Why Is Adobe Flash On Linux Still Broken? 963
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."
Flash sucks (Score:4, Funny)
Adopt Silverlight!
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.
Re:Flash sucks (Score:4, Interesting)
Adobe at least tries so hard to support multiple platforms, even planning to ship Flash Lite 3 for free to Symbian/WinMo whatever while Microsoft would sit and cry if somehow all operating systems have Silverlight support.
They (MS) dropped PowerPC support as early as release 2 while Adobe enabled (finally!) multi core/SMP support on Flash 10 plugin OS X.
Moonlight? Yes, we see how Mono helps windows developers to ship for Linux. ;)
Re:Flash sucks (Score:5, Insightful)
But Flash suck on OS X aswell, a couple of pages with flash ads can easily take all my processor power, no matter how much there is, which is just unacceptable.
What we need is to get rid of flash since it sucks balls, who needs it?
1) Flash are mostly used for ads, who wants ads? Especially if they move, makes sound, sits on top of other things, take lots of CPU power, memory and heats up your machine.
2) Flash are sometimes used to design complete webpages, which suck because they have to be navigated in a non-standard way, design goes over function, they take forever to load and I can't open lots of screenshots in multiple tabs...
3) Finally flash are used for videos, which I guess some people who don't have a clue like because that way they don't have to install any more codecs. But personally that's (youtube, gametrailers, and such) the only thing stopping me from removing flash completely, so I so much want this to change. Safari can handle video directly in the browser and I hope we see more of that, won't happen until the suckers with IE get the functionallity + couple of years extra I guess though :/
Even old embedded quicktime days was better.
Re:Flash sucks (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Flash sucks (Score:5, Informative)
Many others are experiencing issues. This [ubuntuforums.org] is one [ubuntuforums.org] of many [adobe.com] threads [launchpad.net] like this on the Ubuntu forums where people are having serious issue with flash (especially compared to earlier versions (before 9.048). Version 9.112 [nvnews.net] and beyond (and even Beta) still are really slow, consume a crapload of cpu cycles and are in general unusable.
I've been researching this issue (mainly to get Hulu.com videos playable in fullscreen on a Mythbuntu setup) and have found no recourse other than playing the video at normal size, but using Firefox's zoom or turning on Compiz and using the fullscreen zoom to enlarge the video. Even so the video gets choppy occasionally and of course, is kind of a pain.
Right now full screen videos (using Flash's full screen option) use 90% CPU (out of 2 CPUs on an Athlon 64x2 4800+) and beat to death the poor Sempron 2800 I have on my Mythbuntu setup. Funny enough, the puny Sempron can play HD videos at 1080p with little or no issue.
After following countless threads (and the official bug report on Adobe's website), trying every 9 version and 10 beta, and so on I've pretty much given up on getting Flash to behave for now. Don't get me wrong, I believe you when you say it's playing fine for you, but either the issue is genuinely not affecting your system, or you haven't paid attention to cpu usage while playing flash. As always YMMV.
BTW, any hints not covered in the forums greatly appreciated. Getting fullscreen flash working is the last step in getting a web video based MythTV setup working.
Re:Flash sucks (Score:5, Interesting)
I think Silverlight 2 will be huge.
I'm an old-school programmer with a CS background. I've programmed embedded systems, MVS, Unix and Windows using machine code, assembly languages, imperative languages, object-oriented languages and functional languages. And my absolute all-time favorite programming environment is C# in Visual Studio. C# is a really nice language, the BCL (the .Net class library) is huge (and for the most part very well designed) and Visual Studio hides all the usual programming cruft. (And for the 0.01% of the time that I actually need to care about the cruft, Visual Studio lets me tinker with it.)
Silverlight 2 is a slimmed-down .Net. It has WPF (the new UI framework, also in Silverlight 1) + the BCL + C# (or whatever other .Net language you like). It is a joy to program and if the cross platform support (Windows/Mac/Linux) works as promised I don't see how it can fail. It is very, very nice. Just one example of its loveliness: WPF is, without a doubt, the best effort to-date in separating presentation and content. It is much, much better than HTML+CSS.
Silverlight's only competitor, Flash, is relatively difficult to develop for because it is a thing in itself. On the other hand, there are already millions of C# programmers, of whom most will learn WPF and have no trouble developing Silverlight apps.
Indeed, I don't see how Silverlight 2 can fail.
Re:Flash sucks (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, Microsoft officially endorse the open-source client, so I'd imagine that they have at least a somewhat vested interest in making sure that it works and remains compatible with the official windows/mac clients.
It's really a shame that people haven't embraced Silverlight, as it really does have the potential to be a lot better than Flash. Unfortunately, the Open-source community treated it with outright hostility, and it looks unlikely to catch us.
Long story short:
If you're trying to gain market share you'll get in bed with pretty much anyone for backing.
If you're trying to keep market share you'll sabotage any real compatbility and interoperability.
Microsoft is not trusted because they have a deeply vested interest in making sure that the only place things really work is on the Windows platform. So we help Microsoft kill flash and when Silverlight has momentum enough, they won't need us anymore. Then you have another Microsoft-controlled technology that ships by default with Windows tying people to the Windows platform, while the OSS community tries to pull off another half-assed dotnet clone which doesn't really work well. Adobe's support for Linux sucks, but replacing it with Microsoft won't be any better in the long run.
