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Adobe (Temporarily?) Kills 64-Bit Flash For Linux 272

Posted by Soulskill from the how-rude dept.
An anonymous reader writes "It seems that with the release of the 10.1 security patches, Adobe has, at least temporarily, killed 64-bit Flash for Linux. The statement says: 'The Flash Player 10.1 64-bit Linux beta is closed. We remain committed to delivering 64-bit support in a future release of Flash Player. No further information is available at this time. Please feel free to continue your discussions on the Flash Player 10.1 desktop forums.' The 64-bit forum has been set to read-only."
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Adobe (Temporarily?) Kills 64-Bit Flash For Linux More

Adobe (Temporarily?) Kills 64-Bit Flash For Linux

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  • Fuck flash (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 11, 2010 @10:37AM (#32535314)

    I never had a player installed. And I'm doing just fine.

    It's just yet another proprietary lock-in. And most of the time it serves just waste.

  • Flash Sucks (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 11, 2010 @10:38AM (#32535328)

    That's one down. Now, get them to cancel flash on i386 Linux, then on MacOS, then Windows, and we'll be all set.

  • flash killer (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 11, 2010 @10:41AM (#32535364)

    First Apple, and now Adobe as the new flash killer. Good job

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by rumith ( 983060 )
      ...For everything else, there's SmokeScreen [smokescreen.us].

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by iainl ( 136759 )

      Hey, at least you Linux lot had a 64-bit Flash in the first place. Us poor Windows users have to drop to the 32-bit browser if we want to run pointless rubbish (well, excluding Windows itself, but you know what I mean).

  • This is why Flash must die. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by LWATCDR ( 28044 ) on Friday June 11, 2010 @10:43AM (#32535384) Homepage Journal

    Yea Flash is an Open standard....
    Let's move on to HTML5 and or even JavaFX and drop this none standard standard.

    • Re:This is why Flash must die. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Richard_at_work ( 517087 ) on Friday June 11, 2010 @11:01AM (#32535694)
      Having done a fair bit with HTML5 video over the past few weeks, I can safely say that although its looking good, and I enjoyed producing HTML5 video apps, its not a flash killer yet.

      They need to sort out the HTML5 subtitle standard, and someone needs to actually support it.

      They need to sort out the cue points standard, and someone needs to support it. (No, events fired every X ms or so is not enough)

      They need to eliminate cross browser issues with overlaying html over the video stream.

      They need to enable adaptive streaming.

      They need to do a lot more work, but what has been done so far is very nice.

      • They need to sort out the HTML5 subtitle standard, and someone needs to actually support it.

        They need to sort out the cue points standard, and someone needs to support it. (No, events fired every X ms or so is not enough)

        What's wrong with the jquery srt plugin [v2v.cc]?

        They need to eliminate cross browser issues with overlaying html over the video stream.

        What issues?

        • They need to sort out the HTML5 subtitle standard, and someone needs to actually support it.

          They need to sort out the cue points standard, and someone needs to support it. (No, events fired every X ms or so is not enough)

          What's wrong with the jquery srt plugin [v2v.cc]?

          It ties you down to one javascript framework - its really something that should be provided by the <video> element itself, and handled by the player, not by external javascript. Having to handle subtitles externally is like having to handle the audio separately.

          They need to eliminate cross browser issues with overlaying html over the video stream.

          What issues?

          I have seen issues where, although rendered above the video stream, links are not clickable, and other issues where components that should be rendered above are infact rendered below the stream.

          • did you set your z-indexes properly? Did you account for all browsers when you wrote the video tags? I ran into trouble with buttons when there were multiple formats for fallback and messing with the video tags a bit seemed to straighten things out in the troubled browsers (chrome seems to be the far most forgiving and safari the least forgiving with multiple formats, but I haven't checked safari 5 yet).

            • did you set your z-indexes properly?

              Yes

              Did you account for all browsers when you wrote the video tags?

              Thats the issue - we have 5 established web browsers today (Opera, Safari, Chrome, Firefox and IE), 4 of which have professed a desire to work closely toward a standard - in this day and age, why should there have to be accommodations made for different browsers when targetting a brand new standard? If the browsers can implement it differently enough that you have to code to the browser rather than the standard, the standard is not strict enough.

          • It ties you down to one javascript framework - its really something that should be provided by the video element itself

            No, it shouldn't. There's a million ways you could do subtitles. There are lots of different formats and there are many ways you could serve up the subtitle content that restricting it to a certain way only limits a developer.

