Flash 9 Beta for Linux Available

DemiKnute writes "According to the official Penguin.SWF blog, the a beta release of the long-awaited Flash 9 for Linux is available for download, a mere year after the release for Windows." From the blog: "While we are still working out exactly how to distribute the final Player version to be as easy as possible for the typical end user, this beta includes 2 gzip'd tarball packages: one is for the Mozilla plugin and the other is for a GTK-based Standalone Flash Player. Either will need to be downloaded manually via the Adobe Labs website and unpacked. The standalone Player (gflashplayer) can be run in place (after you set its executable permission). The plugin is dropped into your local plugin directory (for a local user) or the system-wide plugin directory." Report bugs here.

Seems to work on Firefox but not Opera

[BeeBeard]

A little strange: I just unmasked and emerged the Firefox 9 beta, and it works great on Firefox but only kinda sorta works with Opera. Opera has detected the new plugin just fine (right clicking on a flash movie on YouTube brings up an "About Adobe Flash Player 9" option) but most YouTube movies stall out when I try to play them under Opera. The player UI loads, but the movie never plays. If I go to hardocp.com or other sites which make heavy use of flash ads, some show up but not others. In the past, all Mozilla plugins have worked flawlessly with Opera, but I think this Flash beta might be a little questionable. Does anybody else have the same problem?

Re:Why do we need this?

[filet0fish]

Well people don't have to buy software from Adobe to create flash files. The SWF format is open and there are lots of applications that can create SWF files. OpenOffice has an export to flash option, php has the MING library for generating dynamic files, and there's lots of 3rd party programs, like swish, that are sort of "flash lite." Then if you start looking around on the osflash site (osflash.org, I think) you'll find lots more open source flash stuff including compilers, IDEs, and lots of debugging tools.

I think the main reason companies are protective of the file reader programs is that they want to maintain the integrity of the format. They don't want someone coming out with a buggy or insecure player that makes people hate the format. Of course when they put out a buggy player then there's not much point.

Fantastic

[mogrify]

Long-awaited, indeed. The best part is finally being able to play Flash Video 8 on Linux. They got a huge quality improvement when they switched from Sorensen Spark to ON2 VP6, but no one who cares about Linux users could use it... until now :)

Re:Movies

[cortana]

Unfortunately a plain <OBJECT> element pointing at a movie does not work.

If the movie is MPEG1 then it looks like crap.
If it is in a Microsoft format, people who aren't on Windows can't view it.
If it is in a Real Player or Quicktime format, people who aren't on Windows or the Mac OS can't view it.
Additionally, Real and Quicktime require your users to go to the effort of finding and installing the appropriate player software. Most can't be bothered.
Also, all the above formats are patent-encumbered.
If you choose a free format such as Ogg Vorbis+Theora, then again you force the user to waste their time hunting for the plugin software, but in addition there are about five hundred sites that all distribute slightly different versions; the correct (blessed?) site is impossible to find unless the user is a computer expert.

Flash looks attractive because of these problems. In addition it makes it impossible for non-experts to keep a copy of the movie, which makes it attractive to content publishers. In their eyes, the fact that those who don't use 32 bit Windows, the 32 bit Mac OS, or i386 GNU/Linux, can't view the content is but a small price to pay.

On another note: anyone read the EULA for this Flash player? It's pretty scary! Adobe could arbitrarily send you a huge bill for auditing your compliance at any time. In addition you are 'not allowed' to run the player on an embedded/set-top-box device. Does my desktop PC become embedded when I hook, it up to my TV?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

From a guy who got dragged into Flash development

[IronChefMorimoto]

I have skimmed a few of the comments here and some of the anti-Flash-in-general comments that popped up in the "Holy shit, IE7 launched today!" story comments. I wanted to throw in a few observations about Flash and why keeping this medium around is important.

First, I will agree with anyone that says that Flash gets misused more often than not. It does. It sucks ass when someone does a really crap Flash project. I have 2-3 designers doing the visual labor with me turning their designs into relatively interesting Flash interactives. I like to think that I am using Flash properly, but I know I have much to learn, and I look forward to that opportunity keeping me gainfully employed for a few more years (until enough anti-Flash people get it killed?). ;-)

Secondly, if you're going to take 5 minutes to compose a rant on /. about how annoying Flash ads are, then allocate 3 of those 5 minutes to downloading and installing a Firefox extension (there are several, I believe -- Flashgot, right?) that blocks all Flash (including adverts) until you want them. I know they're annoying -- but coming from a media company that relies on advertisers buying those "fancy, irritating" Flash ads, I accept them as a necessary evil. A website running those box or vert ads aren't FORCING you to watch them now, 'cause I've taken 1 minute of my 5 minutes in this rant to tell you how to block 'em and get on with your web browsing life.

