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Why Is Adobe Flash On Linux Still Broken?
Posted by
kdawson
on Sun Aug 17, 2008 02:37 PM
from the where-there's-a-will dept.
from the where-there's-a-will dept.
mwilliamson writes "As I sit reading my morning paper online I still cannot view the embedded videos due to auto-detection of my Flash player not working. One in every three or four YouTube videos crashes the browser. I remember sometime back reading that Adobe has a very small development team (possibly only one) working on the Linux port of Flash. It has occurred to me that Flash on Linux is the one major entry barrier controlling acceptance of Linux as a viable desktop operating system. No matter how stably, smoothly, efficiently, and correctly Linux runs on a machine, the public will continue to view it as second-rate if Flash keeps crashing. This is the worst example of being tied down and bound by a crappy 3rd-party product over which no Linux distribution has any control. GNASH is nice, but it just isn't there 100%. I really do have to suspect Adobe's motivation for keeping Flash on Linux in such a deplorable state."
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Flash (Score:5, Insightful)
Flash (and Silverlight, et al) are a threat to the Internet generally. I wouldn't run Flash even if they bothered to create a version that runs on my OS (64-bit Linux).
The more of use that don't use Flash, the better.
Flash as a service delivery platform (Score:5, Insightful)
Flash is a great channel to provide commercial products (video, ads, DRM'ed shit).
It's no threat at all when Flash isn't abused as website critical table of contents.
To comment on the OP: have you already tried the version 10 release candidate? It's supposed to support new audio API's and hardware acceleration.
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Re:Flash as a service delivery platform (Score:5, Insightful)
So it's true - if the OP and the subsequent comments are representative of a real problem: Pr0n is what drives the success of a net platform!
Elephant, meet room.
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Re:Flash (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't disagree that flash is bad for the web, but in order to convince developers not to use it, there needs to be a valid alternative. If youtube didn't use flash for video, what would they use instead? Animated gifs? Expecting a site like youtube to just not serve video because there isn't a free software way to do what they want to do is unreasonable.
We really need at least some form of video integrated into the browser, and it looks like we might have it in firefox soon [slashdot.org], (better many years too late than never). Then, we can at least give sites the option of serving video to browsers that support theora but not flash.
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Re:Flash (Score:5, Insightful)
You've proven the case for multimedia on the Web. Not Flash.
Think of the level of citizen journalism, all the articles and ideas, that Microsoft Word has enabled. Therefore, we should all store and distribute .doc files instead of an open standard.
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Open Source Flash? (Score:5, Interesting)
So there is no version of Flash that is open source then?
The disadvantage of not being able to play Flash is mostly on sites like YouTube. But some other sites are also using Flash for the interesting content.
So the big question is - is it possible to implement a Flash player for Linux that's open source?
Re:Open Source Flash? (Score:5, Informative)
There is Gnash (http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/) but it still has a way to go
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Re:Open Source Flash? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Open Source Flash? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not just the "interesting" content unfortunately.
There's a BBQ restaurant nearby that I occasionally order to-go from. If I was out of the house and wanted to get something on the way home I would pull their webpage up on my iPhone and order after looking at the online menu. Well guess what happened a couple months ago? They had their website redesigned with flash and provided no alternate webpage for those of us without flash players.
The use of flash in this case provided nothing for the site other than some fancy animation when the page first opens. I emailed the admin but have had no luck getting access to the old site provided via the new main page :(
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Re:Open Source Flash? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Open Source Flash? (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree with this - but it's important not to go off on some zealotry-driven rant (this being Slashdot) that's full of generalizations. Keep it simple, and explain the exact situation: There is no way to use the restaurant's new website on an iPhone, at all; while it used to work perfectly fine (make sure they realize this second part - something is broken that used to work well).
I've seen and heard plenty of zealotry-driven rants about the web, usually regarding Flash or Javascript. In the real world people don't care about your opinions regarding "good" or "evil" technologies. What they DO care about is something that isn't working in a practical manner.