            I have seen issues where, although rendered above the video stream, links are not clickable, and other issues where components that should be rendered above are infact

            • No, it shouldn't. There's a million ways you could do subtitles. There are lots of different formats and there are many ways you could serve up the subtitle content that restricting it to a certain way only limits a developer.

              So its OK to set standards for everything else, except for the things you don't want them to?

              I have seen issues where, although rendered above the video stream, links are not clickable, and other issues where components that should be rendered above are infact rendered below the stream.

              I haven't experienced any of these issues and it sounds like your z-index is the problem.

              Z-indexes are not the cause of the issues I am seeing (why should anything in a container div be in a different z-index to its parent when not set explicitly?)

              • So its OK to set standards for everything else, except for the things you don't want them to?

                If you're just going to make stuff up and argue with things I didn't say in the first place I think we're pretty much done here..

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by d2globalinc ( 1831704 )
        Im sick of these uninformed idiots thinking flash is all about VIDEO.. video is a small piece of the possibilities with flash... It also makes a great cross-platform application development platform, expec with AIR. Steve Jobs doesn't want flash because it would mean the end of his money train called the app store, it has nothing to do with steve's qwest for perfection.. If steve was that into performance, security, etc - he would have stopped making QUICKTIME a long time ago. Flash push'd quicktime outa

    • Got an Education? (Score:5, Informative)

      by m509272 ( 1286764 ) on Friday June 11, 2010 @11:21AM (#32536002)

      Stupid comment, get an education. If you want to create your own Flash player you can do that. It is OPEN. Stop drinking the Apple Kool Aid without question.

      http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/ [gnu.org]

      http://flowplayer.org/ [flowplayer.org]

      http://www.swift-tools.net/Flash/ [swift-tools.net]

      http://www.swftools.com/tools-category.php?cat=968 [swftools.com]

      There are also dozens of tools that create Flash apps so you are not restricted to Adobe's tools either.

      • Re:Got an Education? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by datapharmer ( 1099455 ) on Friday June 11, 2010 @11:40AM (#32536254) Homepage
        except that the standards published are always a few versions behind and in reality none of those players will play any of the most recent content reliably. Sure, they work for some simple stuff but calling them an open alternative is hardly fair. Sure, they could be if adobe published their intentions in advance but then they would lose their advantage. Same problem with PDF on the creation end. Sure, it is open, but if you want the most recent features in acrobat from a free or even paid alternative, too bad, they haven't been published yet.

        • Sure, it is open, but if you want the most recent features in acrobat from a free or even paid alternative,

          If you want the most recent features of Acrobat, you must be a very rare and special person.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by s73v3r ( 963317 )
        Except Adobe is solely in control of that "standard". Face it, Flash is about as "open" as Microsoft's Office XML format.

  • Committed (Score:5, Funny)

    by Enderandrew ( 866215 ) <enderandrew@NOsPAM.gmail.com> on Friday June 11, 2010 @10:44AM (#32535398) Homepage Journal

    By committed, we mean not really committed at all.

    We know that Silverlight is suppoting 64-bit. We know that Microsoft has been pushing 64-bit since 2003. We know all new Windows 7 PCs are coming 64-bit. And we will continue to keep our heads in the sand.

    Thanks for your continued patronage.

    • Re:Committed (Score:5, Interesting)

      by VGPowerlord ( 621254 ) on Friday June 11, 2010 @11:18AM (#32535926)

      We know that Silverlight is suppoting 64-bit. We know that Microsoft has been pushing 64-bit since 2003. We know all new Windows 7 PCs are coming 64-bit. And we will continue to keep our heads in the sand.

      You are aware that the default browser in 64-bit Windows is 32-bit Internet Explorer?

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Want to know why?
        It's because many plugins, such as Flash, don't come in 64-bit flavors.

        • Another reason: You don't need a 64-bit address space to run a web browser.

          • It isn't just about addressing more than 2 or 4 GB of memory with a single program. In fact, that isn't what 64 bit means. That term "X bit" refers to the the size of the command that a CPU processes at a given per cycle. That is, the maximum registersize used for all math operations, and if done right, the fastest. So large numbers can be dealt with faster. Bench marks show that this only really speeds up computation for a few common computer programs: people doing lots of computations, databases, and

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by squizzar ( 1031726 )
        Not to mention VS2010 - which is depressingly slow on my x64 Windows 7 machine. I thought there was already some way of running 32 bit Firefox with 32 bit flash on 64 bit linux? That's basically Microsoft's 'Solution'

    • We know that Silverlight is suppoting 64-bit. We know that Microsoft has been pushing 64-bit since 2003. We know all new Windows 7 PCs are coming 64-bit. And we will continue to keep our heads in the sand.

