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Updates on Flash support for LinuxUpdates on Flash support for LinuxPosted Apr 19, 2012 3:40 UTC (Thu) by jcm (subscriber, #18262)Parent article: Updates on Flash support for Linux
To me, the biggest problem with flash is that Linux in general is seen as too hostile as a moving target platform for Adobe to want to continue releasing a standalone plugin outside of Chrome. We would be well served to take a step back and ask ourselves why that has to be the case (note: I'm not interested in, and I don't care about, any reasons why using flash is "evil" - in the real world, people use flash for real daily purposes).
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Updates on Flash support for Linux Posted Apr 19, 2012 3:52 UTC (Thu) by jake (editor, #205) [Link]
> Linux in general is seenas too hostile as a moving target platform for
> Adobe to want to continue releasing a standalone plugin outside of Chrome
while I'm aware of your platform soapbox, this doesn't really seem to fit with that, does it? Adobe won't be doing plugins for Firefox on *Windows* or *OS X* either, will it? This is Adobe dissing the NPAPI "platform", I think, not Linux ... or am I (as usual) missing something?
jake
Updates on Flash support for Linux Posted Apr 19, 2012 4:07 UTC (Thu) by cuviper (subscriber, #56273) [Link]
Adobe's announcement said, "Flash Player will continue to support browsers using non-"Pepper" plugin APIs on platforms other than Linux."
Updates on Flash support for Linux Posted Apr 19, 2012 12:34 UTC (Thu) by jake (editor, #205) [Link]
Indeed. Clearly I was confused. I plead "lack of neurons" or something.
jake
Updates on Flash support for Linux Posted Apr 19, 2012 7:57 UTC (Thu) by cmccabe (guest, #60281) [Link]
From Adobe's point of view, Google is doing the work to support Flash on Linux via Chrome. Why should they spend more money on it?
YOU would be well served to take a step back and consider what it is that you really want out of Linux. Do you want a locked down platform, where there's a single, unmodifiable, uncustomizable version of X, for any X you could name? Controlled by a single company? There are plenty of platforms like that out there. Linux isn't one of them, and hopefully it never will be.
It's really irritating to see how many people want to turn Linux into another clone of OS X. If you want OS X, why not just buy a copy?
I also take issue with the idea that Linux is somehow a hostile platform (partly because the company I work for develops almost exclusively for Linux). But this comment is getting too long as is, so I'll leave it at that.
Updates on Flash support for Linux Posted Apr 19, 2012 10:54 UTC (Thu) by cortana (subscriber, #24596) [Link]
I just don't want to see Linux get significantly less useful as a desktop platform, and the lack of Flash for anyone who decides not to jump through the hoops of installing a proprietary browser will sadly make it so.
Updates on Flash support for Linux Posted Apr 19, 2012 20:50 UTC (Thu) by cmccabe (guest, #60281) [Link]
Running flash in Firefox under Linux never worked all that well for me. npviewer.bin would often start taking 100% of the CPU, or lock up and stop displaying video.
I also don't understand why someone would be unwilling to install a proprietary browser, but willing to install an (unsandboxed) proprietary plugin.
I feel bad that Firefox will become less popular as a result of this decision, but Linux users who are willing to install Chrome will probably actually have a better experience than in the past.
P.S. I don't have flash installed and haven't for the last few years. I don't miss it.
Updates on Flash support for Linux Posted Apr 19, 2012 11:36 UTC (Thu) by Seegras (subscriber, #20463) [Link]
> To me, the biggest problem with flash is that Linux in general is seen as
> too hostile as a moving target platform for Adobe to want to continue > releasing a standalone plugin outside of Chrome.
Hah! Remember how long it took Adobe to produce a 64bit-version of flashplayer for _any_ platform? There was an interview with a head developer who was whining on how hard it was, with all those different assemblers and such.
The simple fact was, the Adobe flashplayer team was a horde of incompetent nincompoops. Maybe still is. In any case, that is a far more likely cause for lacking support for <insert platform here>.
Updates on Flash support for Linux Posted Apr 20, 2012 11:20 UTC (Fri) by wookey (subscriber, #5501) [Link]
Being beholden to proprietary providers for important bits of software does not solve the problem in anything other than a supercifical way.
Indeed in this case it's made the problem _much_ worse. If it hadn't been really quite easy to 'get flash now' for so many linux users we'd have fixed the flash problem years ago and gnash and lightspark would have a great deal more developers. But nearly every Free Software/Open Source person I know just installs adobe's flash player and says 'what problem - my computer seems to be working?' I find that pretty depressing. I know it's annoying but this stuff matters and if we can't be arsed solving our own problems then we have no-one else to blame (well, except maybe Adobe for making this awful mess in the first place).
If Adobe is about to stop supplying flash plugins that might actually help direct a bit of effort to a genuine solution (although I guess most people will just stick with the version they have). Gnash and lightspark really are quite good these days. Having been using them both for years I can tell you that somewhere between 'quite a lot' and 'most' stuff now works, so it's perfectly useable day-to-day but you get an incentive to report and fix the sites/players/apps that are still bust.
BBC iplayer would be a good target for example, which still says 'you have the wrong version of the flash player, please f*ck off from our nice publically-funded service, low-life' (I paraphrase slightly)
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