Re:Flash sucks (Score:4, Insightful)
Microsoft owns several patents related to Silverlight, covering both implementation and concepts. Microsoft promises that it will not sue the Moonlight team over any of these patents. However, a promise is not a legal agreement.
How much faith do you have in Microsoft keeping its promises?
Re:Flash sucks (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason why it won't ever supersede Flash or Silverlight is because it's not supposed to supersede Flash or Silverlight. SVG is designed for still vector images and animation on the order of animated gif (IE, short and no sound). Nothing else.
This means that both the parent and the grandparent are being dumb. SVG isn't meant to do what flash does and so the GP is ascribing abilities to it which it will never have and P is criticizing it for not doing things which it was never meant to do. Obligatory Car Analogy: GP suggests using a pickup truck to move a shipping trailer on a long-haul delivery. P says that pickup trucks suck because they can't pull shipping trailers very well and then calls everyone who drives one a smelly virgin.
As for online video, why the fuck is every sonofabitch out there making their own fucking flash client for video? Video should be distributed in a proper file none of this "Compress->Re-encode/resample for flash->stream to my computer" bullshit...
Re:Flash sucks (Score:5, Insightful)
As for online video, why the fuck is every sonofabitch out there making their own fucking flash client for video? Video should be distributed in a proper file none of this "Compress->Re-encode/resample for flash->stream to my computer" bullshit...
Because it Just Works, and Flash is ubiquitous whether you like or not. According to the stats on the commercial site I maintain, upwards of 96% of visitors have some FLV-capable version Flash installed. That means I can deploy video without forcing some large percentage of my users to install yet another player/plugin/codec just to see it. That just isn't true of any other comparable streaming video technology.
Re:Flash sucks (Score:5, Funny)
(you may want to multitask whilst you're waiting. otherwise you just ruined *two* lives.)
Re:Flash sucks (Score:5, Informative)
but there are plenty of ways to present video via JavaScript without using a plugin monster like Flash or Silverlight. That's what Apple does
No. Apple uses Quicktime, which is a plug-in. Are you being purposefully dense?
It's pretty monstrous, too. Flash is, what, 1.4 MB download? Silverlight is like 4.5 MB or so... the old 1.0 version less. Quicktime is somewhere around 23 MB.
Using the presentation of web video as a killer app for browser middleware is absurdly ridiculous.
Ok; so how do you do it without using "browser middleware?" The only browser with any form of video support at the moment is Safari, since they're already starting to implement HTML5. Hey, maybe HTML5 will be super successful and using plug-ins like Quicktime and Flash to present video will be seen as quaint. But that doesn't change the fact that, right now for the majority of users, a browser plug-in is the only way to view video on the web.
So let's take the third application of Flash/Silverlight beyond animated ads and framing video: rich apps. Apple is also proving that this can be done just as well using a JavaScript framework with MobileMe. Yes, Apple had problems getting their servers up to serve the few million upgrading .Mac users and an an influx of new iPhone MM subscribers, but the apps work pretty well, and they outclass anything I've seen built in Flash/Flex/AIR.
I can't drag a file from my desktop and drop it on a Javascript application. I can't have a Javascript application ask me where to save a file to my computer, then save it. There's no such thing as a Javascript runtime (although I hear Mozilla is working on one) so that I can use the JS app like a local application, without requiring a browser.
There are tons of things Flash/Flex/AIR can do that Javascript can't. Remember the concepts there were cribbed from Shockwave, and Shockwave has a track record of making functional cross-platform applications that don't require a browser.
You don't even have to like Apple's hardware to appreciate what its doing for open source.
I don't really give a crap about what license a particular piece of code is under. I do, however, care that you're so busy giving your Steve Jobs collector's doll a blowjob to realize that Quicktime is actually a browser plugin... seriously, man, get a grip.
Re:Flash sucks (Score:4, Funny)
Wow I actually got marked as a troll? I guess things have changed in my 6 month Slashdot hiatus.
Yay Microsoft, I hope Silverlight catches on?
Re:Flash sucks (Score:4, Interesting)
Doubtless there will be a way to prevent it, especially in Moonlight as it's open source.
* See my journal
** Put the following code in a batch file in your "all users" startup folder:
Re:Flash sucks (Score:5, Funny)
Indeed. Anything to get it away from its abusive parents.
Re:Flash sucks (Score:4, Interesting)
Adopt Silverlight!
If by that you mean that we should be investigating alternatives, then absolutely.
Before Adobe swallowed Macromedia, they were assisting the development of SVG as an alternative to Flash. Perhaps we need to return to this idea and place renewed emphasis on SVG. I'm sure that SVG combined with other open technologies (JavaScript, Ogg Speex/Vorbis/Theora, etc.) could prove to be a viable alternative if the right effort was put in.
The biggest stumbling blocks I see to this are the dearth of easy authoring tools and the lack of a strong install base on the client side.
Re:Flash sucks (Score:5, Informative)
First off, I think Slashcode ate some tags in your post.
On topic: for YouTube and other embedded video, one can try one of the few bazillion "play this video using embedded MPlayer/Media Player/QuickTime/VLC/whatever" Greasemonkey scripts over on userscripts.org [userscripts.org]. That is, if you use a Mozilla-based browser.
