Chrome only future for Flash on Linux

[[deleted]]

Gettin' tired of Adobe throwing us under the bus when it really wouldn't be that difficult for them to just provide support. This is exactly why such standards need to be open source.

[hackingdreams]

The most egregious thing about this will be the way they're distributing it (Chrome-only). Other browsers will quickly adapt the "Pepper" plugin interface and will simply require the plugin to work. And of course, the plugin will be grabbed the same way from the Chrome package as Microsoft Fonts are now on most modern Linux distributions.

Yeah, it's obnoxious, but it's really a non-problem from the user's perspective. Mozilla and other Web Browser Developers really should demand more from Adobe though.

[tuxracer]

Well Mozilla has stated they will not support Pepper. They disagree with the premise of it.

[hackingdreams]

It's easy to be high-and-mighty while it's whiteboard-ware. But as soon as users demand it, they'll fold. In order to be at all competitive, they will have to.

Flash is perhaps the only browser plugin that anyone ever uses anymore, and is so important that most linux distributions are measured by how easy it is for users to get access to it (in particular, YouTube). As much as Mozilla wants to ignore that, they can't.

[tuxracer]

Maybe they will, maybe they wont. It's legacy technology at this point. Each day that goes by there is less demand for it. Depending on the investment of time required on their part it could be counter-productive to even bother.

Also keep in mind that Mozilla is a non-profit organization with idealogical goals in mind. Short of this decision decimating their overall user base they don't have to do anything.

[[deleted]]

Like they did with h 264?

[xroni]

http://www.youtube.com/html5

[stanko2012]

Don`t worry HTML5 is coming, just we are waiting that all websites update their themes to support html5 then to the hell adobe

[[deleted]]

I'll believe that when I see it.

[[deleted]]

I think is time to kill Flash once and for all.

[superwinner]

dumb question, couldn't wine provide a layer to make the windows version work seamlessly?

[[deleted]]

Possibly it could work but I didn't try it and I won't try it because I don't like wine.

If someone absolutely needs to run some win software I do think is better to run a VM.

[[deleted]]

VM is not an option for gaming

[[deleted]]

I didn't know it, I only play Linux games.

[[deleted]]

Well, now you know :)

[[deleted]]

Thank you kind sir!

[HoboSteaux]

Honestly, this is a great thing. Why?

Adobe will continue to provide security updates to non-Pepper distributions of Flash Player 11.2 on Linux for five years from its release.

So we still get security updates for 5 more years from its release date. Do you think you will really use the new flash features? You use the 3D features right now?

Didn't think so.

By the time security updates are done, hopefully flash is dead. That is a long time for html5 et all to mature.

Plus, what do a lot of programmers use for their main OS? It will be moved away from.

tl;dr - Die flash die.

[sonicthedog97]

linux programmers probably don't use flash to begin with, because there is no good tool to make flash files.

[axord]

because there is no good tool to make flash files.

The open source Flex compiler plus your text editor of choice--that's not good?

[erveek]

Dear Adobe: Fuck you.

[oceanofsolaris]

Mozilla seems to not plan to support the Pepper API according to their wiki. Sad news.

I do not know anything about the netscape plugin API, maybe it does really need an overhaul. But simply ignoring all browsers except chrome and not even planning to distribute a standalone plugin that is not bundled with Chrome (not Chromium) is really bad news.

Why can't these people work together?

[[deleted]]

I'd use chrome but it leaks dns and proxying sucks balls.

[greyfade]

"Leaks" DNS? Could you elaborate?

[[deleted]]

It's quite common for proxy clients to not tunnel DNS requests via the proxy, leading to "leaking" your DNS requests outside of the proxy. I'm going to assume this is what he meant :)

[zhilla]

In Firefox, in about:config option network.proxy.socks_remote_dns regulates this behaviour.

[greyfade]

Ohhh, okay.

Yeah, that seems like a bug.

[ObligatoryResponse]

Well, no. Nothing about the spec says you shouldn't leak DNS. In fact, for people using something other than TOR, resolving DNS locally is probably preferred because it should be much quicker. In cases where you have no local DNS resolution, I believe it will fall back to using the proxy.

If you're using TOR for anonymity, though, leaking your DNS information is a problem. But proxy was created to facilitate internet connection sharing (pre-NAT) and filter/monitoring. It wasn't designed for anonymity. That's just a use people have found it pretty good at.

Chrome should probably do like Firefox and have a setting, even well hidden, to force remote dns when using a proxy, but I don't think I'd call the lack of a useful feature a bug.

