Macromedia to Port Flash MX to Linux?

LnxAddct writes "An article on CNet reports that Macromedia will start taking Linux more seriously. It will start this new initiative by making it's suite of tools run easily under WINE, then depending on the response it gets, it will port it's tools natively to Linux! Their Chief Software Architect, Kevin Lynch, stated, 'What we've been investigating is, When will it be time to bring our tools to Linux? I think it might be happening now.' Maybe 2004 will be the year of Linux."

Disaster waiting with WINE

[Anonymous Coward]

They might as well just come out and say they will not support Linux. My experiences with WINE have been, shall I say, bitter. I've managed to get a few games running with it, but never without significant hassle or loss of resources (sound, fullscreen, etc.).

The roadmap to desktop acceptance for Linux cannot go through WINE.

Wrong Software To Port?

[rsmith-mac]

While I applaud any efforts to get more software running natively on Linux, I have to ask: why Flash? I mean as far as most of us are concerned, it's the scourge of the internet, responsible for a slew of poorly designed sites, bad flash movies, and anoying advertisements. If Macromedia wants to go after the Linux crowd, wouldn't a more appreciable tool like Dreamweaver be a better choice?

That's not going to happen

[Anonymous Coward]

If you read the article, what you will see is that the guy is talking about some plans to make Flash MX work on Linux through wine first. The second phase has no concrete plan, where a native Linux Flash MX. I highly doubt that's going to happen, mostly because people talk all the time, say things, but we haven't heard much action so far. It is always talk. An action news would be much more exciting.

Maybe Microsoft should port their apps?

[Baddsectorr]

about time they figured out that people actually use Linux. they have Unix ports of their stuff like Coldfusion so why not make everything cross-platform. this is something Adobe should start doing.

A leg up on Adobe

[overbyj]

This move by Macromedia could be a big one because it would give a serious leg up on Adobe. For whatever reason, Adobe has steadfastly refused to acknowledge the Linux market. Where is Photoshop? Gimp is no Photoshop. It is good but no Photoshop. Photoshop on Linux alone would be monstrous, but why don't they do it? Who knows.

Anyway, if Macromedia really wanted to scoop Adobe, this is the one way to do it.

Re:Wrong Software To Port?

[jimbosworldorg]

Because, whether you think it's generally a horrid abomination or not, more and more sites use Flash for essential navigation tools, and up until now, it's worked... inconsistently... at best under any platform but Win32.

Native Flash rendering under *nix could be a very very big step forward towards getting mainstream acceptance for *nix as a mainstream desktop platform.

Re:Wrong Software To Port?

[Saven Marek]

Maybe referring to "The Linux Crowd" isn't the right way to go about it.

Perhaps the current "Linux Crowd" may not want flash, but there may be other reasons they want to go to linux, like the same reasons many other companies are. It's an open, extensible and stable platform with no licensing issues like Windows.

If flash, word, excel, dreamweaver and photoshop came to Linux, the "Linux Crowd" would be a whole lot larger, market share would of course be improved, and developers worldwide would have a much nicer platform to code on than the existing majority player.

Mac OSX tips, desktops and scripts [67.160.223.119]

Re:Linux voids finally being filled...

[eddy]

There are some software titles that just -need- to be ported to linux, do to lack of OSS alternatives. The Macromedia MX line of tools is -definately- one of those.

Why? It's horrible for website navigation and it's pitiful for games.

Not trolling, I just don't get Flash. The only good thing about it is all the flash ads that I don't have to see or even download since I don't run flash.

Re:Wrong Software To Port?

[Xzzy]

> responsible for a slew of poorly designed sites,

That's precisely why you do it. This software is popular. You want as much popular software on linux as you can get, so when jimbob gets pissed off at windows someday and someone suggests he try linux, the inevitable argument of "well can it do this and this like windows" holds no merit.

You gotta take the good with the bad.

How about...

[BHearsum]

They fix the Flash player first? I mean, jesus. Yeti Baseball shouldn't be using my entire CPU.

Re:Linux voids finally being filled...

