may or may not have reduced piracy too.

We partially had to keep relatively current because we were a print shop taking files from other people, as a producer I'd see it very differently, but even so, 20/month vs 800 for photoshop seems a pretty good deal to me.

Even if after 24 months you're spending more.

Re:Bye Bye Adobe

[Zontar The Mindless]

I still haven't forgiven Adobe for this.

Excellent SVG authoring program (from the same folks who produced PaintShop Pro), purchased by Corel (motherfuckers), re-sold to Adobe (motherfuckers squared), and shut down.

If Trajectory had been permitted to mature, Flash would have been all but dead and forgotten at least 5 years ago.

Re:Bye Bye Adobe

[Zontar The Mindless]

Clearly Adobe needed to squeeze more blood from all of their turnips or otherwise they would not have instigated this.

Or, much more rationally, they decided that maintaining rolling releases on subscription over supporting multiple releases on perpetual is more cost effective for them and their customers.

If it were more rational, you'd expect it to be more parse-able, which it ain't.

Flash is dying

[Anonymous Coward]

and this is evidence. Not a slam against linux, but rather a company grasping at straws.

Resurrection...?

[Anonymous Coward]

Resurrection of F?

Security initiative

[Anonymous Coward]

In an Adobe Meeting: "Hey, we heard that NPAPI is getting killed. How about we make an announcement that we'll release newer Flash NPAPI again, and hope we don't make it too soon as to actually have to allocate coding moneys to it?"

DRM Encumbered Flash disabled

[Zombie Ryushu]

Note they mention that it won't support DRM Flash. In order to use DRM Flash on Linux you still have to get the PPAPI Plugin that comes with ChromeBooks.

PPAPI already works fine in Linux Firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

I use this to use PPAPI flash in Firefox in Debian, for what is NPAPI needed?

Re:PPAPI already works fine in Linux Firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

Because they clearly want people to continue using an inferior version of Flash on certain platforms/browsers. Or Google wants to push people into adopting their nigh-useless PPAPI one last time. Or Adobe is fearing for their relevance and needed a PR push.

Re:PPAPI already works fine in Linux Firefox

[Doke]

I use freshplayerplugin to run pepperflash in PaleMoon. It gives me a better interface to VMware vCenter than Chrome, because I can set the an external application to open VM consoles in VMplayer. Chrome insists on opening them as additional flash windows. The flash console windows don't pass CTRL-C and other such characters.

I abandoned Flash a year ago

[FudRucker]

since HTML-v5 has been playing videos at most websites so nicely, i see no point in keeping the flash plugin around, the only people that use it nowadays are god damn advertisers spamming monkeys in adbars trying to distract you from more important things of interest, to hell with adobe i have no interest in any of their products

Flash on Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Just... No.

Might have cared years ago, before everyone else had moved on to HTML5. Too little, too late. No real development anyway. No accelerated 3D, no DRM support... "It's a security initiative" they say? Oh, I bet it is. Looks to me like Adobe just want to reopen a mostly closed attack vector. Won't be happening on my systems.

Thank God for html 5 video

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank God html 5 video finally started working. There was talk about video in html for years, but youtube finally got it working, and other websites followed, so I then no longer needed Flash.

Re:How do you kill that which has no life?

[Anonymous Coward]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oALUNqVWQoQ

Reuters Finally Complained....

[stoicio]

I guess all those complaints about "Your Video Doesn't Work!!!" finally got to Reuters.
Or they finally just noticed the years of complaints and sent an email off to ADB.

Acrobat Reader

[Zombie Ryushu]

I wish they would have revived Acrobat Reader for Linux. I need it for sites that use XFA Form submission.

Re:Acrobat Reader

[tepples]

I'm told Evince and Okular can fill in PDF forms. Or can they fill them in but just not submit them?

Re:Acrobat Reader

[Anonymous Coward]

I want to run Acrobat Reader on my linux box! said 1 person ever.

Evince, Okular even Gimp can fill in your forms and the export and print functionality has been with linux forever. I actually find the PDF support on linux to be quite good compared to OSX or Windows.

Re:Acrobat Reader

[nnull]

OCR support is still lacking in Evince or Okular and has been for many years, even when someone on a forum somewhere wanted to integrate an OCR function into it, it was abandoned. It's 2016 and the last discussion for implementing OCR in either Evince or Okular was like back in 2008. It's pretty sad that my cheap crappy all-in-one printer/scanner can do OCR and neither Evince or Okular can. What gives?