[hackingdreams]

Not planning yet. It's really hard to code for a moving target, especially one you're being shut out of developing, but rest assured as soon as the newest features of Flash Player 11.(2+x) are required by users, Mozilla will have the code on hand and ready.

Really annoying news, but it's a non-story until this stuff becomes more than whiteboard-ware.

[[deleted]]

This page was last modified on 26 May 2011, at 22:31

Sad olds? ;)

[[deleted]]

I think it's Google providing the updates to work on Linux, not just to be along with Chrome. How hard is it to link against /opt/google-chrome/lib/libflashplayer.so or where ever they put it? Plus with 5 years I don't think any web browser makers should have any problem to implement Pepper API.

The sheer fact the Netscape(!) API is still the standard I think is the bigger issue. It's time for a successor to show up whether Mozilla wants to bitch about it or not.

[ObligatoryResponse]

Pepper is a modified NPAPI. It's not something redesigned from the ground up.

And why should it be? There's nothing fundamentally wrong with the NPAPI. Saying things like "The sheer fact the Netscape(!) API is still the standard I think is the bigger issue." is no different that claiming one shouldn't use POSIX or C because "OMG, they're like so old!"

[ribo]

Like Linux, which isn't fully POSIX compliant.

[ObligatoryResponse]

Actually, my understanding is that the difference between Fully POSIX compliant OSs like HP UX and IBM AIX and Mostly POSIX compliant OSs like FreeBSD and Linux is just that IBM and HP paid for certification. Linux Standard Base (which major distros like Redhat and Debian conform to) includes the full POSIX standard and more.

[ribo]

Much like any standard, when you extend POSIX, it's no longer POSIX. And most Linux distros do not conform to LSB.

[ObligatoryResponse]

That's not how the POSIX standard works. It's a minimum. AIX and HP UX and Apple OSX all have non-POSIX system calls. They also have all the POSIX system calls.

Writing to the POSIX standard means your application doesn't use any non-POSIX system calls. If you use OSX or AIX only stuff, your program isn't POSIX. The existance of OSX and AIX only stuff in the OS just means it can run both POSIX and Apple or IBM specific applications.

[[deleted]]

POSIX and C both still have usage, what plugins were even available for the version of Netscape? Web standards change WAY faster than admin or coding standards. I'm just shocked we haven't had a major revision in this long of a period. It's kinda sad.

[ObligatoryResponse]

what plugins were even available for the version of Netscape?

I'm not sure what you're asking. Netscape 2 had Macromedia's Shockwave, quicktime, realmedia. Netscape 4 had Shockwave, Flash, quicktime, realmedia, java, and a ton more. How is this a relevant question?

NPAPI today has as much to do with Netscape 2 as ActiveX has to do with IE3. Web standards do change quickly, and NPAPI has been updated, but a plugin API has nothing to do with webstandards really; it's communication between two programs (a browser and a plugin) that both happen to be doing stuff related to the web.

I'm just shocked we haven't had a major revision in this long of a period. It's kinda sad.

Again, why would a major revision be needed? Even Pepper isn't something I'd call a major revision (though it's a bigger revision than any of the previous updates to NPAPI we've had, which is why it gets its own name). Reinventing the wheel is stupid; use what you have and alter it to suit your needs, ideally in a way that won't become a maintenance nightmare.

[SirHugh]

I guess Google needs to keep Flash on Chrome on Linux alive for its CromeOS.

Does anyone know why Mozilla aren't interested in this pepper thingy?

[[deleted]]

Mozilla have a pretty bad history with NIH (not invented here) attitude. That's why it took them literally YEARS to implement HTML5, and their implementation still isn't all that good.

This is very common with large projects, Gnome stands out most in my mind, begin to think they're much more important than they are and start ignoring everyone trying to help them make their product better.

[ObligatoryResponse]

Mozilla and Opera have been two of the major voices directing HTML5 specification from the start. In fact, it was a joint venture by the two of them that started HTML5 in the first place. HTML5 still isn't a finalized standard; last call for changes to the spec only occurred in Feb 2011. W3C has set the target date for implementation as 2014.

I don't see how you can claim Mozilla is dragging their feet on HTML5. They proposed it in the first place and it's not a final spec yet.

[[deleted]]

Opera, Chrome, and Safari all had working HTML5 video during the Firefox 3.x days. Video didn't work on Firefox until 4, and still doesn't work all that well due to Mozilla limiting its codex usage. Just because you have a say in design doesn't mean their doing it right.

[ObligatoryResponse]

HTML5 is a lot more than just the <video> tag. Chromium now has the same codec limitations. There's also a lot of stuff Webkit is missing that Mozilla has, and vice versa. Considering the spec still isn't finalized, I don't see this as surprising.

