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

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?

[Hognoxious]

knowing != caring.

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]

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: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: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.