[cubicledrone]

After years and years of "oh, how wonderful it would be if the net were truly a multimedia platform," the only toolset, and I mean ONLY toolset that offers solid animation and compatible sound capabilities on Linux, Mac and Windows, which is also, by the way, completely cross-platform, is Macromedia Flash.

There is also an installed base of some 500 million players. That's why it needs to be ported to Linux.

Re:Flash plug-in?

[evil_liam]

The Apple plug-in is significantly inferior to the PC one. Not trolling here, it just is, it's bigger, and runs slower.
This is one of the easiest things to benchmark.
MX2004 is supposed to be a big improvement, but I'm skint, so I don't know.

Re:Wrong Software To Port?

[Daltorak]

Don't blame the tool for these things. Blame the people who design sites poorly, and who use Flash for advertising.

Flash excels in things like interactive presentation and training systems (e.g. online product demonstration), and it is of course popular wtih online humour sites like Homestar Runner, Camp Chaos, and Rather Good. There's no lack of political satire Flash cartoons out there, either.

Another reason Flash is good is that it's well-supported on many OS platforms. It's certainly more consistently supported, and has better development tools than the equivalent W3C standards.

Re:Sweet.

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't even think about linux on the desktop untill adobe ports photoshop. this is the show stopper at are company.

if adobe is reading this...come on...get on the ball you don't need microsoft, your software on windows is half assed anyways (Pagemaker). also photoshop et al. have been ported to MacOS X so it can't be that hard to port and support a *nix env., if i remember correctly you had a unix port at one time. so come on allready.

Re:Wrong Software To Port?

[Tumbleweed]

Why HTML? I mean as far as most of us are concerned, it's the scourge of the internet, responsible for a slew of poorly designed sites, bad GIF movies, and annoying advertisements. If Macromedia wants to go after the Linux crowd, wouldn't a more appreciable tool like Gopher be a better choice?

---

Look, you can use any tool improperly. That doesn't mean the fault is with the TOOL. As with frames in HTML, so with Flash. A bad designer is going to do things badly, no matter the tool or technology.

Re:eaiser to run?

[damiam]

I wonder if the existence of MacOS X being unix based has any role in this kind of decision

For what is, unfortunately, probably not the last time, OS X being UNIX has nothing whatsoever with how easy it is or isn'tto port a Mac program to Linux. Mac apps are written for (in this case) the Carbon API, which is a continuation of the Mac Classic API. It has no resemblance at all to any API available on any non-OSX UNIX platform. It is, in fact, probably more difficult to port a program from OS X than from Windows, because there is no WINE equivilent for Carbon, and the APIs of popular widgets sets are closer to Win32 than to Carbon.

Re:See, the problem is that

[chazwurth]

I don't think that's fair. Yours is the first post I've seen in this discussion that's mentioned any of these things. Maybe I missed a post or two, maybe not -- but I don't see any crowd. I'm sure there are people out there who'd prefer that all the software being ported to Linux was done so under open source licenses - hell, I'm one of them. But I think you're over-estimating the level of zealotry more than a little bit.

What's in it for Macromedia?

[wfberg]

As much of a "win" as this is for Linux, I really wonder what's in it for Macromedia. It's not as if flashy website developers won't have any windows and mac boxes around (if only to test what your sites look like on the platforms that determine the majority of your users' experiences); the people who are really into using these tools aren't likely to be the same people who are into compiling kernels and tweaking their mod_perl.. As some one else here noted; there's no photoshop for linux.

Of course, getting the MX tools working with Wine is a great step, and gives them instant cross-platormability, but I have a hunch things will stay at that level for a while..

Re:Sweet.

[stateq2]

you can always use gimp [gimp.org] untill PS is ported (but IMO, gimp is a PS replacement)

Re:Sweet.

[plj]

You sure fill those PDF forms with xpdf too? Quite commonly used by government agencies in Finland.

OTOH, you're still right that reades sucks on Linux - you can only fill the forms with ascii characters, which is not so funny when your alphabet uses 3 extra characters in addition to English ones...

