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Flash 9 Beta for Linux Available
Posted by
samzenpus
on Thu Oct 19, 2006 06:49 AM
from the watch-it-now dept.
from the watch-it-now dept.
DemiKnute writes "According to the official Penguin.SWF blog, the a beta release of the long-awaited Flash 9 for Linux is available for download, a mere year after the release for Windows." From the blog:
"While we are still working out exactly how to distribute the final Player version to be as easy as possible for the typical end user, this beta includes 2 gzip'd tarball packages: one is for the Mozilla plugin and the other is for a GTK-based Standalone Flash Player. Either will need to be downloaded manually via the Adobe Labs website and unpacked. The standalone Player (gflashplayer) can be run in place (after you set its executable permission). The plugin is dropped into your local plugin directory (for a local user) or the system-wide plugin directory."
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AMD64 version? (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't play flash animations on my Turion laptop with Debian AMD64 installed.
Re:AMD64 version? (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah, it's a pain, but you only need to do it once.
Why not say something into adobe.com/go/wish ?
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Re:AMD64 version? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:AMD64 version? (Score:5, Insightful)
I run 64-bit OSes on both my AMD and Intel boxes. Flash be damned for all I care.
Tom
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:AMD64 version? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:AMD64 version? (Score:5, Informative)
It makes the distribution much more complex to have combinations of 32 and 64 bit applications and libraries.
I assume all the libraries of a 32 bit app on a 64 bit system would haveto be 32 bit as well, look at all the libraries effected...
# ldd
libmozjs.so =>
libxpcom.so =>
libxpcom_core.so => not found
libplc4.so =>
libnspr4.so =>
libpthread.so.0 =>
libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0 =>
libgdk-x11-2.0.so.0 =>
libX11.so.6 =>
libpng12.so.0 =>
libjpeg.so.62 =>
libz.so.1 =>
libsmime3.so =>
libssl3.so =>
libnss3.so =>
libcairo.so.2 =>
libXinerama.so.1 =>
libXt.so.6 =>
libXp.so.6 =>
libXft.so.2 =>
libfontconfig.so.1 =>
libxpcom_compat.so =>
libstdc++.so.6 =>
libm.so.6 =>
libc.so.6 =>
libplds4.so =>
libgdk_pixbuf-2
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You install it under a chroot. You can find instructions for debian/ubuntu on the net. On my ubuntu dapper AMD64 box the chroot takes about 0.6 GB. If you have a 64-bit machine you can probably set aside that much disk space. I have firefox, acroread, opera, realplay, totem installed there (plus the required libraries). It works fine.
Re:AMD64 version? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why, because all the other damn plugins and libraries are 64 bits? If I compile Firefox 32 bit, the Java plugins do not work with it. Then I need java down at 32 bits, which will require to get down to 32 bits everything else that depends on Java. The same way goes mplayerplugin (therefore mplayer and all related apps), and pretty much everything that a browser uses. All this goes down in a chain reaction of 32-bit ripples, and ends up with breaking some functionality at some point, just because some lazy ass at Adobe did not want to recompile a damn binary one more time with different flags. I mean, it's not a different OS, it's just a different processor.
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Re:AMD64 version? (Score:4, Insightful)
You do not understand the nature of proprietary development. I think Flash player has a number of major issues internally that make me reluctant to use it for anything. It seems to eat CPU at a low level constantly even when no Flash animations are showing. I don't trust that thing farther than I can throw it.
I'm betting that the code is a huge rats nest with numerous and obscure places where assumptions were made about the sizes of various types that prevent the code from being ported to 64-bit.
That's the only conclusion I can come to after their failure to do this even though 64-bit CPUs have been out for almost 2 years now.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
2 years [wikipedia.org]?
1991: MIPS Technologies produced the first 64-bit microprocessor, as the third revision of their MIPS RISC architecture, the R4000. The CPU was used in SGI graphics workstations starting with the IRIS Crimson. However, 64-bit support for the R4000 was not included in the IRIX operating system until IRIX 6.2, released in 1996.
Re:AMD64 version? (Score:5, Interesting)
AFAICT, you use up more disk space, individual apps require more memory and the biggest benefit - that you can access >4GB without hacks like PAE - is irrelevant.
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Bigger virtual address space (Score:3, Informative)
For instance, nptl threads get a performance boost from not having to juggle around to save on stack space.
There are also advantages with prelinking.
Finally, even if you have "just" 4G in 32 bit, you won't be able to use all of it in one process, as the kernel needs some address space too.
Re:AMD64 version? (Score:4, Informative)
This PCStats article [pcstats.com] has some benchmarks on the topic. Anandtech had some too, but I couldn't find them immediately.
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Memory Space Clearly (Score:3, Funny)
Re:AMD64 version? (Score:4, Insightful)
(Now I just wish they did the same with the media players, for the Win32 codecs and such, as I was forced to compile my own to get that working)
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Re:AMD64 version? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:AMD64 version? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re: (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.gibix.net/dokuwiki/en:projects:nsplugi
0.9.90.1 that's available in the official site doesn't work with new firefoxes, so you really need to get 0.9.90.3 from mandriva.
