Linux Now an Equal Flash Player 437
nerdyH writes "As recently as 2007, Linux users waited six months for Flash 9 to arrive. Now, with Microsoft pushing its Silverlight alternative, Adobe is touting the universality of its Flash format, which has penetrated '98 percent of Internet-enabled desktops,' it claims. And, it today released Flash 10 for Linux concurrently with other platforms. Welcome to the future." Handily enough, Real Networks released this summer RealPlayer 11 for Linux, the first release for which they've included a .deb package, and offers nightly builds of their Helix player, for which Linux is one of the supported platforms.
yay competition! (Score:5, Insightful)
Now make them do the same with Photoshop.
Competition is good! (Score:5, Insightful)
YAY another binary release (Score:4, Insightful)
The future? (Score:5, Insightful)
There's still no 64-bit version yet!
No deal. (Score:3, Insightful)
But still not open-source. So if you need it on PPC Linux, or FreeBSD, you are still SOL. Give us the source guys, and we'll maintain it for you. Or if you absolutely cant do that, publish a spec that somebody can use to write compatible player.
Re:The future? (Score:5, Insightful)
Or running a 64-bit system?
If only... (Score:3, Insightful)
But of course there wouldn't be much profit incentive for Adobe to do such a thing...
Re:The future? (Score:5, Insightful)
Us nspluginwrapper.
Actually if Firefox would support 32 bit plug ins under Linux that would also solve the issue.
Or the Distros could include 32bit Firefox be default.
Both would solve the problem. And if you need Firefox to be 64bit you are surfing the wrong sites.
Re:The future? (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed; that was the first thing I checked upon reading this story.
I'm sorry, but I'd rather have a 6 month wait and a 64-bit version than concurrent releases. Linux has been running on AMD64 for what now? Three or four years? And now that Vista runs on 64-bit as well there's even less excuse for this. Hell, they're even got a version for the Sparc.
I don't mean to belittle the fact this story. It is pretty cool that Adobe seems to at least recognize linux as a worthwhile platform*, it's just that support is still rather lackluster.
(*While I would think that this would have to do with the increasingly common use of linux on embedded devices, the fact that there's no ARM version seems to contradict this. However, I suspect there's a (secret) version somewhere since I'm seen embedded linux devices that play flash.)
Great news but... (Score:4, Insightful)
First of all, as some have already pointed out, where's the *BSD binaries and 64-bit binaries?
Why doesn't Adobe go (L)GPLv3 with their flash plugin, keep all the products that produce flashes commercial and watch how other people (while being angry at their original plugin's performance) fix their bad code?
In all seriousness, what bad could releasing flash renderer as a GPLv3 or LGPLv3 mean for adobe? They have the market for 90s style websites (one big graphic) and 100% of Internet's video sites already, their actual closed source not so well performing plugin is the first reason why people don't think flash is great for anything other than attracting teenager users.
If the do not open source it, one day it will a better alternative will grow out of the open source community or flash simply ceases to exist as it's replaced by more open standard X or better renderer Y.
Re:Outstanding!!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously. On my gf's Vista machine, Flash hanging in IE is *the* major reliability issue over the past 6 months.
[Vista has this "system reliability" thingy which is actually cool (oops there goes my slashdot karma). It gives an overall score on how reliable the system is and charts it over time, showing what apps crashed or hung to reduce the score.]
Still, I have flash on my linux desktop which will never, ever, ever have silverlight installed on it.
Re:The future? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The future? (Score:4, Insightful)
Us nspluginwrapper.
nspluginwrapper is a workaround not a solution.
Actually if Firefox would support 32 bit plug ins under Linux that would also solve the issue.
Good idea, but why bother when they can port flash to arm, why not x86_64?
Or the Distros could include 32bit Firefox be default.
Both would solve the problem. And if you need Firefox to be 64bit you are surfing the wrong sites.
If you want suboptimal performance why not just go back to windows? I have a 64bit processor (it came with my laptop) I do not have 4GB of memory or edit photos but i dont see why i should accept sub optimal performance just to run a plugin, a plugin that seams to max out any version of my os anyway.