Re:Flash sucks (Score:5, Informative)
Oh and don't forget to AdBlock the original video with a suitable pattern, as otherwise Flash and your favorite player will fight a duel to the death over which one is going to play the video, the loser (Flash) often taking the browser down with it.
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.
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.
Re:Flash as a service delivery platform (Score:5, Informative)
speaking of that, video codecs are a WAY bigger problem than flash. Anyone can live without flash. I'd put codecs and games way before flash any way. And if Red Alert 2/Oblivion/Generals/Starcraft can't run on Linux, I'm installing Windows.
I guess it's a good thing they all [winehq.org] run [winehq.org] in [winehq.org] Wine [winehq.org] then. I was just playing Starcraft less than an hour ago, actually.
As for video codecs, I've never run into a video I couldn't play before.
Re:C&C: generals (Score:5, Insightful)
Keep in mind though, that using a no CD crack is pretty much a requirement for running many games in Windows too. All convenience issues aside, SecuROM and other DRM can actually break the games' ability to run in many systems CD or not. To say nothing of various Windows issues you may have due to the DRM. So after you buy the game, you frequently need either a No-CD cracked .exe, or you just pirate the damn thing and leave the unopened game on your shelf.
In regards to Flash, I've never actually had an issue with it. I run Ubuntu 8.04 and the non-free binary version of Flash and Firefox has no issues whatsoever with YouTube or any Flash site. Indeed, I've not had a problem with flash since Ubuntu 5.10 or thereabouts. Now, Shockwave, that's another issue. It doesn't work AT ALL. I'd like to see a fix for that sometime this millenium.
Re:Flash as a service delivery platform (Score:4, Insightful)
Because that logic isn't a fallacy when applied to Windows. Unlike popular Open Source software, Windows isn't really improving with time.
Try this: Go back to Windows 2000 for a while, and as you use it, make a list of all its faults. Then install Vista, and start crossing the fixed issues off your list. Despite seven years of development, I doubt you'll have much to cross off.
Now repeat the experiment with Ubuntu 4.10 and 8.04. The difference is huge even though that represents half as much development time as Microsoft had between Windows 2000 and Vista.
Re:Flash as a service delivery platform (Score:5, Informative)
Not just that - Flash is also great for minigames, original animation, small applications... The only thing flash should NOT be used for is making websites, wholly or in part. Unfortunately, lots of bad webmasters just don't get it.
Of course, maybe if Javascript behavior was more consistent across different browsers, versions of the same browser and operating systems, people would stop making crappy flash websites.
Re:Flash as a service delivery platform (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't know what went wrong for you all, but here, Flash 10 beta 20080702 runs nicely, except for some glitches on back areas in video playback, a hang every now and then (rare, so it's not very annoying), and because this is compiz-fusion and x86_64 on a crappy onboard graphics card, it's too slow in full screen (while xine/mplayer/vlc run fine).
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I wouldn't run Flash even if they bothered to create a version that runs on my OS (64-bit Linux).
I'm using Flash on 64-bit Linux right now. No problems with YouTube, although some sites appear to be using crap detection scripts that give me a "You must upgrade to Flash 9 to view this" when in fact I am running Flash 9.
That being said, I'd be much happier if Flash were displaced by SVG or some other form of markup. Binary blobs suck.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Flash (Score:4, Informative)
My bad - sort of.
I'm using 32-bit Firefox 2.0.0.16 on 64-bit openSUSE 10.2. (I get tired of waiting for them to upgrade, and I can't get it to compile, so I just grab the 32-bit binary from mozilla.com and plop it in my ~/bin.)
BTW, the Flash 10 installer wouldn't run ("OS not supported"), but copying libflashplayer.so to ~/.mozilla/plugins and restarting the browser did the trick.
Re:Flash (Score:5, Insightful)
More posts that should be put in a distro-specific forum, instead of the slashdot front page. Im all for helping people, but some need to help themselves.
I never had any serious, regular problem, in the last year and a half, with Debian Etch or Any Ubuntu release since 6.10 (when i first used it) with flash. The oddball crash happens, but its nothing normal or that I can re-create (in epiphany browser or firefox)
With that, I link to "How to ask questions the smart way" or "christ, can you search first, then ask in the apporopriate place?" :
Clickity [linuxmafia.com]
Please understand I have nothing again helping anyone....but people should help themselves first. The flashplayer performance is horrible, but the OP lists no specifics to help him with his problem. Theres no distro name, no kernel or browser type or version given, no way anyone can help him.
The post is just a bitch and moan. This is slashdot, news for nerds, etc. There have been useful, interesting "Ask Slashdot" posts, but this is not one of them.
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.
Re:Flash (Score:5, Informative)
If youtube didn't use flash for video, what would they use instead? Animated gifs?
Or maybe embedded video, which browsers have supported for decades? Like, oh, Quicktime, or mpeg?
You could argue that Flash had a wider install base. And you'd be right -- but what about up-to-date Flash? YouTube has been requiring higher and higher versions, like just about all Flash content. At this point, I would guess that everyone who can watch YouTube also has some sort of player that supports mpeg.