The thing that made Adobe Acrobat so great for me was the instant OCR function after scanning or opening a document and the available tools to merge PDF's into one at ease with a point of a mouse. Ever since switching to linux, these tools are there to do the same, but requires multiple operations and multiple different software to achieve the same thing. Using imagemagick to convert PDF to a tiff, then using tesseract to ocr the text, then using ghostscript to put it all back into the PDF and then opening the PDF in Okular to have a searchable PDF, such fun! Then drag and drop multiple PDF's to merge into one file? Neither Evince or Okular will do that. Sure I can make a script for all this and I have, but when I could do this with one click in Acrobat? It's 2016, and Adobe has had this functionality for many many years. I don't understand why the choice of having the lack of functionality and innovation in the opensource alternatives.

So I don't know where you get that the PDF support on linux is quite good compared to OSX or Windows. I would say it's adequate for basic PDF editing, but it's not great, that's for sure.

WebGL needs GL 2; GMA 3150 stuck on GL 1.4

[tepples]

WebGL

From get.webgl.org:

Hmm. While your browser seems to support WebGL, it is disabled or unavailable. If possible, please ensure that you are running the latest drivers for your video card.

It turns out that WebGL requires at least OpenGL 2.0, and the Intel GMA 3150 in my laptop is stuck on OpenGL 1.4. WebGL should be fine if you know PC users will come in with at least Intel HD Graphics (the successor to GMA), if not NVIDIA or AMD graphics.

Re:WebGL needs GL 2; GMA 3150 stuck on GL 1.4

[Anonymous Coward]

And you still wonder why netbooks were discontinued, huh? They were doomed from the start due to anemic hardware paired with unrealistic expectations. But hey, you can still watch Homestar Runner on Linux using current software, maybe that will quench your whining a bit.

Re:WebGL needs GL 2; GMA 3150 stuck on GL 1.4

[Anonymous Coward]

the Intel GMA 3150 in my laptop is stuck on OpenGL 1.4

Also, I can't run Microsoft Office on my Nintendo Gameboy from 1989. It's not fair.

Re:WebGL needs GL 2; GMA 3150 stuck on GL 1.4

[tepples]

Is it impossible to put non-anemic hardware into a 10 inch laptop chassis?

Re:WebGL needs GL 2; GMA 3150 stuck on GL 1.4

[Anonymous Coward]

No, but the form factor has been forever tainted so no manufacturer is touching that with a ten foot pole. Negative public perception is a powerful thing.

Re:WebGL needs GL 2; GMA 3150 stuck on GL 1.4

[Anonymous Coward]

From get.webgl.org

Your browser supports WebGL

And I'm using a massively outdated version of Opera (31.0) because there is no way to disable that ridiculous, proprietary Google login "avatar" profile button in newer versions of Opera, Chromium and Chrome.

Re:WebGL needs GL 2; GMA 3150 stuck on GL 1.4

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. My phone is in a less than 6" chassis and outperforms your computer by a large margin. WebGL works just fine on it.

Re:WebGL needs GL 2; GMA 3150 stuck on GL 1.4

[Zontar The Mindless]

Using Opera 39.something, and no Google login avatar here.

Version: 39.0.2256.48 - Opera is up to date
Update stream: Stable
System: openSUSE Leap 42.1 (x86_64) (x86_64; KDE)

It supports Flash just fine, BTW.

How to enforce return without DRM?

[tepples]

Without digital restrictions management, how can the publisher enforce the contractual requirement that the subscriber not keep a usable copy after the subscription has expired?

Re:How to enforce return without DRM?

[Anonymous Coward]

Realistically it can't be enforced with or without DRM. If there's a will to breach contract and keep a copy, it will be done, restrictions be damned. This doesn't mean such services couldn't or shouldn't exist because of these arbitrary constructs.

Re:How to enforce return without DRM?

[tepples]

DRM deters breach by making breach so difficult in practice that most will not try. I said most.

Re: How to enforce return without DRM?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know, how were contracts enforced for the hundreds of years before DRM?

Re:How to enforce return without DRM?

[Anonymous Coward]

making breach so difficult in practice

It will never be difficult. It turns out light and sound can be detected and recorded. All you need to do is point a video camera at the screen and you'll get a high quality copy. Maybe the next DRM scheme will be to outlaw physics.

Re: How to enforce return without DRM?

[tepples]

Before DRM, making a copy required substantial investment, and following the money to find whom to sue was more practical.

Re:How to enforce return without DRM?

[tepples]

Telesyncing the display in this manner is "difficult". It requires a suitable camcorder, which most don't already have and aren't willing to buy just to keep a rented movie past the due date.