Re:RealPlayer? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah. I thought the same thing. Real represented every wrong way to market and produce a product. It was neat in the beginning (well, it was pretty much the first, as far as I know), but as time went on, it became a bloated, spyware ridden piece of garbage far inferior to all of its competitors.
Honestly, I didn't know Real was still around. I wouldn't let that software near my windows machines, much less the Linux ones.
Re:Outstanding!!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
Currently my laptop doesn't handle heat very well (freezes up on me),
+1 Ironic
Flashblock. Seriously. That way you get to selectively enable Flash media rather than being carpet-bombed on pageload.
Re:YAY another binary release (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: You've got the spec (Score:2, Insightful)
The SWF file format specifications have been published for a decade. Just like HTML.
The sourcecode to the canonical implementation has not, just like most of the HTML browsers out there.
Adobe licenses high-quality video decoders from third-parties, so it's difficult to have an ideologically-pure Player.
jd/adobe
Re:No 64-bit (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:RealPlayer? (Score:3, Insightful)
While it's difficult for me to understand the need to watch movies on your telephone, I guess I could see the appeal to some.
But if I were to get a phone that could play videos, I'd want to to play videos in a non-proprietary standard. My guess is, Nokia entered some deal with Real to put it on there.
As for acrobat not working, wait for them to port Foxit to your phone. You might actually be able to view PDFs.
Re:No deal. (Score:3, Insightful)
But still not open-source. So if you need it on PPC Linux, or FreeBSD, you are still SOL. Give us the source guys, and we'll maintain it for you. Or if you absolutely cant do that, publish a spec that somebody can use to write compatible player.
Haven't the OSS community said specs is enough? Well, in that case put your money where your mouth is:
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/swf/pdf/swf_file_format_spec_v9.pdf [adobe.com]
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flv/pdf/video_file_format_spec_v9.pdf [adobe.com]
You are free to develop anything you want from these specs as of last May. That does not include the codecs, but ffmpeg can decode both sorenson and h.264 which are the most important codecs, and probably the rest flash ever used too though I haven't checked out all of them. I look forward to seeing your flash implementation soon.
Re:64-Bit support? (Score:3, Insightful)
and there are much better solutions for video.
Considering Flash is what made video on the web actually viable and reliable, I would like to hear of these "much better" solutions. You apparently don't remember the Bad Old Days before Flash video when streaming video worked about 10% of the time, and when it did work, it took about 60 seconds to start up.
Say what you want about Flash, but it works pretty damn well.
Flash appearing ontop of pages in linux/firefox (Score:5, Insightful)
So did they fix the *really* annoying problem where on linux firefox configurations that flash objects appear ontop of *everything* else in the page? This annoyance has made many pages very much un-usable (especially ones with drop down menus where the menu gets hidden behind the flash object :( ...adobe's own site fits into this catagory).
Linux people, I want your platform to succeed... (Score:5, Insightful)
In your minds, if company Z doesn't support Linux, they lose. If they do support linux, they lose even worse. They get screamed at for not releasing specs, not GPL'ing the source, not supporting a specific distribution, not supporting 64-bit... the list goes on.
Now if you're going to take the time to respond to this, please answer me this: Why should company X spend the most time supporting a platform that has the least marketshare?
Linux folk see the problem being that software vendors don't support linux. The fact of the matter is Linux doesn't support ISV's. There are a million different distro's with no standardization. You already have your market share working against you, and you realize that. What you don't seem to realize is that your platform is the hardest to develop for and support.
You really should do something about this before you scream with a sense of entitlement that some company should spend time and money supporting your platform when it is not likely to be financially viable.
Re:No 64-bit (Score:3, Insightful)
And a major company can finish porting a program to a new, reasonably similar, platform in less than 6 years. Sorry, lame excuses about porting to 64 bit being hard were great in 2005 or so, but at this point it's completely clear that there's no 64 bit flash player simply because Macromedia / Adobe has chosen not to devote the resources to it. It's not like they're the ones who will get shit when web browsers hit the 2GB barrier.
