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Flash 9 Beta for Linux Available

Posted by samzenpus on Thu Oct 19, 2006 07:49 AM
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." Report bugs here.
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  • AMD64 version? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by andersa (687550) on Thursday October 19 2006, @07:54AM (#16499481)
    Will there be a 64 bit version for us AMD64 users?

    I can't play flash animations on my Turion laptop with Debian AMD64 installed.
    • Re:AMD64 version? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 19 2006, @07:58AM (#16499493)
      Adobe have said no in the past, just install a 32-bit web browser instead of your 64-bit one.
      Yeah, it's a pain, but you only need to do it once.

      Why not say something into adobe.com/go/wish ?
      • Re:AMD64 version? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Bert64 (520050) <bert&slashdot,firenzee,com> on Thursday October 19 2006, @08:27AM (#16499713) Homepage
        Which is a huge nuisance, why should adobe be able to hold people back from moving to 64bit architectures?
        • Re:AMD64 version? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by tomstdenis (446163) <`moc.liamg' `ta' `sinedtsmot'> on Thursday October 19 2006, @08:29AM (#16499737) Homepage
          They do what?

          I run 64-bit OSes on both my AMD and Intel boxes. Flash be damned for all I care.

          Tom
          • Re:AMD64 version? (Score:5, Informative)

            by bug1 (96678) <glenn.l.mcgrath@gmai[ ]om ['l.c' in gap]> on Thursday October 19 2006, @09:37AM (#16500517)
            "Why would running a web browser in 32bit mode have any negative effect on uptake of 64bit OSes?"

            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 /usr/lib/firefox/firefox-bin
            libmozjs.so => /usr/lib/libmozjs.so (0x00002b566e625000)
            libxpcom.so => /usr/lib/libxpcom.so (0x00002b566e7bb000)
            libxpcom_core.so => not found
            libplc4.so => /usr/lib/libplc4.so (0x00002b566e9a5000)
            libnspr4.so => /usr/lib/libnspr4.so (0x00002b566eaaa000)
            libpthread.so.0 => /lib/libpthread.so.0 (0x00002b566ebe6000)
            libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0 (0x00002b566ecfb000)
            libgdk-x11-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libgdk-x11-2.0.so.0 (0x00002b566f124000)
            libX11.so.6 => /usr/lib/libX11.so.6 (0x00002b566f2b9000)
            libpng12.so.0 => /usr/lib/libpng12.so.0 (0x00002b566f4c2000)
            libjpeg.so.62 => /usr/lib/libjpeg.so.62 (0x00002b566f5e5000)
            libz.so.1 => /usr/lib/libz.so.1 (0x00002b566f708000)
            libsmime3.so => /usr/lib/libsmime3.so (0x00002b566f81e000)
            libssl3.so => /usr/lib/libssl3.so (0x00002b566f948000)
            libnss3.so => /usr/lib/libnss3.so (0x00002b566fa6e000)
            libcairo.so.2 => /usr/lib/libcairo.so.2 (0x00002b566fbf0000)
            libXinerama.so.1 => /usr/lib/libXinerama.so.1 (0x00002b566fd59000)
            libXt.so.6 => /usr/lib/libXt.so.6 (0x00002b566fe5c000)
            libXp.so.6 => /usr/lib/libXp.so.6 (0x00002b566ffbc000)
            libXft.so.2 => /usr/lib/libXft.so.2 (0x00002b56700c4000)
            libfontconfig.so.1 => /usr/lib/libfontconfig.so.1 (0x00002b56701d9000)
            libxpcom_compat.so => /usr/lib/libxpcom_compat.so (0x00002b567030c000)
            libstdc++.so.6 => /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6 (0x00002b567042e000)
            libm.so.6 => /lib/libm.so.6 (0x00002b567062e000)
            libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x00002b56707b0000)
            libplds4.so => /usr/lib/libplds4.so (0x00002b56709ec000)
            libgdk_pixbuf-2
          • Re:AMD64 version? (Score:5, Insightful)

            by orzetto (545509) on Thursday October 19 2006, @09:46AM (#16500619)
            Why would running a web browser in 32bit mode have any negative effect on uptake of 64bit OSes?

            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.

          • Re:AMD64 version? (Score:5, Interesting)

            by jimicus (737525) on Thursday October 19 2006, @10:25AM (#16501121) Homepage
            I'd go a step further and ask what benefit a 64-bit OS has unless you have over 4GB RAM.