      To be fair to Microsoft (gasp, yes, even they deserve minimally that), they were planning on making Windows7 x64 only since every chip since 2006 (that was Conroe's launch, many NetBurst supported it as well but not all) supported it. Then Intel came along and released a glorified 486 called Atom which sold like hotcakes (for $40/unit, why wouldn't it -- netbooks are great in their niche) and completely screwed their plans.

      The new Atoms support x86_64 and Microsoft has hinted that Windows 8 will be x64 only

  • Footcannon: aim, fire, reload ... (Score:5, Funny)

    by AliasMarlowe ( 1042386 ) on Friday June 11, 2010 @10:44AM (#32535412) Journal
    Oh well, it looks like Adobe wants us 64bit Linux users to focus on H.264, which is really great with hardware acceleration in the graphics card. Uh, wait a minute...

  • Adobe has one target market: (Score:3, Insightful)

    by 0100010001010011 ( 652467 ) on Friday June 11, 2010 @10:45AM (#32535432)

    Windows devices.

    Is it any wonder that how good Flash for OS X is, Steve banned them from the iP* devices? I don't know how Flash runs on Linux, but on my Mac more than 1-2 youpo^H^H tube videos up in tabs and my fans are maxed out.

    Someone in the Linux community needs to step up tell Adobe to shove it like Apple did and start working towards an HTML5 future.

    The enemy of my enemy is my friend?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by LWATCDR ( 28044 )

      Exactly. Adobe will support what ever platforms make the most money for Adobe.
      That is why they want to be on the iPhone so bad.
      But they will always be in control. We must have an open standard for this and now.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by farble1670 ( 803356 )

      adobe is one of few major software vendors that has consistently kept their software suite going on mac, even through the bad times.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Khuffie ( 818093 )
      Apple only recently provided 3rd party API access to hardware acceleration for video in Mac OS X 10.6.3. Six days later, Adobe released a beta preview of Flash Player 10.1 with hardware acceleration for video. So really, is it Adobe's fault? Or is it Apple's fault for locking down their OS and access go important APIs? http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/28/flash-player-gala-brings-hardware-decoding-support-to-mac-os-x/ [engadget.com]

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by s73v3r ( 963317 )
        Bullshit. That's the low level API. Since 10.4 or so, Apple released CoreVideo, which provided video playback, and used hardware acceleration if available. Adobe just didn't want to use the high level API.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Khuffie ( 818093 )
          That's because the CoreVideo API didn't allow to read back the rendered pixels, which the Flash Player kind of requires to be able to put overlays (with transparencies) if needed over the video. You really think Adobe didn't use an API because they "didn't want to"?

    • Flash Player on OSX has sucked since long before the iPhone, though it has gotten significantly better in that time.

  • I've only ever used 32bit versions of Flash on Linux, and even those have tons of bugs (or just plain don't work). I can only imagine what the 64bit version is like. I really doubt that it worked any better - Flash on Linux sucks, in general, and whatever makes it die quicker is okay with me.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by chicagoan ( 670650 )
      The 64bit version of flash on linux was much better for me than the 32bit version running through ndiswrapper. The plugin used to crash for me all the time when wrapped but ever since the 64bit version came out crashes are rare. When I go full screen on say you tube it does get a bit choppy very easily but I'll take that over crashes.

    • Works fine near as I can tell.

  • I think that HTML5 is going to come on REAL strong.

  • openSUSE has an RPM that pulls in Flash, because they're not allowed to redistribute it directly. What it mainly seems to do is show an EULA and then download and install Flash. I know I've had a couple of updates to it, so it'll be interesting to see what happens if the 10.1 Flash site is disabled.

    Oh well, I guess I can manage without Flash. It's not as if the occasional YouTube video is a big loss.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by G Money ( 12364 )

      I don't think they ever used the 64 bit version of flash, they just pulled in the 32 bit version so this shouldn't affect OpenSUSE at all. They always used nsplugginwrapper before for flash on x86_64 (although maybe they've changed this lately).

