Ex-Amiga hacker and ex-BeOS engineer Tinic Uro, now at Macromedia, blogged about the next version of Flash Player for Linux. Apparently version 8 will be skipped and the Linux version will see some extra love on upcoming version 8.5.
Flash Player 8 for Linux Update
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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I think the linux community will be happy now:P having flash 8 sites available to users.
Even if it’s not free, I expect this release soon since the 7.0 version is buggy like hell… and I hope that the 8.5 version and later will be updated more often, like the win version…
i wish that version 8.5 wont use lots of cpu ressources.
JIT VM and mark-and-sweep garbage collector? Damn, that’s a lot of tech just to watch Homestar Runner!
Think “Rich Client Interfaces” aka Flex.
Tragdor!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It’s Trogdor! >.<
For those of us who like flash on some pages and use Linux as a main desktop.
Yeah, now you can view the Vonage VoIP spam on OSNews just like the rest of us. 😀
That’s sarcasm, by the way. 😉
Yeah, now you can view the Vonage VoIP spam on OSNews just like the rest of us. 😀
That’s sarcasm, by the way. 😉
It runs OK under Flash 7 on Linux already ;-(
Guess I must reinstall Adblock on Firefox 1.5 and see if it is still blocking all Flash and Java sites or not.
If you are using Firefox 1.5, install Adblock Plus, not Adblock (you’ll have to google for it). It doesn’t suffer from these problems.
Oh, we already can.
It just makes Firefox run that much s l o w e r . . .
Oh, and memory leaks? Umm…
Now we patiently await Adobe CS3:Linux
But actually does someone know any productive flash usage beside annoying websites and advertisements. I have yet to see one. I mean i see flash as an obstruction because it restricts the retrieval of information in an uniform way, so one actually spends more time using flash page than normal page and this gets very annoyng. I mean is there any usefulleness in flash beside beside impressing artsy people. Just my 2c.
Well, flash can be useful for games, animated cartoons and screencasts. Also chess.fm provides very nice video lectures using flash.
I’ve seen Flash used offline in educational, and training CDs. I belive that there’s a Flash interface to Asterix. The point being is that most people judge the merits of a technolgy based on a few experiences. (“Linux sux because I used an old version, or my experience is several years old”). I’m wondering when we get scripted SVG being used on the web, were Flash is now being used? Will SVG be a “bad” technolgy? Good thing we’re all geeks and can see beyound such pettyness.
We use flash for making cross-platform educational cdroms. The flash components are infact embedded within the Mozilla framework, using XUL.
http://www.eyezmaze.com/grow/cube/
Try these games!
There are 2 really good websites using flash.. Glide, which lets you share photos and files with your friends is all flash based as well as pandora.com which is part of the music genome project which IMHO is better then most radio stations..
Bah, the video that flash uses is great IMO. Some sites, like Honda’s, only work with flash 8.
Now when will they release a shockwave player for linux? And it would have been nice if they also released most of the top selling adobe products like photoshop and illustrator on linux too .
Hope they start using ALSA instead of OSS, Flash is currently the only thing that can’t use ALSA, besides maybe Real Player.
The next Real will do ALSA, you can get snapshots from player.helixcommunity.org.
I’m actually glad they use OSS because us FreeBSD guys wouldn’t be able to use Linux flash otherwise.
Macromedia’s Free Software support has been… well, the word is woeful so far. They release only Flash for x86, leaving us having to explain to our children why big companies don’t let them play some online shockwave games like their friends can. They ignore non-x86 platforms, ignore 64bit platforms, ignore other Free Software platforms like kFreeBSD. Hell, it only works in different browsers because many of them support Netscape’s API. If that wasn’t possible, most browsers wouldn’t even work with Macromedia Flash.
I hope we’ll see Macromedia taking Free Software a bit more seriously soon, considering that Microsoft is probably going to push them out of the Windows web graphics market soon, with Vista. If not, we’ll see Macromedia desperately trying to hold on to their market penetration with binaries when better Free Software solutions already exist, much like Real is doing now (and failing at) against GStreamer.
If you read the article you’ll understand exactly why they have “ignored” anything but x86 and 64 bit platforms. It comes down to signficiant changes to the JIT required to support it. Remember this company is still a business, stuff just doesn’t happen over night.
They are re-working their JIT to support 64 bit systems soon.
I hope that this bug: The onKeyDown and onKeyUp event handlers don’t work in the Konqueror browser ( http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=75837 ) will be fixed by either Macromedia or KDE ASAP…
There’s absolutely NO better Free Software alternative to Flash or Shockwave.
Having said that, I would indeed be great if they started to support Flashplayer on other platforms and architectures (not just x86 Linux) as well as on Windows.
I also REALLY hope Adobe releases Flash, Dreamweaver and Indesign for other platforms/arches. Not because I want to use them, but I just think it would a great opportunity for Linux to gain ground in the corporate environment. But that might just be wishful thinking.
Btw I recently was mailed by Adobe. They were doing some market research about Linux and other platforms in a corporate environment. I was glad they are at least willing to investigate the situation of Linux. I can’t really blame them if they do not release any of their larger and more expensive products for anything other than Windows or OS X, if there turns out to be not enough animo.