Re:How to enforce return without DRM?

[Anonymous Coward]

All you need to do is point a video camera at the screen and you'll get a low quality copy.

FTFY. TS releases are rubbish and borderline unwatchable.

Re:How to enforce return without DRM?

[Anonymous Coward]

Telesyncing the display in this manner is "difficult".

It's trivial.

Re:How to enforce return without DRM?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe your Audiovox flip-phone is not letting you see the forest for the trees. Most people nowadays carry very good high definition cameras in their very pockets which they even didn't buy directly - they came with these things called 'smartphones'. Even ignoring that we're not in the 90s anymore, standalone camcorders aren't particularly scarce or expensive either. Exploiting the analog hole today is cheaper & easier than ever. Have a look at YouTube and you'll see tons of these "HD camera pointed at a screen" videos.

Re:How to enforce return without DRM?

[linuxrocks123]

You don't even need to do that. Just get a Hauppauge HD-PVR and record from component out. I do this all the time to record cable TV with MythTV, and it gives an excellent quality result, with no DRM circumvention or camcorder required. I have zero interest in piracy: the recordings are for my own personal use only. But if I'm paying for cable with HBO, I'm at least going to have an uncrippled DVR.

If the FCC ever lets the cable companies turn off component out, then it's time for MythTV users to break out the HDMI-to-component converters. These are like $30 on Amazon and reportedly work just fine with HDCP.

And if they ever stamp those out somehow (they're made by random companies in China, so good luck to them), then, well ... HDCP is totally broken and the master key has been leaked. I'm sure some Verilog or VHDL sources for various FPGAs that include HDMI ports would soon pop up.

My view is they should give up on the DRM and just do watermarking. I don't give a shit if my recordings are watermarked, because I'm not going to upload them. Almost no homebrew DVR users want to upload pirated TV. So, if they do DRM, their opponents are "every geek with a homebrew DVR or other legitimate need for uncrippled media access, plus the few people who want to upload pirated TV". If they do watermarking, their opponents are "only the few people who want to upload pirated TV".

Seriously. Just invisibly watermark the damn movies and TV shows, then take legal action against the uploaders. It's a perfect win-win solution. Dumbass control freaks are dumbass control freaks, though.

Re:How to enforce return without DRM?

[tepples]

How good is the video captured by a smartphone's rear camera? Is it pristine even up to 1920x1080, with correct color balance? And how easy is it to keep aligned with the display?

Re:How to enforce return without DRM?

[tepples]

Almost no homebrew DVR users want to upload pirated TV. So, if they do DRM, their opponents are "every geek with a homebrew DVR or other legitimate need for uncrippled media access, plus the few people who want to upload pirated TV".

It's not necessarily even about uploading. It's about keeping a rental longer than the agreed-upon rental period.

Re:How to enforce return without DRM?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who cares ? The original media being filmed is rubbish too (well it is if it's been produced by Hollywood) But if it makes someone happy for an hour or two who am I to argue ?

Re: How to enforce return without DRM?

[Anonymous Coward]

Most don't have to have the camcorder, they just have to download the video that was uploaded by someone who does.

Re:How to enforce return without DRM?

[mattventura]

But that doesn't matter, because it only requires ONE determined person to crack the DRM and upload it to their preferred den of piracy. The average user has no need to break the DRM, because either they're a paying customer of the service with no plans to cancel thus have no need to break the DRM to begin with, or they're not a paying customer in which case they would be getting it from a different source entirely.

Re:How to enforce return without DRM?

[Anonymous Coward]

A serious ripping group is not going to purchase media in a way that can be linked to them. They will obtain the original using foreign credentials, and the watermarking scheme will be dead the moment the studio tries to sue a 90-year-old half-blind grandmother out in some cornfield of Topeka, for "cracking DRM"

What it means is "Tough shit, greedy corporate bitches - you don't make the rules. Get fucked well & have a nice day"

Re:How to enforce return without DRM?

[Anonymous Coward]

Except it isn't a fucking boat, or a power tool. Nothing about this emphemeral "rental" has anything to do with time, since it does not impact their ability to "rent it" out to other people. Ever.

The problem, they want to rent it out to same person, over and over. Extracting money each time, like a fucking mosquito.

IRIX version

[Anonymous Coward]

The IRIX version is even older, any news on an update for that?

just what we needed!

[e432776]

Now that we have completely updated flash, the year of the Linux desktop has finally arrived!

Re: Blame IE 6

[Billly Gates]

VMWare and ADP are corporate oriented.

