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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.
Must feed...
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).
Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
it is undead.
Will no one rid me of this turbulent program?
Why won't you JUST DIE?
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
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 Flash player?
This is not a signature.
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.
Again and again and again and again and again and...
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.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Clearly Adobe needed to squeeze more blood from all of their turnips or otherwise they would not have instigated this.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
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.
I use this to use PPAPI flash in Firefox in Debian, for what is NPAPI needed?
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).
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
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.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
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.
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.
I wish they would have revived Acrobat Reader for Linux. I need it for sites that use XFA Form submission.
WebGL
From get.webgl.org:
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
There ain't no such thing as proprietary standards only proprietary formats. Standards are by definition open.
Now that we have completely updated flash, the year of the Linux desktop has finally arrived!
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
http://saveie6.com/
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?
http://saveie6.com/
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.
So you don't use spotify or any other music streaming service... Or google play? or other online streaming services.
Non professional people like me do not like subscription software - paying for things that I am not using is something I try to avoid.
In 5 years we'll likely do the same we do now: use HTML5.
Who would want flash player thats every new version is worse then previous ones... And now we have HTML5 t replace flash entirely...
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.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
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.
Please please please kill off this crap
please smite with furious vengeance any websites still using/requiring this piece of bug-ridden crap.
Screw your flash player. Let's have some real apps.
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.
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.
It is trivial to obtain and install Flash for Android devices. Use the Bing, Bill!
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
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.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
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.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.