A burger place may listen politely to a vegetarian, but they're not going to change much to accommodate that person. When a repeat customer is taking their business elsewhere, they're a bit more willing to make changes.
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iphone, no flash? (Score:5, Interesting)
However, as my wife wants the iphone, I have to ask how this problem works. I thought most systems used flash for youtube - which leads me to the question of how does the iphone use youtube if it doesn't use flash?
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Re:Open Source Flash? (Score:5, Informative)
There is two versions of Flash decoding libraries, one called Gnash and another called Swfdec. I still wonder why they don't work together, but hey, they are open source and both has kinda different visions how to deal with Flash proprietary stuff. I have tested Swfdec for a while and I can say that Ads surerly works, so do YouTube videos - but not perfectly. I personally think one of them will achieve 90% of all Flash stuff playable in next year or two, so it is kinda very ok. To be honest, Adobe also opened up Flash spec a bit more and as far as I heard both teams are busy implementing stuff from it.
So, in short, it is possible, but it takes time. As it is not pressing problem - there is Adobe Flash player for Linux officialy - so everything progress slowly. But it goes forward.
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Re:Open Source Flash? (Score:5, Interesting)
This is not so trivial as not being able to play YouTube videos. There are many commercial sites that use flash for almost their entire content.
Along with that, I can tell you about a buddy of mine who works in the advertising industry: we were talking about Firefox and web sites and I mentioned to him about how much I hate flash and all the flashy crap (no pun intended) that distracts and pisses me off when I surf the web... so much so that I use Flashblock. His reply was, "yeah me and everyone I know in this industry try to get the programmers to put as much flashy flash stuff up on our different marketing web sites and advertising banners as possible... and loving it! We won't stop." (Paraphrased, but pretty damn close.)
So you see, just like photo shop, the graphic arts and marketing industry are major players driving this piece of crap scourge (sorry for not letting my real feeling for flash content show... it wouldn't be appropriate here).
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Re:Open Source Flash? (Score:5, Interesting)
I've never been able to make any Flash site at all work with gnash (I'm currently using gnash 0.8.2). Though I'm using 64-bit Linux, so maybe that's the problem. Though I thought gnash was supposed to be written well enough that it wouldn't matter.
I don't want to install Adobe's player. The source isn't available for public scrutiny and it's a major piece of infrastructure. AFAIK it's sending encrypted ICMP packets to Adobe telling them every piece of Flash I download or some such stupidly evil thing.
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Crashes on Windows XP too (Score:5, Insightful)
Flash 9.0.124.0 crashes all the time on my wife's Windows XP system running Firefox as well. Most of the time it exhibits as not being able to play sound. So it definitely isn't limited to Linux. Flash is just crap.
I ask myself the same question (Score:5, Informative)
After the release of Firefox 3.0 I opted to install Adobe Flash Player 10 Beta. The performance was much better as was the video quality and I didn't experience as many crashes. This all changed when Adobe updated the Beta and the details can be found in the bug report that I filed here [mozilla.org]. To summarize, after the update, Flash Player 10 would cause the browser to segfault and lockup so frequently, sometimes even upon startup, that the browser became unusable -- I had to downgrade to Flash Player 9. Currently there is someone from Adobe assigned to work on the "problem" whatever it is, but I haven't heard anything in weeks.
jdb2
Re:I ask myself the same question (Score:5, Interesting)
Thank you for hitting the nail on the head. While everyone that uses Linux exclusively is saying "We need a well running flash player",we Windows users (only use Linux on the laptop for security reasons) will be happy to tell you that there ain't no such thing,certainly not from Adobe. If I build a machine and don't install flash on it,the browsers,be it Firefox,Kmeleon,Opera,IE,etc will be nice and stable. The second I install flash,well that is when the headaches begin. Random lockups,freezes,poor memory and CPU usage,etc. And as the above poster mentioned and I can attest to it isn't just when you are using flash either. It is just a buggy POS software.