Re:No 64-bit (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe a post from 2006 (summarizing an explanation from 2005) is not the best thing. At the end of the day, the excuses seem lame. Java had 64-bit support out pretty quickly (are you telling me the JIT in Flash is more complicated than the Java JVM, of which the JIT is a minor portion?)
The reason is that Adobe doesn't feel there's a big enough market for 64-bit platforms, thus it doesn't throw many resources at getting a 64-bit version, end of story.
Re:No 64-bit (Score:5, Insightful)
That was also written, oh, two fucking years ago! They haven't figured out how to make their JIT compiler work in two years? What kind of incompetents are they? I'm sure it's a hard problem. Lots of problems are hard. But somehow Firefox and Opera and even IE managed to get their Javascript code working on 64bit platforms in the meantime. Why is Flash somehow special?
Re:The future? (Score:5, Insightful)
*cough*Opera*cough*
But seriously, Opera now has a native 64 bit build but it runs 32 bit plugins without any special voodoo. "OMG it isn't open source" you say... well neither is flash.
Re:Linux people, I want your platform to succeed.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Specific distribution: Supporting all distributions isn't hard, you know.
No. Supporting Linux is not hard at all [opera.com]. It's not like you have to release 10 different packages for each distribution you support... and stuff.
Flip it around and ask yourself why shouldn't company X spend a little time making something cross-platform (it's not as hard as you think) and get that many more sales?
You say "It's not as hard as you think." I say, "It's easier said than done."
This just screams troll right here. I find it a pain to develop for Windows myself given that libraries and headers can be all over the place, or are you thinking of RAD C# stuff that is useless for many applications (note I'm saying it's useless for things like, say, Flash; it certainly has a use for smaller programs and other apps that don't need speed, etc).
Yeah, I'm a troll. Instead of developing a modern tool chain, linux folk scream, "Emacs/VIM, the GNU toolchain and a command line debugger is all you will ever need!" Which, wherein lies the most fundamental problem of the Linux crowd, they feel entitled to tell people what they should want and need, rather than listen to what people want and need. And then you call them a troll.
Re:Linux people, I want your platform to succeed.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Now if you're going to take the time to respond to this, please answer me this: Why should company X spend the most time supporting a platform that has the least marketshare?
At one point back in 1995, the Microsoft Windows market was only 20% of the PC market. The other 75% of the market was OS/2, QNX, DrDos, Novell and a few others. Windows was an emerging market so we coded for it.
Linux is now an emerging (or growth) market. Ignore it if you want. Your competitors are not.
There is a reason that google has released Picasa and GoogleEarth binaries for linux and its not because of a bunch of hippies yelling at them demanding the code. There is a reason that Dell is still continuing its Linux line of products. Asus, Adobe, Quicken, Oracle, Real, etc, do not make their product support decisions based on a bunch of screaming smelly basement dwellers.
What you don't seem to realize is that your platform is the hardest to develop for and support.
Linux is the hardest platform to develop for if all you know how to code in is Microsoft based technologies.
Enjoy,
Re: news is already available (Score:3, Insightful)
The "we'll maintain it for you" line has not particularly been borne out by experience.... ;-)
Well said from a closed source company. Heck, we might even be able to resolve all the serious flaws in your code. *cough* cookie *cough*
Gnash 0.8.4 Released Yesterday (Score:5, Insightful)
Gnash 0.8.4 was released yesterday, but I guess that doesn't merit a slashvertisement:
http://gnashdev.org/ [gnashdev.org]
Re:If only... (Score:3, Insightful)
Secondly, apparently you've been too busy bashing Flash to actually pay attention to how far it has come. Flash these days requires actual code, and is not something Joe GeoCities can just pick up and use anymore. AS3 is a massive and mature language at this point. gotoAndPlay() is not exactly a cornerstone function anymore. Google a little app called Spatialkey, and tell me with a straight face if you think it's little more than a badly keyframed splash screen.