Still no version for linux AMD64 then?
Bah!
AFAIK there’s no Windows XP 64bit version of flash.
Seems that the code monkey at Adobe never bothered to write portable code…
Maybe he should whip up a BeOS version then…
On the plus side, now I know I’ll actually be able to visit the Flex 2 sites I develop!
are you forgot about us ?
I just wrote to them AGAIN requesting a Shockwave player for Linux….it’s STUPID that my son has to boot up Windows just to do a couple of online games he likes because they need shockwave and that’s only available for Windows (and mac). I sure hope that they complete the line and come out with that soon.
I haven’t had any trouble with FLASH in Linux. Version 8 or 8.5 should be fine…
Try Crossover Office (codeweavers.com). Yes, it costs a little, but I have been running Shockwave with Crossover for a couple years now, and it works great!
I removed flash from all of my systems a long time ago. After realizing that 99% of all flash stuff I see on my regulary visited web sites is advetisement I came to the conclusion that I don’t need or want flash.
“I removed flash from all of my systems a long time ago. After realizing that 99% of all flash stuff I see on my regulary visited web sites is advetisement I came to the conclusion that I don’t need or want flash.”
Some feel the same way about BT, seeing as how 99% of it’s usage is for illegal copyright infringement.
Grossly exaggerated. Thumbs down. Also off-topic.
You could try flashblock if you are a firefox user. If you are a konqueror user you can whitelist the sites that are allowed to load/use plugins, like flash, and disable plugins globally.
It is not standard, it is not open sourced.
“It is not standard, it is not open sourced.”
*bumper sticker*
“GPL or bust”
Saying that Flash is not standard is insane. It comes bundled with Windows, is installed on the vast majority of all computers, and is the most used method for delivering interactive web multimedia. There are no OSS alternatives. SVG is only now beginning to appear in some browsers, is incomplete compared to Flash, and has a fraction of the developers behind it.
Just what do you think a standard is??
My guess is you believe the W3C is some magical God whose word is law.
The net is about decentralization. Standards should grow in the real world, and that is what Flash did.
Saying that Flash is not standard is insane. It comes bundled with Windows, is installed on the vast majority of all computers, and is the most used method for delivering interactive web multimedia. There are no OSS alternatives. SVG is only now beginning to appear in some browsers, is incomplete compared to Flash, and has a fraction of the developers behind it.
These are not arguments for Flash being a standard. Being a standard is not equal to having it installed on “almost all machines”, standards has to be agreed upon by several parties, and with an open standard, the specifications are regulated by the involved parties (not by one company as in the case of Flash). Flash is rather Macromedia’s idea, and while being available to loads of machines (except mine with Flash 8 as you can see, and Flash for my old iMac I loaded up with Ubuntu), it’s not at all a standard.
If it had been Free Software (GPL or equivalent) it had helped a lot, since even if it not being a standard it had been open and accessible for any computer technically sufficient to run it.
When will Adobe finally release its Flash plugin for FreeBSD at last???!
Looking forward to that, and while they’re at it they can whip up a shockwave version for BSD/Linux too…
The Flash 7.0 Linux version crawls like a dead dog on FreeBSD…
“Some feel the same way about BT, seeing as how 99% of it’s usage is for illegal copyright infringement.”
There is a big difference between not installing/using something on your own systems and th e goal to destroy a technology so that noone can use it.
Regarding the tip for flashblock: thanks, I’ll give it a try.
The point is that the percentage is wholly artificial, and has no relationship to the merits of Flash.
As for your side-issue of BT being targetted for destruction. Not quite. What’s really being targetted is abusers of the technology.
In fact I am hapy to have a choice not to install any version of Flash player, and for being unable to see flash animation at all.
Yes, there are sites which can not be navigated without Flash, but I consider those sites being incompatibile with myself and not worth seeing.
DG
So can look foward to a version for aWeb then?
Also I will add my voice to the 99% of Flash sites are rubbish.
And thank the lord for Flash, how else would we able to see those wonderful Cruical Memory adverts?
“And thank the lord for Flash, how else would we able to see those wonderful Cruical Memory adverts?”
As opposed to not seeing any ads, and OSNews closes at the end of the year.*
*Of course we all know how to prevent that and not see any ads. Right?
They don’t utilize any of the new features of Flash 8, and run just fine with Flash 7, which has been out for Linux for a while. This is only about Flash 8. Flash 7 made Flash at least usable on Linux though (the sound couldn’t sync at all on Linux with Flash 6 for Linux), but it still has a lot to be desired from it, not very polished software or anything. I’ll be happy if they do make as much of an improvement as they did from Flash 6 to Flash 7 with Flash 7 to Flash 8.5 for Linux. It should be in mostly usable state for software that just came out, on its first revision.
Didn’t Adobe skip Acrobat Reader 6 for Linux?
I’ve found UNIX systems with Acrobat Reader 4, Acrobat Reader 5, and now Acrobat Reader 7…
Oh well, at least there seems to be some renewed interest. And I do second the person who hopes they use ALSA. Right now the lag times are about one second, which makes it annoying to watch Strong Bad make fun of people…
Ooh! Scene change! But… he’s still talking…
rofl… windows doesent bundle blash…