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- baalzebub, on 10/12/2007, -10/+85i will be removing flash-7 for Linux because it can no longer be trusted since active development as stopped, adobie is just as bad as microsoft = embrace & extend & extinguish...
- aptget, on 10/12/2007, -4/+72Wait for Gnash to be developed further. That's what I'm waiting for.
- shitthisfook, on 10/12/2007, -7/+53I am going to laugh hard and dance with joy when this STUPID PIECE OF ***** company gets owned by a much better open source alternative. This level of stupidity, of apathy, apalls and disgusts me.
- schmichael, on 10/12/2007, -4/+50Dear Powerful Linux Lovers*: Please talk to Adobe. Help Adobe make Flash 9 for Linux a reality. Linux *needs* good Flash support and frankly we're sick of waiting for a viable GPL alternative.
* Google, Novell, RedHat, Linspire, Mandriva, etc. - hchaudh1, on 10/12/2007, -4/+47Yep, this is disappointing. What also sucks is that they release software for Linux on the serverside, but they refuse to support Linux on the client side. Talk about taking and not giving.
I wish someone would release an ActionScript to Java Applet or Ajax translator or something like that. - funkatron3000, on 10/12/2007, -3/+46"Unfortunately this is one of the reasons why some people won't consider switching to Linux."
As a web developer who targets IE but develops under linux, I can honestly say this is the main reason I wont switch to Flash.
Ever single time I hit a page that says I need Flash 8 I shake my fist at Adobe and curse their name. *shakes fist* - XVampireX, on 10/12/2007, -2/+43Instead of bashing Adobe go show them who's the boss and contribute to the gnash project!
- redhatcat, on 10/12/2007, -1/+40"There are some standard facilities and APIs that Windows and Mac operating systems provide to applications that Linux simply doesn't."
This is a bit vague. What do you need, Mike? The GNULinux community might be able to help, but we need to know what the problem is.
In the meantime, can you compile flash player 7 for the x86_64 and PPC archs and make them available? - schmichael, on 10/12/2007, -2/+41They do publish specs here:
http://www.adobe.com/licensing/developer/
But the license speficies that: "This license does not permit the usage of the specification to create software which supports SWF file playback."
However, it can be used to make a "clean room" implementation where 1 person reads the spec and tells another person how to build the player:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_room_design - Rice, on 10/12/2007, -2/+34I'm highly pissed at Adobe now...
...highly - fivre, on 10/12/2007, -3/+30On the bright side, this means I'll not have to deal with those annoying, counterintuitive, why-the-hell-can't-I-use-copy-and-paste-functionality flash based sites.
- V1ncent, on 10/12/2007, -3/+28Unfortunately this is one of the reasons why some people won't consider switching to Linux. If software and hardware developers supported Linux then one could finally build a Linux box that provided the same surf experience as on other platforms. This bites!
You know how many people (common folk) would switch to a free Linux to surf if they could see flash and all correctly? Grrr... - crilen007, on 10/12/2007, -4/+29What they don't realize is that more and more developers are moving to linux.
Wether or not the main users do, its all pointless unless the developers use those tools in the first place. - schmichael, on 10/12/2007, -1/+26I've heard of a lot of people running Firefox+Flash under Wine quite successfully. Far from ideal though.
- robbyt, on 10/12/2007, -3/+27WHAT THE *****!! Mike Melanson spent weeks trying to get gentoo installed on a ***** server. Mike Melanson couldn't figure out how to compile a kernel. why the ***** is Mike Melanson the main linux flash devloper?!@?!@?$
- HavocStyles, on 10/12/2007, -2/+26I have to post and to make sure *if* Adobe reads this Digg on how unhappy I am with them. in other words Adobe can suck a big fat one!
- jrepin, on 10/12/2007, -2/+25If they are not capable enough to program this themselves they should just release the specification for Flash and it would take a lot less time and we would all have the opensource sollution that would also work on AMD64 Linux, BSDs and probably elswhere too.
- philovivero, on 10/12/2007, -0/+23This is depressing. I'm a Linux user, and lately I've been getting more and more of the "Download latest Flash if you want to see this content" messages on my computer.