            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.
    • Re:AMD64 version? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Octorian (14086) on Thursday October 19 2006, @08:00AM (#16499509) Homepage
      Which is exactly why some distros (well, my SuSE box at least) installed Firefox expicitly as a 32-bit binary, even if almost everything else on the machine is 64-bit.

      (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)
      • Re:AMD64 version? (Score:5, Informative)

        by CastrTroy (595695) on Thursday October 19 2006, @08:48AM (#16499921) Homepage
        Yes, but you also have to have a lot of other 32 bit libraries installed just for the browser to run. I think that one of them is glibc. I'm running mandrake 2007 rc1 (haven't downloaded final yet, but i've installed all the updates), and when I tried using 64-bit, even isntalling a 32-bit browser didn't work. Firefox would crash every time flash tried to start. So, we could either install only the 64 bit libraries, or install 64 and 32 bit libraries, and the 32 bit browser and hope it works. However, I'm still running full 32 bit linux on my AMD64. I tried 64 bit for a while, but I found that a lot of stuff still isn't stable enough for me on 64 bit. For one thing, the 3D desktop on Mandriva 2007 wouldn't work on my Radeon X550 when I had 64 bit. With 32 bit, no problems at all. I guess i'm going to have to wait until Mandriva 2008, when hopefully 64 bit linux will be ready. I also tried out other 64 bit distros (Fedora, Suse) and found that they weren't any better.
    • Re:AMD64 version? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anssi55 (729722) on Thursday October 19 2006, @08:03AM (#16499525) Homepage
      You could try nspluginwrapper [gibix.net].
    • by Rik Sweeney (471717) on Thursday October 19 2006, @08:35AM (#16499783) Homepage
      I can't play flash animations on my Turion laptop with Debian AMD64 installed.

      Since it's a 32bit binary, won't installing it twice do the trick?
  • gentoo ebuilds (Score:5, Informative)

    by kswtch (790406) on Thursday October 19 2006, @08:03AM (#16499531)
    here [gentoo.org] and here [gentoo.org].
  • Good news! (Score:5, Informative)

    by bioglaze (767105) on Thursday October 19 2006, @08:08AM (#16499565) Homepage Journal
    Even being beta version, Flash 9 for GNU/Linux works very well when compared to previous player.

    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)

      by sarathmenon (751376) <srm@sarathmenon . c om> on Thursday October 19 2006, @08:38AM (#16499815) Homepage Journal
      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.
      gnash is usable enough for me. Most ads works (sigh), and from what I've seen pretty much everything is rendered fine except for the flv videos. Now that ffmpeg and xine have full flv7 support, its only a matter of time before we can start to see gnash support youtube in its full glory. The best part is that it "works" on an x86_64.
  • by AcidLacedPenguiN (835552) on Thursday October 19 2006, @08:09AM (#16499573)
    Now we too can participate in the revenue generating flash supported articles that are linked from slashdot!!!! They're not just for the windows crowd anymore!
  • by Rik Sweeney (471717) on Thursday October 19 2006, @08:28AM (#16499727) Homepage
    was checked that FlashBlock [mozdev.org] still worked.

    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)

    by thebluesgnr (941962) on Thursday October 19 2006, @08:29AM (#16499733)
    There are a few problems with this release that I hope will be fixed in the future (I can only hope, since it's not open source yet).

    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.
  • Fantastic (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mogrify (828588) on Thursday October 19 2006, @09:22AM (#16500311) Homepage
    Long-awaited, indeed. The best part is finally being able to play Flash Video 8 on Linux. They got a huge quality improvement when they switched from Sorensen Spark to ON2 VP6, but no one who cares about Linux users could use it... until now :)
  • Inaccurate. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mad.frog (525085) <stevenNO@SPAMcrinklink.com> on Thursday October 19 2006, @09:24AM (#16500343)
    Flash Player 9 for Windows was officially released on June 28, 2006.

    4 months != 1 year
  • Tried it (Score:5, Informative)

    by spitzak (4019) on Thursday October 19 2006, @01:10PM (#16503811) Homepage
    On my Mandrake machine. I got no sound from YouTube, and sound works in the FlashPlayer7.

    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!)

    • by pandrijeczko (588093) on Thursday October 19 2006, @08:32AM (#16499757)
      People use Linux for various reasons, not just because they're part of an anti-Microsoft or anti-Closed Source crusade.

      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.

      • by mjbkinx (800231) on Thursday October 19 2006, @12:43PM (#16503395)

        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].