Re:Screw that!

[Egonis]

I switched to Gentoo Linux on my laptop and desktop a few weeks ago, and am VERY pleased with OpenOffice (the Ximian Edition)

I can follow powerpoints in class almost perfectly, there's the odd Bullet List Screw-Up, but it's a project that has matured wonderfully.

I no longer have ANY reason to run Windows, and I do alot of things, like:
- DV Capturing via FireWire
- Video Editing with LVE
- Instant Messaging
- Writing Documents, Spreadsheets, etc
- Wireless Networking
- VNC to some of my Customers' Desktops
- EMail via Ximian Evolution
- Reading PDF Files (via GNOME's built-in app)
- Writing PDF Files (via CUPS PDF Printer)
- Playing Quake, etc....

Why run Windows anymore? My computer is actually stable now!

Re:Linux voids finally being filled...

[capz loc]

A few months back I had the opportunity to talk with a representative from Adobe who said that they have no plans to release any of their products for Linux until there is a larger customer base.

Unfortunately, this has become the chicken-and-egg scenario, where vendors won't make software for Linux until there are more people using it, while there will never be people migrating to Linux until there is more software that will run on it.

As much as I hate it, I feel that WINE is a good intermediate step in this situation, because it gives Macromedia a low-commitment opportunity to feel out the Linux market without fully porting the software.

Re:Linux voids finally being filled...

[asdfghjklqwertyuiop]

Why? It's horrible for website navigation and it's pitiful for games.

Not trolling, I just don't get Flash. The only good thing about it is all the flash ads that I don't have to see or even download since I don't run flash.

I don't like flash much either. Much of what it is used for is crap.

But there are some good uses, like educational diagrams. Here's a perfect example: how a car transmission works [howstuffworks.com]. You can even play with the gearshift and see what happens. Stuff like this is the only reason I have flash installed.

Re:Screw that!

[Saven Marek]

You may have been marked funny, and perhaps even writing in jest or indeed poking fun at us! But I think when it comes down to it that's one of the big obstacles to converting people to Linux and I am one of the people who's all for converting more people to Linux. market share = application writer attention = better for all of us.

I think a port of MS Office to Linux is likely one of the later ports that will happen, but applications like Flash and other general productivity ones will keep up the interest of all other software houses. There are dozens of big name applications I'd like to see released for Linux. They don't necessarily have to be open source themselves either. Imagine if Linux had a 50% market share just because Macromedia, Adobe, Microsoft and others released big name apps? that would be twenty times the user base we have now, twenty times the coders and twenty times the gamers and twenty times the bug reports.

How much better could Linux get if it were that popular? Unstoppably so

The uncrackable mac [67.160.223.119]

Re:Sweet.

[bursch-X]

Well then you have never seriously worked with Photoshop. Really the GIMP is a remarkable piece of software, but saying it's a replacement for Photoshop is like saying Windows 3.1 is actually a great replacement for Mac OS X.

Re:Sweet.

[Hooded One]

You can speed up Acrobat significantly by getting rid of unneeded plugins, either by deleting them or moving them to another directory. There are only a small handful you'll ever actually use. It could still stand to be a lot faster, but it's better than it comes out of the box.

By Number 2 do you mean second or poop?

[danieleran]

Because anyone who looks at webstats knows that linux is not overtaking anything on the desktop, and certainly not Apple's share.

Your 'smart move' comment is also wrong for another reason.

The other critical difference between Mac users (the only other platform supported by most mainstream commercial developers) and Linux users, is that people who throw down all that extra cash to have a nice Mac instead of buying parts and putting together their own PC... ALSO PAY FOR SOFTWARE! Imagine that. Who the hell is going to move major apps to linux to sell to people who have never bought anything beyond Windows games? How many Linux users are gonna drop $1200 for Adobe's Creative Suite CS or Studio MX 2004?

Also recall that Macromedia has started DRMing MX 2004 apps [roughlydrafted.com].