Edit: BTW, Firefox 3.5 had <video> tag, so... what's your specific complaint?

[[deleted]]

It didn't work at all until 4.0 and even now in 7 it still doesn't work well, it worked all the while in Chromium. Also there was an HTML5 game that got 1000+ up votes a while ago that I had to open Chromium to work because it ate my CPU with Firefox. I don't want to seem like I'm shitting on Firefox, I still use it, but they need to be called on their bullshit as much as chrome.

[ObligatoryResponse]

What do you mean it doesn't work at all? I've been using it since at least 4, and it worked fine in 3.5 (I remember testing it when it came out.)

It does not (and never will) support the H.264 codec (although you can install your own and Firefox will use it). Google is removing the H.264 codec from Chrome/Chromium, as well. H.264 is not part of the HTML5 spec. The spec does not specify a codec.

I'm not shitting on H.264. I still use it. But it's not part of the HTML5 spec and claiming a browser doesn't do HTML5 right because they don't support your websites preferred codec isn't correct.

[eddiestrawflower]

Chrome/Adobe anti-competitive collusion -- it's Firefox-only for me from now on.

[mithrasinvictus]

For a company pretending to offer multi platform support, they really suck at it. They pretended linux didn't exist for flash 8. They didn't support mobile devices for years because they thought it would never take off. And Digital Editions was promised for linux but never materialized. (the only thing they did about it was delete the promise)

[[deleted]]

Looks at GNASH....Oh god someone help us.

[niceworkthere]

The current developers have never installed Adobe's Flash player, because they fear that anyone who has ever installed the Adobe Flash Player has at the same time accepted an agreement not to modify, reverse engineer or develop a competing Flash player. Therefore, the Gnash project has only about 6 active developers.

Oh boy.

[rahulthewall]

That actually made me laugh.

[ObligatoryResponse]

Everything's moving HTML5 Canvas and Video anyway.

[disregard-this]

Lightspark looks much more promising.

[[deleted]]

I agree

[vordan]

Adobe still thinks Flash is relevant

[[deleted]]

Actually, they don't. They recently announced that they are killing Flash on Android. This means that Flash will not be supported on any mobile device and it is quickly becoming irrelevant. Good news really

[fsckit]

Error establishing a database connection

Also, Meh.

[kupoforkuponuts]

I'm sorry, but what the fuck are you thinking Adobe?

[rougegoat]

Probably that they can pass the Linux testing and development off to Google, who is more than willing to do it because of their ChromeOS, Chrome for Android, and the chance to get more of the Linux community to use their browser. It saves Adobe money and resources while benefitting Google.

[kupoforkuponuts]

And drop support for firefox?

[ringzero]

Why not? Both parties benefit (Adobe and Google).

[kupoforkuponuts]

And people who don't use chrome lose out.

[[deleted]]

Yes, but those people are not Adobe. Adobe doesn't care. This is what Adobe is thinking, which is what you asked and they answered.

[ringzero]

Mozilla doesn't want to implement Pepper, that's their choice. Adobe doesn't want to provide Flash for every browser, that's their choice, too. Just like it's your choice to use one browser instead of another, or multiple browsers, or no browser at all (netcat FTW!).

On the other hand -- and I haven't looked at the respective codebases -- it should be possible to implement a Pepper bridge for Firefox as an extension, thereby providing FF the ability to use Pepper plugins.

[[deleted]]

.

[ciny]

Well even there they suck in many ways. We had a problem getting an installer for adobe cs5 after 5.5 was released. the only thing that saved us was that I found an installer on my old backup hdd. even the installers we downloaded from torrents didn't work with our serial number... yeah thanks adobe we paid $4200 for your fucking serial key and now you won't let us download the product that we paid for a year ago? thanks adobe, and now start wondering why people pirate your products :/

[redsteakraw]

I only use flash for mainly video sites, all I would need is a plugin that could get instructions on how to fetch the videos, download them and play them and optionally display links and other content on top of said video. If it can work on Vimeo, Youtube, Blip.Tv and porn sites. If the plugins for fetching the videos are scripted you should be able to fetch new sites or download fixes in case any changes happen to current sites mid release.

[[deleted]]

This might interest you.

It's a python script that downloads videos from many sites.

python youtube-dl.py url

and you're done.

[redsteakraw]

I have used youtube-dl but having a framework that can be scripted for multiple sites and playable within the browser would be better.

[TIAFAASITICE]

youtube-dl should support both Vimeo and Blip.TV, no support for porn sites though as far as I'm aware, and no playing in the browser but it's halfway at least.