We really need at least some form of video integrated into the browser, and it looks like we might have it in firefox soon
You're talking about the HTML5 video tag. Erm... Safari beat us to it. With h.264 support.
So, Safari and Firefox will support native video. It should be trivial to write a script which detects a browser not supporting the video tag, and replaces it with some embedded Flash, for backwards compatibility -- and because we know it will take a decade or so for IE to support this.
Re:Flash (Score:4, Informative)
MPEG has the patent problem: Getting a commercially supported player, for Linux, remains impossible becuase the patent owners _will not sell_ reasonable licenses for Linux. While sites like 'Penguin Liberation Front' remain very useful for those of us who need casual tool access to play an occasional MPEG, making commercially supportable MPEG players for Linux remains awkward.
Mind you, the 'Penguin Liberation Front' remains a wonderful source of software for anyone outside of the DMCA encumbered and software patent encumbered USA who wnats to play MPEG's, DVD's, or even have access to wired old tools that had odd licenses.
Re:Flash (Score:5, Insightful)
I tell you the issue with Quicktime and my personal favourite (really!) Real Player.
Flash player plugin is a single click install with a joke like 1.2 MB size, it lives inside browser, nothing added to startup.
Quicktime and Real missed the opportunity because of their size and old policies (Real, especially).
There is no way you can explain to Apple fans that adding a taskbar icon on Windows, bundling additional software with UI tricks (iTunes) are reasons of "death sentence" on Windows scene. I am sure there are similar thinking people at Apple themselves. Would you want rc.flash.startup in your /etc everytime you install Flash? It is same for them.
I see Real doing lots of things to get the download smaller with less user irritation but they still can't understand a basic trick: bare minimum framework+plugin. That is what Adobe does, even on recent Adobe Air.
HTML5 guys pushing ogg format really, really doesn't make sense. Media have gave up VP3 ages ago and you know as people having lawyers dedicated to copyright, they aren't that bugged about patents. Big media is arguing whether they should keep on MPEG4 or convert to H264. It seems new fashion tiny laptops saved MPEG4 fate ;)
Flash does SO much more than just video. (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not trying to hide my bias - most of the work we do is in Actionscript.
But I agree as much as the next guy that making a typical website in Flash is stupid. So is unnecessary required video, low-contrast color schemes, gratuitous music, required Javascript for basic navigation, poor text-only / accessibility support, and many other things that are common on all together too many sites.
There's a bunch of reasons to use Flash, but the biggest one is that it lets you do something no other platform does - create rich, full featured, object oriented applications that just work with a wide installed user base, on a variety of platforms, with a minimum* of security risk to the user.
If you're only thinking Flash Video, you're thinking too small. Think "any application in the world that does not need direct hardware access or to maximize its access to computing resources" It runs over the web, it runs locally, and it runs the same.
Really, Flash shouldn't have this crown. Java applets should. But they don't, because of how that played out in the 90s. The behavior isn't consistent, and developing rich applications for it was tedious at best.
For the programmers reading, you don't want to develop apps in Flash, which is a super-glorified animation tool. But you want to develop in Adobe Flex, which is a wonderful tool with a for-pay IDE, but a free CLI compiler. The OUTPUT is a Flash swf, but the INPUT no longer has a binary animation file, and all of the layout supports inheritance. And the crossover is tremendous and seamless, so you can use whatever your animators/designers make in Flash in a blink.
To address some other points:
Even requiring a recent version of Flash, Flash does generally have a higher installed user base than any other single system. Obviously "HTML" per se has a higher base, but if you're doing anything modestly complex you have to break apart the major-different IE versions from everything else, and last I checked I believe Flash 9 has a higher installed base than any family of HTML rendering. I believe these stats were based on computers "active on the web" - so it doesn't count things that aren't hooked up to the internet currently, many of which presumably have old versions of IE.
Flash Player isn't as open and crossplatform as I'd like, but in general it's been getting better on both counts. Reading the comments of people who actually described there system, it seems like there's problems running Flash Player with 64bit browsers in Linux, and not with 32bit browsers...
*I didn't say NO security risk. But as platforms for running totally arbitrary third party code go, I don't know of anything that does a BETTER job.
Starting as early as 2002 Actionscript is an OOP language.
QuickTime does MPEG-4 (Score:4, Informative)
I could flame you for suggesting to replace a 5-year old proprietary format with a 10-year old proprietary format
QuickTime follows a published international standard [apple.com]. If your concern is patents, what non-proprietary format were you thinking of? Ogg Theora?
Re:Flash (Score:4, Interesting)
The thing is, despite all the flaws in Adobe's flash player, it is generally fast and things load really quickly. Java on the other hand though more open and better, takes forever to get things loaded and navigation in Java has always seemed to be laggy.
The loading speed of the Java plugin is being addressed with the upcoming update 10, which actually contains many improvements. The navigation issues are usually a result of a badly written UI, which unfortunately is all too easy to do with AWT and Swing.
The new JavaFX takes much of the complexity out of writing a well behaved UI. It will also have better multimedia playback for video content like what YouTube uses Flash for.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Flash (and Silverlight, et al) are a threat to the Internet generally.
BS. Flash is a great way to deliver rich content on a website. It's only a threat if you think the Internet should stay in the same configuration it was in in 1983, when a 1200 baud connection was considered fast and if you wanted porn you had to print it out and hold it two feet in front of you.
