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Adobe Released 64-bit Flash For Linux 274

Posted by samzenpus from the included-free-of-charge dept.
kai_hiwatari writes "Adobe has been taking quite a bashing from Linux supporters of late. First, there was the issue of them dropping AIR for Linux and then came the bashing because of the lack of updates on the experimental 64-bit Flash for Linux. Well, guess what! They have just released Flash 11 and it includes native 64-bit support for Linux as well. When they discontinued their experimental 64-bit Flash earlier this year, Adobe promised to release a 64-bit version of Flash for Linux when they release the next major version. They have kept that promise."
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Adobe Released 64-bit Flash For Linux More

Adobe Released 64-bit Flash For Linux

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  • I hate flash. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 14, 2011 @12:03AM (#36758648)

    And I hate to say it, but I really appreciate Adobe treating Linux well.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Frosty Piss ( 770223 ) *

      ...appreciate Adobe treating Linux well...

      Because they released Flash? How about Photoshop and ImageReady for Linux?

      That's the only reason I keep an XP machine...

      GIMP is, well, GIMP, and not suitable for professional use.

      • Re:I hate flash. (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 14, 2011 @02:17AM (#36759226)

        "GIMP is, well, GIMP, and not suitable for professional use."
                  Really I doubt this. I heard the excuse that it didn't support color management. It does now and has for years. I heard the excuse that it didn't support sRGB and CMYK. It does now and has for years. I don't expect people to SWITCH to the Gimp if they are used to Photoshop, but I just don't think that is true any longer.

        • Re:I hate flash. (Score:5, Informative)

          by bahstid ( 927038 ) on Thursday July 14, 2011 @04:04AM (#36759834)
          As someone who does occasionally use GIMP for professional use, I'm afraid to inform you that its CMYK support is not what you think it is.... there is a CMYK colour picker and thats about it. So while its suitability for professional use might be debatable, its a fact that doesn't support CMYK properly and hasn't for years.

          There is a plugin with rudimentary export support (Separate+) but doesn't really cover all bases, and the import plugin can only handle TIFFs.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by IrquiM ( 471313 )
          In addition, most people claiming that "Gimp is not suitable for professional use" have never used Photoshop for professional use either. (Not saying all, but some of the most loudly ones for sure!) They're just repeating something they heared long time ago.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rvw ( 755107 )

        ...appreciate Adobe treating Linux well...

        Because they released Flash? How about Photoshop and ImageReady for Linux?

        That's the only reason I keep an XP machine...

        You don't need a "machine" for that. A VM will do. I use Photoshop and Illustrator and Flash in a VirtualBox XP-VM since about a year, and it is no problem. Even a Pentium 4 can do this with enough RAM (3GB or more).

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Pieroxy ( 222434 )

          You don't need a "machine" for that. A VM will do.

          Can you tell us what the "M" stand for in "VM"? Just for fun.

      • GIMP is, well, GIMP, and not suitable for professional use.

        yeah, I guess that's why it's not be used in movie productions and stuff.. oh wait.. (no i won't google it for you)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mwvdlee ( 775178 )

        You still want ImageReady for Linux? It's been dropped since 2007 on all other platforms.

        Photoshop for Linux would be great, I think version 2 or so was available on Unix, but they probably haven't maintained the code for it ;)

    • I really appreciate Adobe treating Linux well

      Yup, I'm really glad I can watch Flash on my i.MX515 (ARM) laptop that shipped with Ubuntu. Oh, I can't? Even though Adobe said when the i.MX515 was announced that they'd be providing a Flash player for it using the on-chip H.264 decoding engine for video playback, by the time it shipped?

      • Out of curiosity, where did you get an arm based ubuntu laptop? Over here all you can find in terms of non-x86 laptops are the chinese sub $99 netbook knock-offs spawned by the eee-pc, running either windows CE or obscure linux versions.

        Also, with Adobe's history of supporting linux, why the hell did you expect any sort of support for linux on a non-x86 platform at all?

        • Out of curiosity, where did you get an arm based ubuntu laptop?

          Genesi makes them. They sent me a couple to get Objective-C working nicely on. It's quite a nice machine, although the fact that building LLVM takes about 5 hours makes development pretty slow.