Re:Wrong Software To Port?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you miss the point. The problem with Flash is that it attempts to replace the open, page-browsing format with its own proprietary, plugin-dependent model. The internet becomes just another form of television - passive and purely image-driven.

I would rather Linux had nothing to do with Flash. Why they didn't go for Dreamweaver I can't imagine.

Re:Sweet.

[stateq2]

"Well then you have never seriously worked with Photoshop"

You're correct. But even w/ my limited knowledge in PS, gimp is much closer to PS, than win3.1 is to OSX. For the average user, gimp is very well a PS replacement. To say otherwise, would obviously mean that a PS bias is present.

Now, as a linux user, it's always good to see big name proprietary software ported. I've been waiting for FlashMX for a long while.

Re:Flash is worse than spam

[azav]

Wow! You must be the ANTITROLL!

Why to people actually like flash? Hard for me to fathom.

Re:Linux voids finally being filled...

[Ogerman]

There are some software titles that just -need- to be ported to linux, do to lack of OSS alternatives.

Wrong. We don't "just need" any proprietary software to be ported to Linux. We do need to get behind the projects that are developing OSS alternatives and support them both community-style and financially. We also need to gather support of the business community, focusing on software that will save them money. ex.) "You spend $10,000/year on Macromedia tools? Support our project and you can drop that expense within 2 years."

I personally would gladly donate $100 to a professionally run project implementing SVG solutions so we can ditch Flash once and for all. I would donate more if it would give me a vote in future feature development. If we can buy Blender in a few month's time, we can surely pool enough resources to do this.

Re:Macromedia.

[Dr.Dubious DDQ]

Yeah, and I'm STILL hoping they eventually get around to fixing the sound synchronization problems on their Linux player...

Wonder if they've got a "beta" player hidden somewhere, as they had for a while with version 6?...

Re:Flash is worse than spam

[NanoGator]

"Why to people actually like flash? Hard for me to fathom."

Flash isn't the problem, it's how it's used. The difference? Kill Flash and people who set out to be annoying will use other methods, like huge animated .GIFs etc.

Flash is actually pretty slick. Fortunately it's being used more tastefully these days, though there are some who still need to learn that lesson.

I guess what I'm saying is it'd be far more productive to teach people about using it tastefully than it is to bitch about the existence of it.

Yeah right ...

[petabyte]

How about a flash 7 plugin guys?

The reason they want their tools to work under Wine is simple. People will use them instead of code a replacement. Ming exists but isn't anywhere as easy to use as Flash. They're probably worried someone will make a Flash clone that will output swf and svg files and be OpenSource. That would kill their market for Flash.

The Flash plugin is a pretty good example. Its a version behind. It enough that most people aren't going to bother coding their own viewer but not exactly Macromedia's top priority.

Re:adobe's going backwards

[Slack3r78]

In all honesty, the dropping of Premiere support had more to do with Final Cut Pro being a far superior product than it did Windows reliance.

Re:Sweet.

[black mariah]

The Win 3.1/OSX comparison is really quite fair if you use Photoshop or Gimp for more than photoresizing and color correction. PS just has a FAR deeper and more robust toolset. It's not better at everything (Gimps interface is faster on my systems than PS, I like some of Gimps tools better), but over all it is a much better package.

Actually, you know what? A better comparison would be Win95 to WinXP. Everything is vaguely the same, but Win95 just doesn't feel as FINISHED as XP.

"Inobvious" Linux downloads from Macromedia?

[Dr.Dubious DDQ]

I vaguely recall that, much like Real, Macromedia often 'hides' some of the Linux downloads where they are difficult to impossible to find.

I can see the link to the over-a-year-old Flash plugin for Mozilla 1.1 for Linux, but I don't see the fabled "standalone viewer" (which I know exists - I downloaded it to another machine last year), and I wonder if there isn't perhaps a 'beta' download directory or something hidden on Macromedia's site somewhere...

Anybody know of any such links?

Re:Dreamweaver, and No WINE PLEASE!

[burns210]

why not be happy with ever step, and realize that where there is one, there will be more. be happy that a MAJOR software company is looking to port one of it's big apps to linux. If this goes well, they will port more.