Considering the level of citizen journalism that sites like YouTube and LiveLeak have enabled, all thanks to Flash, I think you need to seriously rethink your stance against that platform.
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.
Re:Flash (Score:5, Interesting)
It's a threat to anybody that isn't able to use flash. And the fact that there aren't any good alternatives to their implementation is a pretty good reason to fear it as well.
As a FreeBSD user the only way I get to see flash is if I use wine to run a Windows version of Firefox. Which means that a great number of sites like youtube don't run in any meaningful manner without a lot of extra effort.
Just because I have a DSL line doesn't mean that I'm OK with sites that choose to waste a lot of it unnecessarily on overly complicated interfaces which ultimately just slow things down.
Same goes for processing power, I don't care if it's lost revenue, if the only ads available are flash, I'm not going to be clicking. There's absolutely no reason why flash ads need to be used. We've got gifs and pngs which can do pretty much all of that without risk of crashing the browser.
Re:Flash (Score:5, Interesting)
It's only a threat if you think the Internet should stay in the same configuration it was in in 1983, when a 1200 baud connection was considered fast
This isn't about the technology, not directly. There are two points to keep in mind here:
First, Flash is proprietary. Making the Internet depend on proprietary technology is destroying the one thing that makes the Internet great -- anyone can connect, from anything.
That is: The Internet thrives on open standards. Flash isn't open, and Silverlight is neither. (Yeah, I know about Moonlight -- how long till that gets hit with patents from Microsoft, though, if it starts to matter?)
Second: Flash is its own little ecosystem. HTML really is very powerful -- done right, it's possible to both style it up very richly with CSS, and yet keep the HTML itself so clean that it's machine readable -- so much so that people start to build microformats [microformats.org] on top of it. Makes the job much easier for screenreaders, also, or for people who want to reskin the page (just load up a Greasemonkey script and add a stylesheet).
Flash supports none of these things. There is some mention of accessibility, yes, but it's nowhere near where HTML is.
HTML separates things into pages and sub-page anchors. It's possible to do this with Flash, but only by piggybacking on top of what HTML is already doing, and with a fair amount of Javascript.
That is: I can bookmark this comment, if I need to. I can link to it from another page, directly. If Slashdot was written in Flash, would I be able to?
I could go on. And on.
The only legitimate use of Flash is to add functionality which isn't yet in a browser, and to select chunks of the page -- that is, YouTube isn't entirely Flash, just the player. But that should only be a holdover until the necessary things are implemented in the browser.
Considering the level of citizen journalism that sites like YouTube and LiveLeak have enabled, all thanks to Flash...
No, thanks to embedded video, which existed long before Flash, and is finally being done in a standard way with the HTML5 video tag. YouTube never needed Flash, and still doesn't.
Re:Flash (Score:5, Funny)
The internet isn't thriving, it is festering.
Re:Flash (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't know who modded you insightful but you're full of it.
The last 15 years includes HTML, XML and a host of other protocols/formats that started out about as open as it can possibly get and *THEY* are what drove the enormous growth of the internet.
Re:Flash (Score:5, Informative)
As the inventor of live video on the web I think I know what I'm talking about, and it used no plug ins (just multipart/replace encoding). Later versions used javascript to achieve the same effect, still no plug ins needed. Audio was initially done using a small java applet.
XMLHttpRequest is used for 'under water' connections to the server to update a page that is already there, try switching off javascript for a while and see how many websites will break, the majority of them (including the one we are writing all this on) will have a non-js fallback. So, that's definitely not what 'drove the popularity of the internet'. That's just FUD.
TCP/IP, HTTP, XML and to a lesser extent older content protocols such as NNTP, gopher, archie, ftp and telnet are what made the internet as large as it is.
Only when there was sufficient critical mass did we get these 'proprietary protocols' and file formats with all the associated trouble. Read back for a bit in the RFC archive to see just how wrong you really are.
XMLHttpRequest is a classic example of Microsofts embrace and extend strategy, and it is to this day carrying the baggage of that.
Re:Flash (Score:4, Informative)
Nearly all the advances that have happened on the internet over the last 15 years have been started as proprietary technology, while the technologies that began life open have wallowed and gone virtually nowhere. It's only when the proprietary technologies become open that things become better.
Yeah, that email thing was a real flop. Nobody uses that. SSH? What's that? When ever will BitTorrent actually get used? HTML? Who uses that when they can use Flash?
Of course, qualifying it with in the last 15 years cuts out the biggies, the internet itself! Fully documented standards without which we'd still be modeming to BBSes or Compu$erve.
Many of the truly successful innovations on the net, including the net itself, are the result of fully open specs designed to permit easy re-implementation and even better, reference code or full apps ready to use.
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
Re:Open Source Flash? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
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?
I was going to mod you down for not RTFS [especially the part about GNASH], but instead I'll answer your question.
Yes, it's called Gnash.The Wikipedia page [wikipedia.org] should tell you all you need to know.
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 :(
Re:Open Source Flash? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Open Source Flash? (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
If I am right, GNASH [gnu.org] is a GNU Flash player under GPL, whose base is gameswf [tulrich.com], which was originally created for the interface of a game on XBOX.