          Also, with Adobe's history of supporting linux, why the hell did you expect any sort of support for linux on a non-x86 platform at all?

          How about their press releases when the i.MX515 was announced saying that they'd be supporting it?

  • Too bad (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 14, 2011 @12:04AM (#36758652)

    it comes with flash.

  • One could argue that it has not been released if one has to apply to a pre-release program to get it.

    • Re:released? (Score:5, Informative)

      by bunratty ( 545641 ) on Thursday July 14, 2011 @12:13AM (#36758718)
      I just downloaded it from http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer11.html [adobe.com] without applying to any program. But anyway, I was using a beta version of Flash 10.3 for 64-bit Linux before, and this is just a new beta version.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by arth1 ( 260657 )

        I just downloaded it from http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer11.html [adobe.com] without applying to any program

        That's because you downloaded a beta version.
        To get the release version, you have to apply to a pre-release program, which means it isn't really released, now is it?

        • A beta release is a release. Perhaps you're thinking only the final release or a stable release is a release. Alphas and betas are referred to as releases [wikipedia.org].

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by arth1 ( 260657 )

            Check your own link. They're not. They're referred to as alphas or betas, never just an unqualified "release". Scroll down to the #Release subsection of the link you posted, and you'll find what a release means.

            (Also, logically, there would be no RC after the beta if the beta was considered a release...)

            • I've looked at the section and can't find what you're referring to. Can you show where it states that the term "release" means only a final release?

        • I just downloaded it from http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer11.html [adobe.com] without applying to any program

          That's because you downloaded a beta version.
          To get the release version, you have to apply to a pre-release program, which means it isn't really released, now is it?

          And yet the release date on the aforementioned URL is July 13th, 2011. Last I checked today was July 13th, 2011. *checks again* Yup, still July 13th, 2011.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Xtravar ( 725372 )

            So... I just installed this and it makes Firefox freeze-up. I had to revert to that old alpha... anyone else having this problem?

  • Only a beta so far (Score:3)

    by nzac ( 1822298 ) on Thursday July 14, 2011 @12:07AM (#36758670)

    http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer11.html [adobe.com]
    Still looks good though should should be nicer than the preview.

    • I only ever used it to watch videos, but it so far works just as well as the prior release (running 64-bit Debian 6.0).

  • Oh, "great" (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward

    It is buggy as hell.
    Testing it now.

    Fun thing is, "OMG FLASH LETS PUT FLASH IN OUR SITES" and make user experience WORSE.
    KISS principle.

    Protip: drop Flash.

    • It is buggy as hell.

      That's perfectly normal -- it's buggy as hell on other operating systems and hardware platforms, too.

    • Protip: drop Flash.

      Real professionals never considered Flash in the first place...but there are two problems to this:

      * Mist webdesigners out there are not "professionals".

      * Clients: "I want it all flashy and shiny and moving and stuff and really loud sound so that we get their attention..."

      • For the second problem there is javascript. For the first.. well that one is tough.

      • >Real professionals never considered Flash in the first place

        Wait, so what's youtube? You think all those PhD engineers at Google aren't "professional?"

        Real professionals examine the landscape of platforms and runtimes, and make compromises.

    • > "OMG FLASH LETS PUT FLASH IN OUR SITES" and make user
      > experience WORSE.

      Actually this applies to more than just the use of Flash. My computers have gotten exponentially faster, same with the connection, the browser promise 20 and more percent more speed with each major release....and yet tons of farking pages load slower and slower. Woe you if you try to scroll before the whole damn thing actually loaded its crap. Then it jumps all over the place and whatnot. Even clicking on a story and then going

      • Could it be that a lot of these websites are being created with content management systems by designers who think they are programmers? It's seems to me that most cites aren't handed-coded anymore. Am I wrong here?

      • NoScript works great for that. My first machine is 5 and a half years old and the other is a netbook, but they're still pretty good for loading webpages if you block most of the scripts scripts and Flash. When I try to watch TV shows online though, then they start to struggle. I do my best to use external players if possible (e.g. stream it through mplayer instead of the native Flash player).