  • Like in a Kafka novel... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Kidbro ( 80868 ) on Friday June 11, 2010 @10:54AM (#32535590)

    Welcome to the Flash Player 10.1 Forum
    Important: Do not use this forum to discuss the Flash Player 10 64-bit Linux prerelease or Flash Player 10 and earlier release players. Follow these links to discuss these topics:
    Flash Player 10 for 64-bit Linux forum [adobe.com]

    Flash Player 10 for 64-bit Linux (Read Only)
    Welcome to the Flash Player 10 for 64-bit Linux Forum

    I'm not sure whether I should laugh or cry... but it reminds me of reading The Trial :)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by raddan ( 519638 ) *
      I'm pretty sure that any sufficiently large organization, say, one that has more than 20 members, behaves pathological. Humans don't agree by nature, but it's easier to keep the message coherent when you only need to knock a few heads together.

  • Adobe couldn't pull (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Stumbles ( 602007 ) on Friday June 11, 2010 @10:56AM (#32535612)
    their head out of their ass if they used the worlds largest crane; http://www.dlog.com/fileadmin/user_upload/UEber_uns/Presse/mobil_kran_2_20cm.jpg [dlog.com]

  • The beta is closed, but that doesn't mean Flash 10.1 isn't available for Linux. You can still download it from their site. The closure of the beta could mean anything from 'we're not going to do it' to 'we really messed up and we're writing it from scratch'.

    Flash 10 had been working a LOT better than previous versions for me, so at least we aren't stuck with the old flash 7 or 8 crap.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by makomk ( 752139 )

      Except the 64-bit beta version almost certainly has a remote code execution vulnerability that's unlikely to ever be fixed now there's no new releases. In fact, it looks like not wanting to put in the effort to fix it is why they terminated the program, judging from the timing.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by John Hasler ( 414242 )

      > Flash 10 had been working a LOT better than previous versions for me...

      That's the explanation, then. The quality got out of control and exceeded their standards. Nothing to do but kill it.

  • Poor Adobe... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by gentlemen_loser ( 817960 ) on Friday June 11, 2010 @11:14AM (#32535884) Homepage
    A few days ago, there was a discussion here about how evil Apple was for trying to kill Flash. I said then, and will repeat here: Fuck you Adobe.

    They took their sweet time porting their "cross platform" plugin to Linux, and in the meantime, we were stuck with the barely functioning (although I do not fault them for the effort) GNU implementation. Cross platform to Adobe means: Windows 7, Windows Vitsa, Windows XP, and Mac OS. Personally, I pine for the day that HTML 5 is able to displace Flash, and therefore Adobe, permanently. In my opinion, they have squandered any goodwill towards the open source community. I'll be the first one in line to dance on their grave.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by JackDW ( 904211 )

      Disagree. Adobe's work in porting Flash to Linux has made the Linux browsing experience as similar to the Windows one as we would ever wish it to be. Adobe has made Linux more usable, because most websites now "just work" on Linux, even when they rely on Flash.

      Linux users such as myself (13+ years of desktop use) cannot expect the rest of the world to give up Flash just because it's a non-free application. Someday, HTML5 and Javascript may be so much better than Flash that the switchover occurs naturally,

    • Cross platform to Adobe means: Windows 7, Windows Vitsa, Windows XP, and Mac OS.

      For their CS suite, yes. For the Flash player, MacOS isn't *much* better off than Linux. The Flash player on OSX stinks. Not only is performance bad, but it crashes constantly.

      On the bright side, Apple includes a nice quick PDF viewer, so at least you don't need to install Acrobat Reader.

    • I'll be the first one in line to dance on their grave.

      I think Linus already shotgunned the grave dancing back when he was struggling with youtube on his wife's Fedora install [redhat.com].

      Linus Torvalds 2008-03-31 15:37:13 EDT

      Description of problem:

      youtube no workee - fedora 9 not usable for wife

      Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):

      swfdec.x86_64 0.6.2-1.fc9
      swfdec-gtk.x86_64 0.6.2-1.fc9
      swfdec-mozilla.x86_64 0.6.0-1.fc9

      How reproducible:

      I didn't try a lot of videos, but I couldn't find a single one that actually
      worked. And what's the internet without the rick-roll?

      Some just show a light gray background, some give the play buttons etc, but show
      only a black screen even when the red ball at the bottom moves along..

      Steps to Reproduce:
      1. Install current Fedora 9
      2. Rick-roll!
      3. No profit!

