Submitted by So you might have heard of the new GNU Gnash Flash player from GNU.org. While still in it’s infancy, it’s the first non-Macromedia stand alone flash player available. Here is an article walking you through installing Gnash on Linux. It’s geared toward Mandriva, but can be used by anyone to compile Gnash from source.
With things like gnash, gcj and mono we can have fully open-source drop-in replacements for many proprietary applications! Good work!
And before many of you say you can have flash player from macromedia that works better, and this is useless, etc, may I remind you that linux is NOT only x86, and that is one of the things I like about linux and most open-source software, you can run all of it on the platform that YOU want to use, be it x86, amd64, powerpc, sparc, arm, sh3, etc..
… let alone the fact that the proprietary player still uses the OSS (!!!) interface for audio playback in Linux and eats tons of CPU time to render simple animation.
The use of OSS is important for cross platform compatability. This si a project designed to bring an open implementation of Flash to all platforms and operating systems. Sure ALSA may be great for Linux, but it’s just linux. The projet is not for a Linux Flash player, but for a universal flash player and a significant number of operating systems use OSS. ALSA just wouldn’t do.
So support both. Everything that runs on Linux should support ALSA, IMHO, it’s the only way to get Linux’s audio out of the stone age where it currently lives.
I don’t know. In my opinion, a programmer for a cross-platform software shouldn’t have to deal with that kind of details. It should be handled to an interface that is going to deal with them. At worst, there is OSS emulation in ALSA…
But come on, let’s try to avoid lowest-common-denominator approaches. OSS sucks, period. It may be cross-platform, but so is ANSI C and you can’t do a whole lot interesting with that.
You can’t avoid OSS; these guys are writing a portable program so OSS support is very welcome. It’s supported in a wide range of platforms, including those using Linux 2.6 and earlier. ALSA supports OSS emulation.
If you’d like native ALSA support you can contribute it. But this project has a lot more important code to write, and until someone steps up ALSA support won’t happen. I assume it’s not a high priority at this point.
Now wait on, OSS should be avoided. It is pure evil and should be left behind. What’s stopping other platforms porting ALSA? Leave the legacy behind. At worst gnash should support both. I wish developers would stop building apps for OSS!
It may be cross-platform, but so is ANSI C and you can’t do a whole lot interesting with that.
That remark probably wasn’t meant to be funny, but I had a good laugh anyway
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How about those other OSes come up with something a little more advanced? I like the idea of multiple programs using the soundcard at once and nothing would please me more if OSS would disappear.
Use SDL then.
It’ll give sound card abstraction on all supported platforms. (Including Windows)
G.
Use http://www.amanith.org or http://www.cairographics.org then.
Edited 2006-02-01 08:07
I don’t think this is the first stand-alone player – gplflash has worked stand-alone for quite a while as far as I know (assuming the definition of stand-alone means works outside of some containing application). Stretching the meaning of stand-alone, there’s swfdec too, and I think there are others.
Sorry about that, to clarify, it’s the first non-Macromedia flash 7 player.
It does have a bit better support than the old gplflash overall, but you’re right, gplflash was a non-macromedia flash 4 player.
Gnash isn’t the first non-Macromedia flash 7 player as it is based on gameswf [1]. gameswf is public domain and Gnash is a relicense of that code under GPL [2]. There is also the swfdec Gstreamer plugin [3], which predates Gnash.
[1] http://www.tulrich.com/geekstuff/gameswf.html
[2] http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/#TOCintroduction
[3] http://www.schleef.org/swfdec/
this thing doesn’t support flash video (video.google.com, http://www.youtube.com, etc.. etc..) get over it.
… so don’t use it.
I’m on x86_64 which isn’t supported, both on Linux and on Windows making gnash my (and other people’s) only option.
BTW, forgot to ask.
Did you bother to open a bug report about your problems? Or did you just act like a 3 y/o baby, screaming and kicking when things don’t work like he wants them to?
It’s still in alpha. Chill out.
Gnash definitely seems like a good effort to bring Flash outside of Macromedia’s (Adobe’s now) own player making it more widely used.
And it has already http://www.iscomputeron.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=… been ported to ZETA as well (a story I submitted here 4 days ago).
(a story I submitted here 4 days ago).
Yup, but ICO getting a screenshot without any form of the ability to confirm that screenshot isn’t really news, now is it?
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I follow BeOS/Zeta closely (I’m using Zeta R1 as my primary desktop) so I’ll notice as soon as a verifyable download comes up.
Point taken, though I must say that even without downloading it, I trust the person who mailed it to me (not the coder)
And being still in development, no download (public) yet.
But like I said, point taken, thanks
too bad it doesn’t compile on freebsd…
…
npplat.h:21:19: npapi.h: No such file or directory
npplat.h:22:19: npupp.h: No such file or directory
…
gmake[3]: *** [npn_gate.lo] Error 1
gmake[3]: Leaving directory `/usr/ports/graphics/gnash/work/gnash-0.7/plugin/mozilla-sdk’
gmake[2]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
gmake[2]: Leaving directory `/usr/ports/graphics/gnash/work/gnash-0.7/plugin’
gmake[1]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
gmake[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/ports/graphics/gnash/work/gnash-0.7′
gmake: *** [all] Error 2
*** Error code 2
Stop in /usr/ports/graphics/gnash.
We could have just taken your word for it.
I’m using FreeBSD6.0 and I did portsnap few days ago.
It compiles on my celeron 400.
…
install -o root -g wheel -m 444 /usr/ports/graphics/gnash/work/gnash-0.7/doc/C/images/* /usr/X11R6/share/doc/gnash/images
===> Compressing manual pages for gnash-0.7
===> Running ldconfig
/sbin/ldconfig -m /usr/X11R6/lib /usr/X11R6/lib/gnash
===> Registering installation for gnash-0.7
Whaddya know…
* ALPHA
* gnash is still in heavy development
* please report gnash bugs upstream to the gnash devs
>>> Regenerating /etc/ld.so.cache…
>>> net-www/gnash-0.7_alpha20060129 merged.
🙂
For the record, I have had no issues using ALSA since it hit the kernel. Some dists even recommended using the user-mode utilities and I still didn’t have issues.
Edited 2006-01-31 23:58
In other related news, it’ll be possivel to create Flex applications (flash like apps) using any IDE (like Eclipse) with the free command line compiler that will be released along with a free SDK:
http://www.danieldura.com/archive/its-true—a-free-flex-sdk