Thirdly, if Adobe were in it just for the money, they'd have given *nix systems the finger a long time ago. Yes, they're in it for money, they're a corporation before anything else. But they're doing a much better job than Microsoft would even dream of doing, and they work hard to keep the devs that use their products in the loop, constantly consuming feedback to improve their product.
And I'm not even an Adobe rep, I just happen to make a good living using Flex to make some great apps that would never fly using anything else.
Thank you! (Score:1, Insightful)
Someone on Slashdot who finally gets it.
I go a step further, and say that 'Linux' is not a platform at all if you're an end-user or starting out in app development.
Don't get me wrong... I'm LPI certified and use various distros on a daily basis for all sorts of things. But I am far from an average user or even power user.
Re:YAY another binary release (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:YAY another binary release (Score:4, Insightful)
Same issue with PPC.
Well, I guess we can say "Same issue with [insert here any Linux-supported architecture which is not x86]"...
Actually, I find it quite misleading to say that "Adobe [..] released version 10 of its [...] Flash Player [...] in a variety of convenient packaging formats for Linux". Adobe didn't. "Adobe released version 10 of its Flash Player in a variety of convenient packaging formats for some version of Linux running on the x86 architecture" is the correct wording.
Binary releases are simply not a viable solution for an open-source based system.
Re:yay competition! (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't see a great number of professional graphic artists willing to brave the murky linux technowaters. They love Apple because to them it's basically a TV.
No, wait, hold your flamethrowers! I don't mean it isn't a powerful OS, what I mean is that they don't have to do anything to make their tools work. When was the last time that you needed to upgrade, configure or recompile something to watch a show on a consumer television set? Yes, the signal goes digital so you ditch the old box and get on with the shinies. Exactly as in the Mac world. Need more functionality — channels — then get cable, satellite, TiVo, younameit. No messing about with the appliance itself, just plug the add-on and bother about using it. Want a car analogy? You need know nothing about carburetors or lack thereof to drive. As long as you heed the lights on the dashboard and shell out at the mechanic when the issue goes beyond them, all a user needs to know is how to operate the thing, not how to service it.
The average /. enthusiast's personal anecdote is irrelevant because they are a vanishing small percentage of the target market. For instance, Automakers don't cater to blingers, modders and assorted $YOURHOBBY$ers, those are a niche markets serviced by niche players.
I believe this is the reason you won't see Photoshop on linux until there is a rock solid OSX-like distro that the userbase (the pros, mostly) can use with a kitchen microwave level of ease. If you are an enthusiast you'd be MUCH better off supporting GIMP with both your time and bug reports as with your bucks donating to the project. Check out 2.6, its orders of magnitude better than, say, 2.4 (my previous version).
I only wish they'd change the name to G-Imp or Imp/G or even GNU-Imp because most of the time the stupid name is the biggest objection people cite to not even give it a chance. English being my second language, the name means jack to me, but I've encountered the argument often enough...
Re:Demand == Necessity of Resources (Score:3, Insightful)
I know that Wikipedia isn't considered the most reliable source of information, but it does give some links to relevant information should we care to look for it.
If we examine the OS spectrum (as software companies no doubtedly do) (see Usage Share of Desktop Operating Systems [wikipedia.org] for an example), Linux comprises 2% of the share. We're excluding servers on purpose, for the sake of this argument, since end-users will no doubt be the ones interested in things like Flash. Let's say those numbers are deflated, and Linux really is about 5%. Of that 5% how many have made the transition to 64-bit? 50%? That means 2.5% of my potential target audience needs a 64-bit product.
Is that fair though? Not really. I'm typing this reply on a perfectly suitable 32-bit Linux on a processor that supports x86-64. Why? Unnecessary. I get proven, stable applications with 32-bit that perfectly suit my needs. I'd say for the DESKTOP OS, there my have been a reality of 25% who use a 64-bit Linux (and that, too, is probably high)
So, with our modified numbers, 1.25% need a 64-bit flash player, while the 98.75% of my potential user base is perfectly fine with my 32-bit product. I think the numbers speak for themselves.