Gosh, everyone on hear is looking the gift horse in the mouth.

Re:Thank god ...

[Associate]

Right on!
Friends don't let friends use flash.

I want my CPU back

[Midnight Thunder]

Flash is smooth, it allows you to do a lot of fancy stuff, like annoying ads and badly designed web sites, but say sweet good bye to your CPU. What I mean by that is anytime I visit a page with flash I see a 10-20% increase in CPU usage per embeded flash. In some cases I have had my CPU usage at 80% until I closed all web page with flash in it. For this reason I ask Macromedia to please be considerate with my CPU. Maybe we need an option to be able to do a 'nice' on plug-ins?

If it makes a difference, my browser is Mozilla. If you want an example of CPU usage and Flash visit http://movies.yahoo.com/oscars/

Re:Sweet.

[Saint Stephen]

Windows has become shackle-ware so badly (Half-Life now requires a constant highspeed internet connection to play single-player) and spyware and gagware that what you need to do is dual-boot into Linux, backup your "clean" Windows XP partition with partimage, do your stuff, and restore it every other day: just install apps as needed, let it barf all over the PC, then clean up.

It's become utterly hopeless and senile, imaging and restoring often is the only hope. Or mind imprisonment.

RealNetworks revisited?

[Chuck Chunder]

1) Take a reasonably useful product.
2) Add bloat and adverts.
3) Loss!

Re:Puhleeeasse NO!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, this guy is right! Flash is one of the worst things used on the web. Aside from being poorly supported, it is also used nearly exclusively for annoying purposes. I have seen it used for: advertising, crappy navigation bars, and those horrid page "intros". I think this will only open up more possibilities for people to create crappy content for web sites. HTTP is _not_ Macromedia Flash Transfer Protocol. I refuse to view Flash content, and anyone who uses it is effectively cutting me off.

Re:Sweet.

[Overly Critical Guy]

Oh, please. Can you actually name any of this "shackle-ware," "spyware," and "gagware?" Why are you blaming this on Windows?

Half-Life doesn't require a constant highspeed Internet connection to play single-player. Steam allows offline play.

Re:Dreamweaver, and No WINE PLEASE!

[Enrico Pulatzo]

It's called "Testing The Waters". If Linux is gonna be a worthwhile platform for Macromedia to adopt, they need to do a little recon first. If Flash gets picked up on Linux under Wine, you can bet the next rewrite will be offered natively on Linux.

Personally, I'm rooting for a Fireworks MX via Wine to hit the market, cuz Macromedia could corner the for-pay Linux market there before Adobe ever thinks of porting Photoshop.

Re:Sweet.

[Anonymous Coward]

When cable internet first came out, I was doing second level phone support. I had to deal with a few people with the same illness as yourself.

The worst guy was formating and reinstalling his OS EVERY Friday.

You need help!

Re:See, the problem is that

[Delphiki]

Sure, it might make quite a few people rabid microsoft haters. But it's still only a tiny percentage of the population who gives a shit. In fact, outside of slashdot and linux/mac specific forums, not much of anyone seems to have any righteous indignation over Microsoft (unless they hate the rich in general). I don't hate Microsoft that much. I just hate all their products. I'm become less and less willing to get infuriated about their business practices, except maybe them bank rolling SCO to attack Linux, but now I'm rambling...

Re:Sweet.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would you want to use 3DSMAX? When things like Maya are around and work on Linux? Linux is the heavy graphics industry!

Re:adobe's going backwards

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, exactly. This wasn't about "Adobe's done gone Winduz!!!", it's about the fact that Apple ate Adobe's lunch with Final Cut.