I mainly know gameswf for having worked with it, it is nice and very promising, but lacked some important functions and need (in my opinion) a code redesign.
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.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Swfdec is written in C, and Gnash in C++.
Re:Open Source Flash? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
While the Slashdot story opined that "Flash on Linux is the one major entry barrier controlling acceptance of Linux as a viable desktop operating system", I think you've unintentionally hit on the real reason Linux isn't taken seriously in the desktop arena by the masses. How many times have we seen this exact scenario played out on Linux (e.g. in window managers, browsers, digital music, video, etc.)?
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.
From http://www.gnashdev.org/?q=node/30 [gnashdev.org] is a sorta answer:
LWN: Some LWN readers have complained that having two projects aimed at implementing Flash is divisive and wasteful. How would you respond to those readers?
Benjamin: The optimal number of projects for a given project space sounds like a good PhD thesis topic. Having multiple projects in a space, or multiple solutions to a problem is simply how things work in the community. Any non-trivial bug or project space has multiple solutions, and often one cannot determine which is the best solution until all have been tried. Also, people working on these projects are real people with real interests and complex motivations for working on particular projects. Simplifying it into "you currently work on A, so you'd instead like working on B in the same project space" is unrealistic. And IMO, divisiveness between similar projects often has more to do with fanboys than it has to do with developers, who obviously share interests and experiences.
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).
Re:Open Source Flash? (Score:4, Interesting)
Now that usable websites can be created by anybody (mostly because the simplest HTML works best), people who have a career programming websites are a bit stuck.
They can't really advertise being able to create the best types of website (basic HTML) because anyone can do that and most clients are getting along perfectly well with their grandson running the website. Why would anyone pay professionals for that?
So the only reason you'd hire a webdesign professional, is if for some reason you wanted Flash content. Hence the lack of webdesigners using normal, sane techniques. Hence their lack of work. Hence the decrease in their workload as every site they design fails on the iphone or eee or freerunner or ubuntu desktop or flashblocked firefox.
(all browsers should have FlashBlock, it's invaluable at saving your sanity)
So yes, web designers will all use flash. That's because web designers aren't needed anymore to make websites.
Won't fix broken Web Sites and Media. Bad Laws. (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course it's possible to implement Flash with free software, but that won't solve the problem. Free software is a powerful enough development method to overcome CSS, the Windows API, SMB, and DX. What task do you think is out of reach? The problem then is one of a legal framework that makes it impossible to distribute free software that works with broken media like DVDs and websites that use Flash. There are technical solutions but legal solutions are better. Software patents and the DMCA must go.
The
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.
OH RLY (Score:4, Insightful)
Have some tcpdump or ngrep logs to show such behavior? Or maybe your tinfoil hat is too tight.
Re:Open Source Flash? (Score:5, Informative)
I've never been able to make any Flash site at all work with gnash (I'm currently using gnash 0.8.2).
I too am using 64 bit Linux and and just recently gnash has come on by leaps and bounds. I'm currently running 0.8.3 and suddenly quite a lot of things (including youtube) work.
I'm puzzled by the original article though. I've always found Adobe flash on 32-bit Linux to work without problem. The real issue seems to me to be their failure to produce a 64-bit version of flash for *any* platform - Linux or Windows. With the steady shift to 64-bit computing, they're going to find themselves frozen out soon if they aren't careful.
Re:Open Source Flash? (Score:4, Informative)
None of the open-source implementations, last I checked, would run YouTube, or any embedded video.
Huh? Gnash runs YouTube just fine. So does Swfdec. Are you on an unsupported platform?
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 fixed this ages ago (Score:4, Interesting)
I used to have this happen to be on Ubuntu 8.04. I fixed it by downloading the official version of Flash from the Adobe website and replacing all of the versions of the .so on my computer. Wouldn't you know it, it worked again. I think the problem is that the version in Ubuntu 8.04 was hacked up to support PulseAudio. When I removed PulseAudio, suddenly audio didn't work anymore (in addition to, you know, the crashing all the time), but when I replaced the .so, it did again. So I recommend going to the Adobe website and getting the official version, because it does work.
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
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Half-broken (Score:3, Informative)
I experienced frequent Firefox crashes due to Flash in my Ubuntu box, which went being upgraded from 6.06 to 7.04 to 7.10 to 8.04. But then my hard disk crashed and I had to reinstall Ubuntu 8.04 from scratch. It's been now three months of this fresh installation, and in this period Flash has never, ever, crashed my Firefox. It's been rock solid.
My wild guess then would be that your setup is half-broken much like mine was. Try that old Windows trick of wiping your hard disk and reinstalling your Linux distribution, whatever it is. It might be the solution.
Now, this doesn't mean Flash in Linux isn't still full of bugs. It not respecting transparencies and correct depth levels in pages is a major annoyance. But at least crashing isn't part of the list anymore, at least for me.
Re:Are you fucking serious? (Score:4, Insightful)
Depends, is one trying to be productive or is one a hobbyist? I find that most of the time when I spend the time to troubleshoot the problem, I end up with some ideas as to how to avoid the problem the next time around, or how to fix it in minimal time when it does occur.
But in terms of productivity, unless it's a recurring problem, it probably is more productive to just reinstall the OS in those cases.