Finally, I noticed folks talking about the tag to embed Flash. Stop. Stop doing that and google "swfObject" -- it's a Javascript library you can drop into a central location on your web server and forever forget about detecting Flash or making sure it's relatively standards compliant. The guy who wrote it put together a BETTER detection setup than Adobe did (their kit was NUTS), and it works really well. AND it's flexible, processing querystrings and adding flashvars very easily for a simple Flash embed. If you're still talking about the tag and Flash, you're either developing Flash badly (and this is coming from an intermediate level user who tricked people into paying him for it) or browsing a badly developed Flash site.

My 2-3 cents (5 minutes) about Flash. Be nice to it. With Flash video, it's really coming around as a useful tool, and things like Flex 2.0 (wicked cool way to build application interfaces) are making it more of a tool than a design medium for the web.

BTW -- if the title was confusing -- I was "dragged" into Flash development when folks found out I was better at writing ActionScript and using Flash than writing pure CSS page layout. I'm actually enjoying it -- if you're intersted in learning it, be prepared to re-learn a lot of stuff every 1.25 years or so with new Flash versions.

Thanks,
IronChefMorimoto

Re:AMD64 version?

[jimicus]

I'd go a step further and ask what benefit a 64-bit OS has unless you have over 4GB RAM.

AFAICT, you use up more disk space, individual apps require more memory and the biggest benefit - that you can access >4GB without hacks like PAE - is irrelevant.

Re:Movies

[SanityInAnarchy]

If the movie is MPEG1 then it looks like crap.

So make it mpeg2 or mpeg4. Duh. By the way: Flash also looks like crap, but it also performs like crap, and makes things difficult (and crappy-looking and performing) to try to view the video fullscreen.

If it is in a Microsoft format, people who aren't on Windows can't view it.

I can view any WMV format on my Linux, it's just a question of whether or not I need the DLL. I only need the DLL for WMV9. OS X users have a nifty program called Flip4Mac, but ffmpeg has had support for older WMV formats for a long time.

If it is in a Real Player or Quicktime format, people who aren't on Windows or the Mac OS can't view it.

Real Player sucks, always, of coures. But Quicktime has been well supported by various opensource libraries for as long as I can remember trying, so it works just fine on Linux. Bonus for OS X users -- they already have QuickTime.

Additionally, Real and Quicktime require your users to go to the effort of finding and installing the appropriate player software. Most can't be bothered.

This is just annoying as hell, because the same thing would be true for Flash if Microsoft hadn't included it recently. But seriously, if YouTube was all simple AVIs or MOVs encoded in h.264? Everyone would be rushing to download VLC, QuickTime, and the like.

In any case, you could always do what people have always done: Host two versions of the file, one Windows Media, one QuickTime. That way, everyone on a "user friendly" OS has a player installed by default that can handle it. And you can always use mpeg anyway.

Also, all the above formats are patent-encumbered.

I believe you can find free software to create files readable as most, if not all, of the above formats.

In addition it makes it impossible for non-experts to keep a copy of the movie, which makes it attractive to content publishers.

And what, pray tell, is the point of that? Anyone can save the SWF and upload it to another site, even if it still says "YouTube" on it. As for restricting piracy to experts only, we know how well that's worked in the past -- that's why only experts pirate movies -- oh wait.

In their eyes, the fact that those who don't use 32 bit Windows, the 32 bit Mac OS, or i386 GNU/Linux, can't view the content is but a small price to pay.

I can always view the content, and it's always a pain in the ass. Even if I was exclusively 32-bit Windows, I'd prefer a format that I can save a copy of, play fullscreen, etc. And of course, there's this:

On another note: anyone read the EULA for this Flash player?

There are so many formats that don't come with EULAs.

Re:Please use Gnash

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd love to be able to use Gnash as it'd be one less piece of closed source software on my (x86) machine (except for those nVidia drivers, games, FPGA tools, etc., etc., etc.,). It'd be very useful on Linux/PPC, as occasionally you do need flash.

In any case, if I wanted Flash 9 support, rather than Flash 7, Gnash is sadly useless.

Re:AMD64 version?

[rsidd]

I assume all the libraries of a 32 bit app on a 64 bit system would haveto be 32 bit as well, look at all the libraries effected...

You install it under a chroot. You can find instructions for debian/ubuntu on the net. On my ubuntu dapper AMD64 box the chroot takes about 0.6 GB. If you have a 64-bit machine you can probably set aside that much disk space. I have firefox, acroread, opera, realplay, totem installed there (plus the required libraries). It works fine.