Interview With Linux Flash Player's Lead Engineer

An anonymous reader writes, "Ryan Stewart of ZDNet has an interview with Mike Melanson, the lead engineer behind Adobe's upcoming Flash Player 9 for Linux. It covers what the plans are for the player, what kinds of things won't be in the Linux player that are in the other players, and ways to give Adobe input on the Linux player."

64 bits please...

[tomstdenis]

So tired of shit not being developed for x86_64. Get with the times. Didn't RTFA but I assume they'll ignore it like they always have...

Tom

Re:An obscure database known as MySQL

[suso]

Obviously today is asshole moderation day. Since you are probably going to read this and moderate it down too, read this: People take the time out of their day to write comments that contribute in a positive way to Slashdot. Either by being funny, interesting or insightful. They are all important. When you mod those people down, you are making those people become frustrated with this site to go away and then everything goes south. Think next time, every time you mod a comment down that doesn't *need* to be modded down, you are helping to slowly lower the bar on what constitutes a worthy comment.

Re:Allow me to rain on this parade...

[BFaucet]

Gee I didn't know you represented the needs of everyone. I had no idea Flash was completely useless as I've often enjoyed watching documentaries, news clips, home brew animations and interacting with stimulating websites that utilized Flash as a delivery medium.

I better uninstall that useless piece of junk right away!

Re:Allow me to rain on this parade...

[TheRaven64]

If they want input, then I have some:

Change the license on the Flash spec to allow it to be used players as well as generators. I don't care about their plugin, but I do care about using open formats.

Re:An obscure database known as MySQL

[kfg]

Perhaps we just need a -1 I Don't Get It mod. Then they at least have the opportunity to be honest about it.

KFG

Seriously, folks...

[Wylfing]

what kinds of things won't be in the Linux player that are in the other players

The other players can play movies, and the Linux player...can't!

ways to give Adobe input on the Linux player

All comments may be directed to /dev/null. We'll respond as quickly as we can!

Oh, alright, I'm only kidding. Kind of. I actually read (present tense) the Linux Flash developer blogs and at minimum what we'll be getting is a player that is vastly better than anything we've ever had before. I am just a little irked about Flash being so rotten on Linux for so long. I try to evangelize family and friends and get them to dump Windows, but Flash is a frequent deal-breaker. "Oh, Flash works like crap? Forget it then, I need YouTube and the kids are addicted to the games on Noggin and MyLittlePony." Sigh.

P.S. I never understood the reluctance of companies to go ahead and use ALSA.

Re:no hard questions asked....

[mshiltonj]

why does flash 9 for linux suck horribly compared to all the earlier releases?

There *isn't* a flash 9 for linux, sucky or not. It doesn't exist. That's what the dude is working on.

When are you going to release a fixed version that actually works right or at least comperable to the mac or windows versions?

TFA said "early 2007." That's what he's working on right now!

Sheesh.

Re:Why is he a troll?

[picklepuss]

He's a troll because the article specifically mentions at one point exactly what to do if you want a 64-bit player. You keep pounding the adobe wish list with requests.

Re:Open source player.

[Wylfing]

It does not sound like he has heard of Gnash

I bet he has heard of Gnash. I also bet that one of the 2 main reasons for Adobe spending effort on a Linux Flash player is the capabilities of Open Source Flash players. It would be quite horrible for them if Gnash surpassed the current Linux offering from Adobe in functionality. Great for users, but bad for Adobe. They would stand to rapidly lose control over the Flash platform in a big way.

(I think the 2nd reason, from an executive standpoint, that they are developing this is because if they stop short of the "credo" of Flash, that Flash content can be played anywhere, they sell fewer dev kits. Also, the growing market of dedicated gadgets that run Linux, e.g., phones, which has great potential to be a big target platform.)

Re:Still vapourware until *something* gets release

[Peter La Casse]

* A definitive statement on whether they'll support 64-bit (i.e. "it'll be released at the same time as the 32-bit version" or "it'll be released X months after the 32-bit version" or "it'll never be released"). Sadly, Adobe are somewhat pig-ignorant w.r.t. the 64-bit platform and don't even have a 64-bit version for XP!

They've made [adobe.com] their position [kaourantin.net] on 64-bit support pretty clear.

Ignoring the 64-bit world seems shortsighted to me. Sure, most users are 32 bit at the moment, but are new 32 bit machines even sold any more? Old stock, maybe, before current models push it out of the supply chain. Even Semprons are 64 bit now.

The distro question

[rockhome]

The whole question about wanting the player to "just work" on other distributions really brings up a question that the linux world has been avoiding for at least 10 years, and that is the question of why so many ideosyncratic distributions exist. What makes open source so powerful and effective has also made a mess of interoperability where Linux is concerned.