Of course some asshole needs IE 6 support because he doesn't want to offend the director of IT who purchased that ERP app that only works with IE 6 because that developer has another client which has to use IE 6 because of an app another customer uses etc.

IE 6 and 8 are like herpes. The gift that keeps on giving as one when customer has it their suppliers, users, and developers demand IE 6 which in turns others and so on.

So what do you do if your clients want the latest features, multimedia activity, and gorgeous graphics but it needs to work on IE 6? The answer is flash! It just works and actionscript is alot less flakly than IE 6 javascript and CSS.

So in order to save egg on our customers faces and tell them their systems are out of date and suck we NEED FLASH and JAVA on the web ... for credit card processing and HIPPA medical transactions too .... face palm.

Yes it is a big problem and until we can get RDP in HTML 5 we will still use IE 6 at work since these systems are too important to ever be updated

I wish they would just completely KILL flash

[The Cisco Kid]

All modern browsers should actively block it.
ISP gateways/proxies should block it.

Flash is an evil horrid nightmare that needs to just DIE already.

Re:I wish they would just completely KILL flash

[Anonymous Coward]

Encourage all Chrome users to use Chromium. Same thing without the shit. Who really cares about a few bit of annoying media not working? Just skip those sites and services.

Re:I wish they would just completely KILL flash

[The Cisco Kid]

I am mostly migrated to Chromium.

There are just a few things that I have to use Chrome for.

One of them is a function of my bank's online banking service which they have STILL not migrated from flash. Unfortunately, the only other comparable bank to offer the relevant service, ALSO uses flash for that same function, so there's no where else to go. I've explained to them why they need to get off flash and I am waiting.

Flash needs to die and everything that uses it needs to migrate or DIE as well.

EME flash

[jopsen]

From what understand Mozilla is working hard to make sure EME will work with firefox under linux... It'll still require binary blobs, but these can be downloaded automatically and will run completely sandboxed.

Mozilla took a lot of fire for the decision to support EME, but in reality the alternative is that DRM'ed content will only be available on Windows/OS X/IOS/Android/ChromeOS using IE/saferi/chrome.
Yes, EME is still a sad practical choice, but at least the linux desktop will continue to be a viable option. That's how I see it.

Why?

[lapm]

Who would want flash player thats every new version is worse then previous ones... And now we have HTML5 t replace flash entirely...

Flash ain't going away

[Anonymous Coward]

Well as much as Flash should be dead, it isn't. Problem welcome news for Linux users who have little choice but to use Flash. At least it will have some updates and maybe work better.

Re:Flash ain't going away

[Anonymous Coward]

Flash ain't going away

Yes, it is. The trend is clear.

Re:EME flash

[Anonymous Coward]

O rly? How is "protected media path" EME going to work on Linux? If it even works at all, it'll be some specific combo of closed software and hardware (latest versions only, of course). So the end result is going to be the same: If you want to watch any kind of video (commercial streaming services only for now, but let's see if youtube etc won't join up later) you'll have to slave your hardware and software upgrade cycle to one of the corporate walled gardens.

Re: Doesn't Linux Chrome have an integrated player

[Anonymous Coward]

What us pepper flash?

Always a day late

[Wokan]

I just got the PPAPI version working in Firefox last night. That said, I'm still glad they're updating the NPAPI version so I have the option of not installing Chrome to get a current Flash plugin.

Just die already

[jaq1an]

Please please please kill off this crap

Dear God

[JustNiz]

please smite with furious vengeance any websites still using/requiring this piece of bug-ridden crap.

Photoshop!

[vandamme]

Screw your flash player. Let's have some real apps.

What about Acrobat reader?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't care a bit about the flash player, but I need the acrobat reader, as some vital functions are simply not available with the substitutes that run under Linux.

Now that group hate quota has been fullfilled

[Anonymous Coward]

new version seems to solve a lot of issues i was having with older one.

Pandora and VMware vCenter

[Doke]

The only things I ever use Flash for anymore are Pandora radio and VMware vCenter. I've almost gotten rid of Pandora's Flash by switching to pianobar https://6xq.net/pianobar/. It handles normal playing. It won't do the more advanced things like editing a station, adding variety, etc.

I don't have a solution for vCenter. I did, at least, get freshplayerplugin to run pepperflash under Palemoon. That lets me specify an external app (vmplayer) to open console windows. Chrome insists on opening the console windows in another flash window, which won't pass ctrl-C, ctrl-P, or many other control characters. It's infuriating to try to ping something from the console, realize too late that you can't stop it, and have to reboot the vm.