Re:AMD64 version? (Score:5, Funny)
Since it's a 32bit binary, won't installing it twice do the trick?
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Re:AMD64 version? (Score:5, Funny)
Well, you were incited, weren't you?
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Re:AMD64 version? (Score:4, Informative)
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gentoo ebuilds (Score:5, Informative)
Seems to work on Firefox but not Opera (Score:3, Interesting)
right (Score:2)
Until you do a yum upgrade, or something like that. Because then you get a separate directory for each sub version of firefox with a different plugins directory underneath it, and you lose your plugin once again, until you symlink to the plugin from the new plugins directory. Yes, maintaining software on Linux is a breeze, sometimes.
Re:right (Score:5, Informative)
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Re: (Score:2)
Good news! (Score:5, Informative)
Some flash movies that hogged Firefox UI with old player work flawlessy now. Audio is now in sync with video.
While not perfect, this release makes me wonder when the free software Gnash player reaches a usable state. Being a free software enthuasist, i generally don't like the idea of using a proprietary plugin, but being also pragmatic, i use it. I also think that the official Flash plugin could be faster and more bug-free, if the source code were available and under a GPL compatible licence.
That being said, i still think it's important that GNU/Linux users, especially Average Joe, have a lot less hassle with badly designed, flash-dependent websites.
Re:Good news! (Score:5, Informative)
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Ad supported browsers (Score:4, Funny)
Solaris (Score:4, Funny)
wonderful (Score:2)
The first thing I did after installing this (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not joking. I was more concerned about that than the sound being in sync. Does anyone think I'm weird?
Compiling bugs (Score:5, Informative)
The plugin will search for libssl.so and libasound.so; that's broken. They should dlopen the actual library or build it statically, but a hack like that is certainly going to cause problems. (btw, in Ubuntu/Debian you need the libssl-dev and libasound2-dev packages to use all the features of this plugin).
The most annoying bugs I had with Flash (believe it or not) are still there. If the mouse is hovering a Flash content inside a browser window, the browser won't recognize keyboard or even mouse events. This is annoying when you're scrolling through a page with Flash ads or when you want to Ctrl+L but the damn mouse is in the wrong place.
The other problem is that Flash ads that have the "point your mouse here to see the full ad" will always display the "full ad", and you have to choose between the Flash Block extension and not reading that damn page at all.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The most annoying bugs you mention are actually bugs in Mozilla(tm): https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=95541 [mozilla.org] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=87383 [mozilla.org]
YouTube sound issues (Score:2)
Fantastic (Score:5, Interesting)
Inaccurate. (Score:5, Insightful)
4 months != 1 year
From a guy who got dragged into Flash development (Score:4, Interesting)
First, I will agree with anyone that says that Flash gets misused more often than not. It does. It sucks ass when someone does a really crap Flash project. I have 2-3 designers doing the visual labor with me turning their designs into relatively interesting Flash interactives. I like to think that I am using Flash properly, but I know I have much to learn, and I look forward to that opportunity keeping me gainfully employed for a few more years (until enough anti-Flash people get it killed?).
Secondly, if you're going to take 5 minutes to compose a rant on
Finally, I noticed folks talking about the tag to embed Flash. Stop. Stop doing that and google "swfObject" -- it's a Javascript library you can drop into a central location on your web server and forever forget about detecting Flash or making sure it's relatively standards compliant. The guy who wrote it put together a BETTER detection setup than Adobe did (their kit was NUTS), and it works really well. AND it's flexible, processing querystrings and adding flashvars very easily for a simple Flash embed. If you're still talking about the tag and Flash, you're either developing Flash badly (and this is coming from an intermediate level user who tricked people into paying him for it) or browsing a badly developed Flash site.
My 2-3 cents (5 minutes) about Flash. Be nice to it. With Flash video, it's really coming around as a useful tool, and things like Flex 2.0 (wicked cool way to build application interfaces) are making it more of a tool than a design medium for the web.
BTW -- if the title was confusing -- I was "dragged" into Flash development when folks found out I was better at writing ActionScript and using Flash than writing pure CSS page layout. I'm actually enjoying it -- if you're intersted in learning it, be prepared to re-learn a lot of stuff every 1.25 years or so with new Flash versions.
Thanks,
IronChefMorimoto
Re:From a guy who got dragged into Flash developme (Score:3, Insightful)
Flash like java applets should only be used when necessary.
What I hate is Flash for navigation.
Flash is only evil when abused.
Which is WAY TO OFTEN.
Tried it (Score:5, Informative)
Notes:
Biggest problem is no sound from YouTube (or probably from anywhere). Sound works for me with FlashPlayer7 and switching back to that makes it work without any restarting (so it did not permanently mess up sound, like some programs can). This is a Mandrake machine, 2.4.22-10mdkenterprise, I really have no idea how I have sound set up, but it works for me in most software.
Yes it fixed places that check for the version number of the flash player.