Why is that each distribution of Linux has to be so ideosyncratic that a body cannot produce a binary installation that "just works"? Why should that even be a question? Isn't this a stumbling block in terms of mainstream, desktop adoption of Linux? Sure, if you can ./configure --put-this-there --this-is-there --look--for-this-here --my-init-scripts-are-here --use-this-and-not-that;make install everything yourself, you'll not be bothered by a lot of this. But suppose you are the mythical, mainstream Linux dekstop user who doesn't know wnaymore about Linux than it installed from the CD no problem. If you are looking for a piece of off the shelf software are you reall going to see something on the label akin to the following :

Compatible with RedHat Linux, SuSE, Slackware, Debian, Gentoo, Mandrake, Ubuntu,SlackHat Redbian, Mandrux, Unbonux, Seus, ZuSE, Debware, Mandhat, Slackdrake, Jesux, Paulux, Vitamin-C, and Bean Crock Enterprise

Even though you can really categorize most into a few base types, what is to gurantee that my Rhinestone Pantux will run something as easily as my Blue Sude Linux even though they are both based on RedHat?

Re:Open source player.

[cortana]

Works on architectures other than i386. Can actually display text reliably. Sound and video in sync. Doesn't crash the browser.

Just keep hounding Adobe

[kimvette]

Just keep hounding Adobe with requests for Linux versions of all of their products. They will eventually realize it's wise to cater to a growing market. If they continue to ignore Linux, they risk being rendered irrelevant, especially with Xara, Inkscape, krita, and the gimp all quickly maturing. I'm sure that alternatives to Adobe's flash player aren't far off if Adobe continues to drop the ball. I've read that the so-called "lead engineer behind Adobe's upcoming Flash Player 9 for Linux" is the ONLY engineer assigned to the upcoming Flash Player 9 for Linux - I have NO idea if it's true (but the thing is so late I suspect it is) but if it is, that's pretty sad. We'll end up getting the Flash Player 9 for Linux right around the time that Flash 10 for everything else has alreaqdy shipped.

Re:64 bits please...

[Octorian]

Because all these Linux users just discovered "64-bit" yesterday, and don't understand that it can actually co-exist with "32-bit" stuff on the same kernel, and the same userland (no, you do NOT need to chroot it), and only needs a different set of libraries (i.e. "/usr/lib" vs "/usr/lib64").

Solaris, for example, has been 64-bit for quite some time. However, even with a 64-bit kernel & drivers, most of the userland is still 32-bit. They provide 64-bit versions of the necessary libraries, however, so that you can build 64-bit applications when it benefits you. (and when it doesn't benefit you, its just wasteful of system resources)

Then again, SPARC isn't as braindead as classic x86, and you can build 32-bit SPARC binaries that take advantage of all the extra instructions of the sparcv9 (UltraSPARC/64-bit) architecture. x86_64 added a lot of things beyond 64-bit'ness that probably improves performance, but I wonder how much of that (i.e. like extra registers), if any of it, you could even use in 32-bit code.

Re:Why won't they support Gstreamer?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Why don't they use Gstreamer? This would solve the synchronization issues
> (the current gstreamer-0.10 is very good at keeping everything in sync

Because they say they want pixel-for-pixel "compatibility" with the windows version so they can't use it for video display. So how can gstreamer keep everything in sync when it is only handling audio?

> By the way, I have read some comments in the blog saying that Gstreamer
> should not be used because its API or ABI is not stable. I say: bullshit.
> There were some incompatibilities while moving from gstreamer-0.8 to gstreamer-0.10,
> but this was a long time ago and the interfaces have been stable since then.

Umm... gstreamer-0.10 was released ca. 9 months ago. I'd call it a stable API when it has been stable for 1 or 2 years (and not when the developers shout loudest that they _intend_ to keep it stable).
Also gstreamer is one more dependency that might make it not work on some (esp. older) systems. Not every (even Linux) user runs the latest version of everything. And actually I personally wouldn't be too happy if I had to install gstreamer for only this one application (well, I won't install flash anyway, since I have a 64 bit system though, and prefer to ignore flash sites anyway).

Re:Open source player.

[Grishnakh]

So what should Adobe do in your opinion? Do nothing? Support Gnash team instead of their own player?
You're trying paint Adobe as evil (or at least that's my impression). I'm no fan of Adobe, but their efforts in this area should be at least acknowledged.

They are evil. They only renewed their efforts on the Linux player after Gnash got going and put egg on their face. Even so, they're still ignoring all the calls for an x86_64 version of Flash.

So yes, it'd be much better if they supported the Gnash team instead of wasting time with their crappy version.