Why they are so late:

[Qbertino]

Something like three years it was absolutely clear with *everyone* in the professional IT field that Linux/OSS would take off and soar. It went just as generally predicted, only did I lose a bet that Macromedia would have ported at least one app from the dreamteam to Linux within 2 years.
And here is why they're to late for me to collect my dinner out:
During the dot-bomb Flash was everybodys darling. There was no way you could design a solid site with predictable Layout behaviour without using flash. CSS was so crappy everyone just plain ignored it after playing with it for 2 hours. If you wanted a webdoc that was more than just a string of characters you had to use flash.
Then came the bomb, the web grew up within 6 months flat, Flash was to crappy for solid client side apps and the remaining pros switched to functional sites, also ditching Dreamweavers template engine for the bazillion OSS CMSes popping up left right and center. In the mean time IE and Netscape 6.1/Mozilla finally fullfilled the promise CSS had been making for 5 years. That all together weighed in on MM. Flash lost big chunks of it's significance on a monthly basis.
Nowadays Sites are cool and don't need no flash whatsoever.
But here's a really interessting thing: I happend to work on a Rich Media Framework in Flash MX 2004 Pro. After 2.5 years ignoring it I was in pretty fast again. (Sidenote: Customer and Partners agreed to GPL it once the bills are payed!) I actually had to install Windows to do it. While the IDE still has the typical super-crappy anoying macromedia glitches and quirks in it, ActionScript 2 has become a full range PL. ECMA compliance, error handling, a stack of oreilly books for it and all. Rolling an XML controlled industry leading E-Learn-Player and Webpresentation framework was a piece of cake and took me and a guy I work with no more than 8 weeks. On top of that, Macromedia is getting a drift before anybody else in the app vendor field: Their newest product 'breeze', doesn't come in a box anymore. They sell it as a service!
I presume that they saw income going down after the bomb and hushed and listend to the experts. I think there is a strong developers team with them that is seriously fed up with the crappy underlyings in their products (just like many of the professional customers) and that they have gotten a chance to call the shots. Not only is MM doing some very smart moves as a corp. right now, but a Flash MX 2k5 Pro for Linux would bring me right back onto their list. MM has had a steady revenue stream through nice packaging. Now that that doesn't work anymore, they're doing the next step. If I were to bet a fistfull of stockshares on a closed source software vendor, they'd be my first choice.
Linux/OSS is rolling and there ain't no stopping it. And now that MM isn't everybody darling anymore they have to shape up and comply.
All good news indeed.

If not WINE, then what?

[Cardbox]

Speaking as a software developer whose package runs under Windows (because that's where the money is) but sees that platform collapsing into an entropic mess in the not too distant future, I'm interested in ways towards liberation.

If (judging by the comments on this story) adapting your product to WINE and then doing a native port isn't a viable strategy, what is?

There are a lot of vendors like us out there and a little bit of guidance could result in a flood of Linux products.

Obvious move

[Anonymous Coward]

Given that windows longhorn will contain features that is in direct competion to macromedias tools its the obvious move to make.

The more microsoft incorporates technology that challenges the other players, the more "defection" we will see.

Re:Screw that!

[jpop32]

How much better could Linux get if it were that popular?

Seems like you don't realise that the only real edge Linux has over Windows is the fact that it's not popular, Joe Average OS.

When Linux get as popular as Windows, you'll also get all the bugs, all the bloatware, all the spyware, all the idiots, all the exploits and all the garbage you get with Windows. Getting Flash ported is an obvious step in that direction...

Be careful what you wish for, you probably won't like it when you get it.

Wine compliance

[Didius]

That's the first I hear about somebody actually trying to be wine compliant. Asking for wine compliant products in markets in which producing separate windows and linux versions is not an economically sound option would be an excellent path to linux acceptance. Electronic train schedules and such stuff would be a good niche to focus on. "Runs on Windows 95, 98, 2000, XP and Wine."

Re:Sweet.

[cherokee158]

More likely, the result would be "Work for Hire", and the company that hired you would end up owning the software.

The digital revolution hasn't changed the way people do business as much as some would like to think...

Re:Sweet.

[Blue Stone]

Install Adobe Reader 6 :)

From the Start->Run windows menu, open the "x:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 6.0\Reader" folder,
[where x is the right drive letter.]
Find the plug_ins folder and rename it plug_ins_disabled
Create a new folder named plug_ins
Copy the following files from "plug_ins_disabled" to "plug_ins":
EWH32.api, printme.api, and search.api

From The Inquirer [theinquirer.net].