      Actual results:

      Some videos just show a light gray background, some give the play buttons etc,
      but in the latter case show only a black screen even when the red ball at the
      bottom seems to moves along..

      Expected results:

      Rick Astley in all his glory! People have reported that youtube videos are
      supposed to work with swfdec, so I presume they have worked at some point and
      have been broken recently.

      Just to test that this isn't just a anti-rick-roll security feature, I also
      tested some other videos, but let's face it - we do need Rick for the "Full
      Internet Experience".

      Additional info:

      This is "high" priority because the wife will kill me if she doesn't have her
      videos. And the adobe player won't install on current rawhide due to some
      library issues.

      "Obi-wan Kenobi, you're our only hope"

  • The Nessus web interface is done in flash and fairly nice. Is there an alternative for the command-line challenged?

    • You are a security analyst who is afraid of the command line? Really??

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by chill ( 34294 )

        No, sorry. :-)

        I've created some click-n-run templates that generate reports management demands on seeing. THEY are command-line challenged. My stuff is already 90% automated.

  • I'm confused (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    We love flash in Apple/Android stories but hate it in Adobe stories... what about other stories?

  • On this Celeron based machine Flash is unwatchable with 32bit Linux as well as 64bit. HTML5 streamed video on the other hand, when watched with a beta Chrome build that supports it ,gives me a passable viewing experience (although you still get immediate frame-dragging if the machine has any additional load).

  • The problem I have with this is that, in my organizaiton, Flash is actually used for some of the administrative web services within the company. Many of my users (including me!) only have one computer, and it's a 64-bit Linux workstation. We also have a security rule that says we're supposed to patch vulnerabilities, and if a patch is not availble for a known-vulnerable application, we're supposed to remove it.

    So all these rules interact and add up to "some users can no longer use some administrative web s

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Shados ( 741919 )

      Why not just host a browser on a Windows box and serve the applications through Citrix? (It works not unlike X remotely, where the end user experience is roughly like if the application was running locally). Thats what we did at my previous company when stuff was incompatible with user workstations.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Khyber ( 864651 )

        Because Citrix is a slow piece of shit. Having had to deal with it at Solectron, Kroger's, and other places, I've learned to stay FAR the hell away from that piece of garbage.

  • Instructions and download of latest flash 64-bit (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Can be found here: http://nxadm.wordpress.com/2009/04/26/install-64-bit-adobe-flash-player-on-ubuntu-904/ (with md5 of the file, up to date with Ubuntu 10.04 and other distributions).

    This guy made it possible for me to convert all my linux installs to 64-bit.

  • nspluginwrapper (Score:5, Informative)

    by AusIV ( 950840 ) on Friday June 11, 2010 @11:33AM (#32536166)

    I think it's worth pointing out that Ubuntu's repositories have always used 32-bit flash + nspluginwrapper even while 64-bit flash was available. I've never found either of these solutions to be particularly stable, but this doesn't mean 64-bit Linux is going without flash completely.

    • Indeed, nspluginwrapper is the only good way to run flash on any word size. Why would you want to run Flash in-process, regardless of 32/64 compatibility? nspluginwrapper makes the sun shine and the birds sing and the grass grow. It's awesome.

    • I am using the 64bit flash on my linux's boxes and have very good stability. My wife is addicted to flash games and facebook. My daughter will watch 3 different youtube videos with facebook games etc are on other tabs. So it gets properly tested. Not only are my systems still very responsive, but i don't get crashes or lockups either.

      Ok that's not quite true. Firefox has a very slow memory leak, and it needs to be restarted about once a month. That could be caused by the flash plugin i guess.

  • New "feature" in 10.1: DRM (Score:5, Interesting)

    by 200_success ( 623160 ) on Friday June 11, 2010 @02:13PM (#32538916)

    There is a new clause in the Flash 10.1 EULA [adobe.com] that was not present in 10.0 [adobe.com]:

    7.6 Content Protection Technology. If you Use the Adobe Runtimes to access content that has been protected with Adobe Flash Media Rights Management Server or Flash Access software (“Content Protection”), in order to let you play the protected content, the Software may automatically request media usage rights and individualization rights from a rights server on the Internet, and may download and install required components of the Software, including any available Content Protection Updates. You can find more information on Content Protection at http://www.adobe.com/go/protected_content [adobe.com].

    You have to download a 3.3 MB PDF with 280 pages to find this kind of stuff. There's no telling how far these updates will go (remember TurboTax DRM [slashdot.org]?).

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