Popping up the menu with the right button (which I did to check that it reported 9 or 7) would cause Firefox to crash somewhat later. Does not seem to happen with 7. May indicate an overflow of some malloc'd data buffer.
To use, put libflashplayer9.so into ~/.mozilla/plugins and don't rename it. Apparently if it exists it will be loaded in preference to libflashplayer.so. (I wasted some time making a flashplayer.so symbolic link that switched between 7 and 9 before I finally figured out that 9 was being used no matter how I set it. Instead, to switch back to 7, rename libflashplayer9.so to libflashplayer9.so.hidden).
Removal instructions in the readme.txt say to remove libflashplayer.so, not the correct file of libflashplayer9.so.
ldd shows it links in far more libraries than 7 did, lots of gtk stuff. I suspect this is due to Pango (which does I18N text layout) using the gobject library, not because any gtk widgets are being used. This has also been complained about on Cairo (which is supposed to be a drawing library *used* by toolkits like gtk, but because good font layout requires Pango, there is a circular dependency back to gtk!)
Re:Why do we need this? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Why do we need this? (Score:5, Insightful)
I myself use it because I'm comfortable with programming in a UNIX environment and prefer using Open Source tools in both Linux and Windows - but I don't feel "dirty" editing a Word document in MS Office - if anything, because I know Office well enough by now, I get the job done quicker to have more "playtime" in Linux!
However, with that said, I don't understand why an application that just allows you to view files (rather than create or edit them) ever needs to be closed source anyway - if you're a car manufacturer you won't make a car that is only confortable for people who are 5'6" tall to drive, you'll make it with adjustable seats so it caters to the widest possible audience possible. I don't understand why MS, Adobe and others are so protective of viewing their file formats anyway when you still have to go buy their applications to create or change those file formats.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Some technologies lend themselves to abuse.
Re:Well, what now? (Score:5, Funny)
I think that is an oxymoron of sorts
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Re:Movies (Score:4, Interesting)
If the movie is MPEG1 then it looks like crap.
If it is in a Microsoft format, people who aren't on Windows can't view it.
If it is in a Real Player or Quicktime format, people who aren't on Windows or the Mac OS can't view it.
Additionally, Real and Quicktime require your users to go to the effort of finding and installing the appropriate player software. Most can't be bothered.
Also, all the above formats are patent-encumbered.
If you choose a free format such as Ogg Vorbis+Theora, then again you force the user to waste their time hunting for the plugin software, but in addition there are about five hundred sites that all distribute slightly different versions; the correct (blessed?) site is impossible to find unless the user is a computer expert.
Flash looks attractive because of these problems. In addition it makes it impossible for non-experts to keep a copy of the movie, which makes it attractive to content publishers. In their eyes, the fact that those who don't use 32 bit Windows, the 32 bit Mac OS, or i386 GNU/Linux, can't view the content is but a small price to pay.
On another note: anyone read the EULA for this Flash player? It's pretty scary! Adobe could arbitrarily send you a huge bill for auditing your compliance at any time. In addition you are 'not allowed' to run the player on an embedded/set-top-box device. Does my desktop PC become embedded when I hook, it up to my TV?
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
So make it mpeg2 or mpeg4. Duh. By the way: Flash also looks like crap, but it also performs like crap, and makes things difficult (and crappy-looking and performing) to try to view the video fullscreen.
I can view any WMV format on my Linux, it's just a question of whether or not I need the DLL. I only need the DLL for WMV9. OS X users have a nifty program called Flip4Mac, but ffmpeg h
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Should be much faster (Score:5, Informative)
Previous revisions of Flash Player for Linux preformed very poorly compared to the win32 versions (even the win32 verison in crossover office did a better job).
Yeah, Tinic ranted about that on his blog a while ago, saying he used wine for Flash on Linux (before v9, obviously) -- and he's a FlashPlayer engineer. His entry [kaourantin.net] about this beta release addresses performance. He says he's not happy with the current state of font rendering speed yet, but that it beats the Windows version by 20% with other stuff. They're still working on it.
Over all, you should see better performance of existing content, thanks to the new rendering engine introduced in v8. This is especially true for SWFs (competently) written for v8 and using cacheAsBitmap -- not rerendering vectors every frame seems to improve performance. Who would have thought...
The second performance increase will probably take a while to become common: FP9 comes with a new, JIT compiled VM. The old one is still included for backwards compatibility, but once FP9 has a good install base and is supported by developers making scripting-heavy stuff, you should definitely notice the performance increase -- it's much, much faster.
If somebody feels like playing with it, there's the free (beer) Flex SDK on the Adobe site somewhere. However, I'd like to recommend haXe [haxe.org], a Free (capital F) compiler for a very fine language, with a great type system, that I really enjoy coding in. It supports Flash 6 to 9, the Free NekoVM [nekovm.org], and can generate JavaScript (Yes! Typed!). Windows users can use the FlashDevelop [osflash.org] plugin [haxe.org], for the rest of us there's Eclipse with EHX [osflash.org].
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