GAMES

[essreenim]

I think you'vew all managed to go off on a big tangent..again.

I work with games, and increaingly, we're seeing Macromedia flash being used in kids/ed. games.
I believe its a growing market,

so if joe bloggs is scared that by using Linux, his kids will miss out on education possibilities etc. he's mistaken.

If this works out the way it should, Linux could eventaually compete with M$ on the most difficult level - a serious alternative gaming environment...

Good news.

Re:Thank god ...

[tverbeek]

For each 1 site which does use flash for something which absolutely needs an animated illustration of how something works, there'll be no less than 99 sites which:

Sure, but you could make a statement of the same form for the use of just about any new tool: HTML frames, the verdammt <blink> tag, animated GIF logos, Photoshop lens flares in comics, freeze-action-and-move-the-camera effects in film, Java mouse-trailers, etc. Hell, nothing pisses me off more than seeing the aesthetically inept misusing Flash instead of hiring me (or even some other qualified graphic designer) to do it right, but that's not the fault of the tool.

I certainly hope this Flash-on-Linux experiment works out. It's not a show-stopper for me dumping Windows, because I've already moved all my Flash work to OS X, but it'd definitely be nice to be able to use it on my Linux box as well. Seeing Dreamweaver on Linux would be welcome, but I'm really more eager to see Fireworks ported; I'd even pay the money to have a better alternative to the GIMP.

Stop Poo-Pooing

[polyp2000]

There are a lot of people on /. poo-pooing this initiative. Its simply absurd. I have my issues with Flash , and Dreamweaver too, just like everybody else.

But for heavens sake this is great news and I support it whole heartedly. Consider this, suppose this initiative was a success, and we have industry standard applications running, on the linux desktop , Flash, Fireworks, Dreamweaver, Homesite and so forth? There are a lot of New Media shops out there who are going to benefit immensely from avoiding the Microsoft OS tax. The repercussions of this are immense.

Just quit moaning and support Macromedia for taking Linux more seriously. Regardless of issues with the software or how its put to use. Macromedia are doing a good thing period!

Re:Screw that!

[74nova]

but the fact that there are many distros makes me believe that this wont happen. imho, if linux became as popular as windows, youd have distros that were like you suggest, but youd also have ones that stay true to the cause. we would end up with several more apps to use natively on our distros that did not become spy/bug/bloatware. thats the point, you have a choice: not even between windows and linux, but it a couple distros go crazy like you say, there are 1000's more that probably wont.

just my .02

Mod parent flamebait

[fiannaFailMan]

Yeah yeah. "Flash sucks blah blah blah."

Dude, there are plenty of badly designed websites out there written in HTML. Do we denounce HTML as a bad standard too?

Sheesh!

Re:Flash is worse than spam

[globalar]

"Flash isn't the problem, it's how it's used."

Flash is a problem in my mind because it is not configurable for the client. It gives complete control to the creators, which sounds all wonderful, but the creators do not have my interest in mind. I have to either block it or watch it. Can I set a Flash window not to loop by default? Can I turn off sound for all instances of the player? Can I limit the amount of data the player can download?

Re:Screw that!

[jhylkema]

Quoth the poster:

When Linux get as popular as Windows, you'll also get all the bugs, all the bloatware, all the spyware, all the idiots, all the exploits and all the garbage you get with Windows. Getting Flash ported is an obvious step in that direction...

Not necessarily. See, a lot of these problems with Windows comes from its being so inherently insecure by design. Windows XP creates root accounts with no password [microsoft.com] by default! Until recently, Outlook opened attachments automatically by default, even executable ones. Windows has other problems, for example, with ports being left open by default. The list goes on.

By contrast, with Linux, if you set the nodev,noexec,nosuid flags on /home and you're not running as root, you are already orders of magnitudes more secure than with any version of Windows. And there are many, many other ways to harden Linux that Bill can only dream of for his garbage.