        I should note that /. sometimes gets really laggy without NoScript. It can completely crash Firefox if I autoscroll s

  • ... on other platforms. *crash!*

  • ah... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Frosty-B-Bad ( 259317 ) on Thursday July 14, 2011 @12:26AM (#36758782) Homepage

    When the linux community asked for software I don't think they knew what they were in for. Cheers mates, you can crash your browser like the rest of us.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by arth1 ( 260657 )

      Cheers mates, you can crash your browser like the rest of us.

      Actually, it's just the plugin that crashes, not the browser. You need Adobe Reader to crash the entire browser :)

      • On my Linux box, Flash intermittently freezes the entire OS solid. Can't even log in remotely. Granted, that's a sign of some more fundamental issue, which I haven't been able to track down. Personally I think it's the NVidia driver. The OSS driver is useless without vdpau. I've swapped out the PSU and graphics card, and run CPU and video benchmarks for hours on end. Yet it only locks up when my son watches youtube, and then occasionally. Real fun.

        • I've run into the same problem, but running the latest beta driver it seems to be partially solvesd: The screen freezes for about 15-30 seconds, then continues. Probably the HW/driver restarting when a watchdog times out.
          Still, it's better than locking up the machine permanately.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by IrquiM ( 471313 )
          Personnaly, I think it's the distribution. Works perfectly fine on Slackware 13.37 with any of the NVIDIA drivers..

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Mashiki ( 184564 )

      You know I keep hearing this stuff about flash causing crashes and all that. And I've yet to see it happen on any of my home machines in the last oh 6 years ever since flash was rebuilt from the ground up. Seems like 'nix nuts are just as bad on flash as they are on anything related to MS.

  • Piece of crap.... so huge improvement (Score:3)

    by dlgeek ( 1065796 ) on Thursday July 14, 2011 @12:43AM (#36758872)
    On my TV box (Atom D510 with NVidia GT218 (ION)), mplayer or xbmc can play 720p and even 1080p content on fullscreen to my 1080p tv over HDMI without breaking a sweat).

    The new flash can render hulu in the tiny window no problem, but is incredibly jerky and flickery in full screen mode. There are noticible segments that are out of sync with each other, the overlays (hulu logo, player controls, etc) are flashing on and off and drawing incorrectly.

    Sadly, that's a HUGE improvement over the v10 release which couldn't even draw in windowed mode and fullscreen was about 0.5 fps.

    • The out of sync stuff is just Hulu. Don't worry about that. My Win7 experience is the same.

  • not sure if it is just the debian/ubuntu 64 bit package but it failed to install with an error that /usr/lib/kde4 was not found. as i'm not running it, it was not surprising it was missing, but i had to create the directory for the package to install properly. obviously this can be worked around by manually extracting the tar and working from that, but i prefer using the deb packages.

    hope this helps someone.

    • If you're using a Firefox-based browser (ie Iceweasel on Debian), then just uncompress the tarball and move libflashplayer.so into ~/.mozilla/plugins and you're done.

  • Exploits and crashes are now up to 80% faster.

  • Nice, it seems to have fixed this [redhat.com] problem. Even though the main problem was actually in glibc.

  • It's really weird to see "64-bit" applied to Linux in this way, as if it was Windows. Linux runs well on various 64-bit CPUs, but I bet Adobe cannot be bothered to recompile for more than one of them ...

    • From what I understand, the Flash platform is so damn complicated with integrated JIT compilers and other tech within the plugin, that simply running a 64-bit compiler on the codebase isn't quite that simple as the code was never designed to work in 64-bit architectures. Most code should, assuming it's well designed and the developers weren't taking shortcuts by assuming the lengths of various types, but we're talking about Adobe here.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dbIII ( 701233 )

        but we're talking about Adobe here.

        Ah yes, PDF "encryption" by ROT13 (cereal box code wheel set to m->a) and putting a guy in jail that came to the USA to give a lecture on such a "trade secret".

  • Did they also fix webcam support? Sites like ustream don't work because flash keeps supporting an old video for linux standard and not the new one, which is years old.

  • Anyone know where they put the ia64 binaries?