Unfortunately it looks like we are stuck with it for now, just like we were stuck with Real files being all over the net in the 90's. I just hope silverlight doesn't take off,because after feeling threatened by Vista hatred and the netbooks showing up out of left field with Linux running on them I'm betting they really feel the need to lock-in everyone to Windows with a new format. Lets face it,MSFT has never really gotten the web,but getting folks locked into Windows,that they understand. I'm betting if silverlight stomps flash and takes over web video that a year or so down the line they'll come out with a new version that "requires a subset of features only available on Windows Presentation Foundation,which is currently available only on Windows Vista and Windows 7. Please use a compatible Operating System to view this site." And that will be that.
What we need is someone in the OSS community to come up with a completely free and open standard net video format to compete with flash/silverlight. It should run on all the major platforms(Windows,Linux,MacOSX,BSD) and have free editors,converters,etc,and finally have a better picture to size ratio than flash or silverlight. Then everyone could enjoy the Internet multimedia content,regardless of browser or OS. But asking for a non buggy flash,when the Windows version which is their bread and butter is buggy,is just pointless. But as always this is my 02c,YMMV
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They just don't care. (Score:5, Interesting)
They just don't care because there are no real competitors to Flash. For most mainstream sites today, Flash is mandatory. (And no amount of boycott will change that.)
I think the best way to fix this is by subversion and infiltration. Boycotts don't work. They haven't worked with Vista and won't work with Flash.
The Linux community needs to stop thinking it can "boycott" things like protocols, and file formats and instead, work to make alternate applications that can work with those file formats and protocols to eat the other guy's lunch.
Suggest reading Adobe's blogosplat (Score:5, Informative)
and on X64 it's even worse (Score:5, Interesting)
far from the now mature process of download/click/wait/enjoy, the process involved getting just the right software version, installing it manually in the correct location, maybe hacking around with .INI files and then crossing your fingers that the mean-time-between-crashes was longer than the time it took to print your document.
So it is with installing flash on FF3/U_x64. The process basically sucks and as said, provides a sufficiently bad user experience to turn normal people off Linux for years.
Probably... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is an irksome statement. I doubt Adobe has an interest in making Linux look bad. Isn't there a saying, "never ascribe to malice what can be explained by incompetence."
Probably what would work better here is, "never ascribe to malice what can be explained by business sense." Linux is 4%ish of the desktop market so it would make sense that 4% (or less, but certainly not more) of Adobe flash development go to linux porting. 4% of their development just isn't going to make Flash as good as it is on other platforms, and I doubt they are receiving a lot of money from linux distros to change this.
Yeah it sucks if you use linux but no need to point a finger at Adobe. Its simple dollars and cents (or sense).
This story also needs an update. (Score:5, Insightful)
There's various bug reports about this with regards to Pulseaudio and Flash--as well as numerous othat applications--in all major distributions that have packaged Pulseaudio by default. I'm not going to link all the bug reports in a slashdot comment, but you can search for them yourself.
The story and summary seems to be calling out Adobe on this issue, when it's not really their fault. If PA didn't have as many compatibility issues with alsa applications as it has, Flash would work fine.
It's unfair to call out Adobe on this issue. It expects a working alsa implementation, and when it has to use Pluseaudio's version of the virtual device, it crashes. Adobe doesn't have any control over the faultily implementation. So if there's a story that's about Flash crashing fine, but let's put the blame where it belongs here.
Stop browser crashes with nspluginwrapper (Score:5, Informative)
One in every three or four YouTube videos crashes the browser.
Of course the ideal solution would be for Adobe to fix Flash, but in the meantime you can use nspluginwrapper [beauchesne.info] to prevent Firefox from crashing whenever Flash goes down. nspluginwrapper runs Flash in a separate child process from the web browser, and uses IPC to display the plugin's contents in your browser; it was originally created to allow people to use 32-bit plugins in 64-bit browsers, but this mechanism is also great for isolating the web browser from plugin crashes.
Another solution is to use Opera, which on Linux runs its plugins in an nspluginwrapper-like child process by default.
Re:Flash sucks (Score:5, Informative)
Of course, I'd take silverlight more seriously if it worked better on Windows. Several computers I've set up have had problems installing Silverlight.
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