Well, that's assuming that one doesn't compile everything from scratch and lack backups of the packages from which to quickly reinstall them.
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.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
There are already at least two applications that do this: swfdec and gnash.
http://swfdec.freedesktop.org/wiki/ [freedesktop.org]
http://www.gnashdev.org/ [gnashdev.org]
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:They just don't care. (Score:5, Insightful)
The parent is correct though, there are no viable alternatives to the format. Nothing I know of provides the kinds of experience that flash is capable is. (see this site [gettheglass.com]) Advertising drives the consumer side of the web and advertisers aren't going to move to less interactive or more static mediums. It also doesn't hurt that flash has a 99% penetration.
If there was a better platform with good penetration, while maintaining the ability to build rich interactivity, I'd be the first to jump.
Suggest reading Adobe's blogosplat (Score:5, Informative)
It's not Flash, it's Pulseaudio (Score:4, Informative)
You'll have Pulseaudio tell you different, but if you use a pure Alsa for your sound, you'll find Flash--and everything else that uses sound--runs MUCH better.
I have no idea why Pulseaudio has been thrust into various distributions, it's cumbersome at best, outright broken at worst. There's nothing Pulseaudio brings to the table that's needed. Application volume sliders? Anything that outputs volume already has a volume slider, why do I need another one? Sound over the network? Is this REALLY a feature people want at the expense of a huge majority of programs not working? And what's wrong with ESD for this?
So do yourself a favor, and remove all the Pulseaudio stuff from your distro.
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).
Flash has problems everywhere (Score:3, Interesting)
Flash doesn't work completely reliably on any platform I have tried. I find that Adobe Flash on 32bit Linux works about as well as the OS X version (meaning: it's usable but it does have occasional problems).
The main problem people are having is that there is no 64bit Linux version of Flash, so all you can do is run it in some emulated environment.
Because adobe doesn't care about you. (Score:3, Insightful)
what does it say (Score:3, Insightful)
What does it say if Adobe only has 1 employee (if that) working on the linux Flash port and he's doing a better job than GNASH and open source development?
If you really feel so strongly about Flash's importance, maybe you should help turn GNASH into a viable solution.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you think that employee started from scratch? The reason why that "1 employee" is outperforming GNASH is because all he had to do was add Linux support to an existing codebase, while GNASH has to write everything from scratch.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Worse: we have to reverse-engineer the undocumented parts, e.g. RTMP.
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.
Flash is even broken on Windows and OSX (Score:3, Interesting)
Flash is even broken on Windows and OSX
Maybe not as broken as you find it on Linux, but when it comes to sucking performance for no reason or doing really stupid things like cropping video when flipping to full screen video it has some rather hugh problems. (Multi-Monitors is something Adobe thinks people don't use for watching Flash Video apparently, cause it looks very untested.)
Sadly, Flash with Firefox is 10x worse than Flash with IE. After thinking I was going insane on a few new personal installs, I pulled techs to examine the Flash differences. Same sites, same Flash content, and inside Firefox it would bring the CPU to 100% and with IE not even scratch the CPU.
These are also not lemur porn quality sites, these are mainstream sites that have Flash based Ads or even MSNBC which has not moved to Silverlight.
In contrast, the new Silverlight is pretty, efficient and shiny in comparison on both Firefox and IE and even OS X. The NBC Olympic HD streaming it has been handling works better than even my Silverlight developer 'fans' expected, making Flash look problematic and more like an old dog.
Flash on Ubuntu with PulseAudio is broken (+ fix) (Score:3, Informative)
i.e, remove libflashsupport, use the latest flash 10 beta and create a /etc/asound.conf as described in bug 198453 [launchpad.net]
I've not had any browser crashes since doing this, so cross fingers. This is probably a very common problem..
Guide to getting flash working perfectly on hardy (Score:5, Informative)
Flash is not broken, it's your distribution! (Score:4, Insightful)
The original poster of this article is experiencing bugs with his or her distribution, *not* merely with Flash. There are several issues at work here.
a) Flash 10 RC is the first version to support "windowless mode" flash content that several sites use. Unfortunately, there is a bug in Firefox that causes "windowless mode" content to crash. It is not a bug caused by Adobe Flash; un fact, the newest version of swfdec (which also added support for "windowless mode" content) also causes Firefox to crash. This fix is due for release in Firefox 3.0.2 and a workaround is available for older releases already. See: https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/239182 [launchpad.net]
b) Ubuntu Hardy was the first release to integrate PulseAudio, but its default configuration can cause a lot of trouble for users. PulseAudio provides ALSA plugins that enable plain ALSA applications to work correctly with PulseAudio; these plugins are supposed to be enabled by default. Some (buggy) applications do not work correctly using these plugins, including Flash 9 and Audacity. Hardy was released without these plugin enabled, causing many audio mixing problems for users. See: https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/198453 [launchpad.net]
c) It appears the original poster is using the libflashsupport library, which is a workaround to enable PulseAudio support in Flash without the need for the ALSA plugins mentioned in point (b) to be enabled. There is a bug in Flash when using the libflashsupport API; closing and opening new flash streams will result in a crash (such as navigating from one Youtube page to another). See: https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/192888 [launchpad.net]
d) Flash 10 has fixed its ALSA implementation, allowing it to work correctly with the PulseAudio ALSA plugins as mentioned in point (b) - this means that the (buggy) libflashsupport library is now redundant.