  • Control panel? (Score:4, Informative)

    by MasterPatricko ( 1414887 ) on Thursday July 14, 2011 @02:51AM (#36759416) Homepage

    The tarball contents have changed relative to previous releases:
      libflashplayer.so
      usr/bin/flash-player-properties
      usr/share/pixmaps/flash-player-properties.png
      usr/share/kde4/services/kcm_adobe_flash_player.desktop
      usr/share/applications/flash-player-properties.desktop
      usr/share/icons/hicolor/32x32/apps/flash-player-properties.png
      usr/share/icons/hicolor/22x22/apps/flash-player-properties.png
      usr/share/icons/hicolor/24x24/apps/flash-player-properties.png
      usr/share/icons/hicolor/16x16/apps/flash-player-properties.png
      usr/share/icons/hicolor/48x48/apps/flash-player-properties.png
      usr/lib/kde4/kcm_adobe_flash_player.so

    Looks like it provides some sort of control panel now, and attempts to integrate into KDE's SystemSettings. All you really need is to copy libflashplayer.so into /usr/lib64/browser-plugins though (openSUSE).

  • You know, it would be cool if there simply was a dedicated YouTube player for desktop Linux too. There is one for iPad and my Android phone has one too. They know that Flash sucks in performance so they skip it completely. It works great.

    I wonder how easy/hard would it be to figure out the Flash video streaming protocol and glue it in to some movie player? I already remember Totem and VLC implementing a YouTube player but I never have got them to work that well...

    • VLC (Score:5, Informative)

      by DrYak ( 748999 ) on Thursday July 14, 2011 @05:03AM (#36760182) Homepage

      in the latest versions of VLC it now works out of the box. Just paste the URL to a youtube video and it works. What would be now still needed is an interface for the rest of youtube's functionnality (searches,playlists,etc.) the mobile version of the web site would be a nice starting point.

  • If you look at the timeline of the amd64 architecture: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86-64#History_of_AMD64 [wikipedia.org]

    Then it only took 8 years to make a 64-bit port from the date of the first available amd64 machine. If you take into account the date of the first full spec released to the public, it's almost 11 years.

    Now if only complex software like the Linux Kernel could be ported in shorter time....

    • Now if only complex software like the Linux Kernel could be ported in shorter time....

      Seriously, this fact clearly shows the superiority of multiplatform open software. GNU/Linux has been running on lots of different and varied architecture for ages.
      At the time when x86-64 arch was developped,Linux and GNU devs where already used to 64bits bi-arch platfroms. Adding support for amd64 cpu mainly consisted of slapping it's spec over the work already done for sparc64 and the likes. If I remember correctly, the kernel was already running successfully on hardware simulators, even *before* the hard

      • The Linux kernel s used as the tech preview and dev platform by several CPU manufacturers, whether it be IBM and the CELL processor, AMD and its 64bit architecture, or Intel and their TPM previews.
  • So, during most of that discontinued time, square didn't exist? It was only for about a month where there was no support. When they moved from flash 10 based preview to flash 11 based preview and and added 64bit windows support to it too. Now mozilla can build us some nice 64bit firefox releases for windows and I'll be really happy.

  • My laptop uses an AMD E-350, running Debian Testing 64-bit. This works fine for 1920x1080 video on an external LCD... provided it makes use of the built-in hardware-decoder. The official Flash Player doesn't do that.

    My solution? A VA-API-patched mplayer, gnome-mplayer, a few GreaseMonkey scripts and the gecko-mediaplayer plugin take care of most web videos I watch perfectly (including basically anything on YouTube), and the remaining Flash content is taken care of by a combination of the Gnash plugin and th

  • It seems to have fixed the buzzing in the audio on a lot of live feeds that I experienced on the last 64-bit plugin (but not on the 32-bit one).

  • The combination with FF 4 and flash square beta 2 was really good I loved it, it was the first time it actually worked. But looks like this newer version with FF 5 is also working well, thanks Adobe.

  • Awesome! (Score:3)

    by Kamiza Ikioi ( 893310 ) on Thursday July 14, 2011 @09:38AM (#36761976)

    I always wanted vulnerabilities in my otherwise secure 64bit systems!

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