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Where's the 64-bit plugin? (ZDNet)
Where's the 64-bit plugin? (ZDNet)
Posted Aug 29, 2006 18:51 UTC (Tue) by alspnost (subscriber, #2763)Parent article: Interview with Mike Melanson, lead engineer on the Linux Flash Player team (ZDNet)
What, no mention of the glaring, absurd omission of a 64-bit Flash plugin, after all these years? Not that I'm bothered any more, since I've gone back to 32-bit and use a Flash-free browsing setup. But I know a lot of people could really use this.
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Where's the 64-bit plugin? (ZDNet)
Posted Aug 29, 2006 20:09 UTC (Tue) by kh (subscriber, #19413) [Link]
I think you missed this:one suggestion I would make to the community is to use the Adobe Wish Form to make specific feature requests, such as support for 64-bit and PowerPC platforms and alternate OS such as FreeBSD, so the comments are more productive.I'm hoping for the gnu version myself.
Where's the 64-bit plugin? (ZDNet)
Posted Aug 29, 2006 20:25 UTC (Tue) by alspnost (subscriber, #2763) [Link]
No, I saw that, but what I mean is that the interviewer should have pushed them harder on that point. As far as I know, people have been nagging them for ages, via that form and other means, but clearly it hasn't achieved anything yet. The 64-bit issue is just lame in late 2006 - they should have made him squirm with that a bit!
Where's the 64-bit plugin?
Posted Aug 30, 2006 15:25 UTC (Wed) by ernstp (subscriber, #13694) [Link]
If you read their blogs they mention it a couple of time, and that they're working on it!The problem is that Flash deals with bytecode and that part of the engine seems to be a bit more complicated to port to a 64-bit architecture.
Note that there's no Flash plugin for 64-bit Windows either.
Where's the 64-bit plugin? (ZDNet)
Posted Aug 31, 2006 15:34 UTC (Thu) by bos (subscriber, #6154) [Link]
In a previous life, I had to occasionally hack on the Linux Flash player source code. It wasn't bad code, but it wasn't very clean, either. I'd have expected a port to a 64-bit environment to take a few months of full-time work for a small team at that time, and the player has become considerably more complex since then.
Considering that most Linux-on-x86_64 users can simply run a 32-bit version of Firefox, and that the regular Flash player works fine there, I can somewhat understand Adobe's lack of urgency in doing a port, especially given the tiny number of prospective users to be satisfied by such work.
The GNU swf player has a laudable goal; if you want to unyoke yourself from reliance on a proprietary vendor whose priorities don't match your own, roll up your sleeves and join in.