Note that all the above bugs contain links to the upstream issues when applicable. For those too lazy to follow the individual bugs, I have posted a guide to configure PulseAudio (and Flash 10) correctly for Ubuntu users, complete with testing packages. See: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=789578 [ubuntuforums.org]
What problems? (Score:5, Funny)
I am not a fan of Flash, however I have not seen any problems with Flash on Linux since they ended the enormous version lag that broken some sites when Windows hd flash 8 and Linux port stopped development at 7. Flash on Linux is a massive resource eater, has idiotic installation procedure, often has to be updated because of security bugs, however it has exactly the same problems on Windows. It is more crappy and unfixable than most Linux software, however this says more about the level of quality that is considered acceptable on Windows rather than about any deficiencies specific to a Linux port.
As for Youtube, why would a Linux user want to use their flash-based player? Install latest version of clive, mplayer and xclip, and run this script after selecting or copying Youtube URL:
#!/bin/sh
cd "$HOME"
cd Desktop 2>/dev/null
xterm -bg "#ffffff" -fg "#000000" -cr "#800000" -ah -fa "DejaVu Sans Mono" -fs 14 -g 80x6 -T "Video Download" \
-e sh -c \
'xclip -o | clive "--player=mplayer -fs %i" --play=src --mask=custom'
(assign it to some panel launcher or menu in your desktop environent).
Re:What problems? (Score:4, Interesting)
This is the biggest problem with FLV. You need a website-specific script just to FIND the videos in question. Certainly, there are several apps that can handle YouTube, but 95% of the FLV videos I would ever care to watch are embedded on other, smaller websites like, eg. GorillaMask.
IMHO, we need some kind of SWF plug-in, but not the monsterous, slow bloated beast that is GNASH. An SWF plug-in stripped down to absolutely nothing, that runs when it encounters an embed=file.swf, then it's only task is to look for the media player strings, find the pointer to the FLV filename, and launch MPlayer with that URL (of the actual FLV file).
With a tiny fraction as much development effort as something like GNASH, and practically no system resources, every FLV video out there becomes easily accessible on Linux, FreeBSD, ReactOS, BeOS, on x86, PPC, ARM, MIPS, et al.
IMHO, Adobe screwed this up horribly... With H.264 support, they could have leap-frogged Microsoft's WMV, and become the ubiquitous format for web playback. However, they, instead, are working AGAINST 3rd parties that also included H.264/MP4, by not embedding the file directly, and forcing websites to include it, hidden behind an SWF "player" that simple obfusticates the actual file, and makes it impossible for other apps to get at, on the off chance they DON'T have the latest version of Flash installed (it'll be a few years before everyone upgrades to v9+). But instead of that, they force websites to provide TWO different web pages if they want compatibility... One for Flash, one for every other video player in the world. Unfortunately, of course, the easiest way out is to just create the Flash page, and screw everybody else over, which is what most sites do, YouTube included. Google Video was smart enough to included a download link, but they are the exceptions, and a direct link to the Flash file would be just as good.
Did you report issues to them? (Score:4, Interesting)
I know lots of people will smile when reading this comment but I actually report issues to Adobe, especially alpha/beta testing Flash 10. They are NOT very communicative but I see some stuff I reported has been fixed. I am also on PowerPC (still) which MS overlords decided to drop support as early as Silverlight 2.
Another issue with closed source/large company software is, they can't include "crash reporter" so they don't actually know who crashes doing what. It is problem on OS X too but at least we send them to Apple, I don't know what Apple does with them though. For that part, also thank to paranoids and conspiracy theorists. They can obviously have "crash dump" code attached and next day, you would see "Adobe spies on their Linux users!!!" type of story.
Anyway, if you know a specific site triggering crash, you better report to Adobe. Linux is _very_ important to them in light of recent developments. If they didn't care, you wouldn't see Flash 10 beta shipped for Linux.
For "Real Networks" and "Adobe", realistic companies not spoiled like Microsoft, Linux support is passport to "devices" and somehow OSX/future iPhone. Don't think they don't care.
Mod Parent up...AND... (Score:3, Insightful)
..frankly Adobe (and other major software vendors) is one of the main barriers to adoption of Linux as a desktop platform.
I'm on Mac OS Leopard and the only thing it'd take to make me move to Linux is to be able to get the Adobe, Microsoft and other suites of professional applications on Linux. That's na' ga' happen. Wouldn't be prudent for Adobe, Microsoft, et al.
And Gdammit (beta), don't tell me that GIMP is just as good as Photoshop. Just don't. It's not, just not, just so very NOT. And there are a milli
Re:Poor flash not the bigges barrier (Score:4, Insightful)
Poor Flash is the one major barrier? Pah - there are a number of more pressing issues, like poor wireless support...
Hardware problems are annoying, but they are fundamentally different from the problem of "critical" software being broken or unavailable. A computer manufacturer that wants to ship computers with Linux pre-loaded, instead of Windows, can pick Linux-friendly hardware to work around the hardware problems. There is no work-around for Flash being crap.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)