At least Google Videos still supports Flash 7.
It might be time to join the luddites and just block Flash entirely from my computer. If all the good content goes to Flash8, the only Flash left that's compatible is... you guessed it... the annoying ads. - aroedl, on 10/12/2007, -0/+22This is so typical for those software companies. The guy who does the Linux port of the flash player is a lonesome rider within Adobe. It seems that he is the only one doing the whole Linux port. I was in the same position in a huge music software company, but without the support of the management, I gave up.
- bdeitte, on 10/12/2007, -5/+27Yikes, lots of overreaction here. The blog writer had a bad day. Active development on the Linux version hasn't stopped. I know someone who's working on the Linux player right now, something other than the blog writer.
- mistermachine, on 10/12/2007, -0/+22what a ***** title for this story - nowhere does it say that Flash 8 or 9 for Linux is "not likely". quite the ***** opposite:
"Though many of the Flash 8 and 9 features are in place now, the Linux Flash Player currently crashes. A lot. I have yet to make it through one full minute of a video when I try to partake of the erudite entertainment at YouTube. On the plus side, the pre-crash A/V sync is outstanding."
i think the main gist is this: he knows there are tons of you out there waiting for this like the second coming - thing is, it's not as easy as he though, so there won't be Flash 8 or 9 for Linux TODAY. but there will be soon enough.
i understand that people are frustrated, but how does it help to write *****, untrue headlines and summaries? - atdigg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+22This is an outrage, I hope Gnash will become better. They might realize that by this attitude the encourage Gnash developement and they might find out their product replaced by open source variant in couple of years... really unwise.
- chicken101, on 10/12/2007, -1/+21...because they don't really give two-***** about Linux. They could make flash 9 if they wanted to, but they don't.
Hence my extreme frustration and anger. - dael, on 10/12/2007, -1/+19This is why relying on closed-source code, and protocols with stupid licenses is a dead end..
Sure, while they support you, it's great. But as soon as they stop, you're back to square one. Time and time again, OSS users compromise and use some proprietary program.. because it's what works _now_. But then they're screwed a few months or years later then they company stops supporting it.
Once people realize this and only use programs (closed source or open) based on genuinely open standards will we get past this mess. - jzimmerman, on 10/12/2007, -5/+22True that many developers use Linux, but developers develop for users, most of which use Windows and Mac.
I think the best thing that Adobe can do for Flash Player and other technologies for Linux is develop and official partnership / resource for those wishing to provide things like gnash to the open source community.
If they do it correctly the open source products will not compete with their commercial products. They will complement them. - emmych, on 10/12/2007, -2/+19Hmm. I really have to agree with mistermachine on his point about the title.
Adobe *is* working on a Linux Player and we *are* planning to release it. Those plans have definitely not changed. We have publicly stated early 2007 availability, and we will have public beta versions available before that -- most likely on Adobe Labs (labs.adobe.com), if not our current beta page (www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/public_beta - right now running Intel Mac Flash Player 9 beta). Mike never said we were not doing it ... he was just pointing out that is is not easy.
Obviously "soon" is not "now" and with the widespread popularity of Flash video the adoption of Flash 8 (and now 9) is indeed leaving the Linux community a bit out in the cold. All I can say at this point is that we are really pushing hard to get a good beta out so everyone can enjoy YouTube equally on the machine of their choice. No one will be happy until we actually ship, so until then I'll just say that we do listen and useful feedback on our products is always appreciated. ;-)
best,
Emmy Huang
Sr. Product Manager, Adobe Flash Player - GeneralFailure, on 10/12/2007, -0/+15I admit that I'm no expert on linux, but it only takes me 8 hours to install Gentoo Stage 2 on a server. The first time it took me 2 days. This is insane!
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+18How is that vague? Simply stated: There is one or two APIs to X in MacOS or Windows, while in *nix there are (random number>2) of APIs that do the same thing--which one do we chose?
Examples for the *nix:
Windowing frameworks: plain X, KDE, GTK, etc
Sound frameworks: Straight OSS/ALSA, Arts(KDE), Esound(Gnome), Gstreamer
Device frameworks: Use some kernel module, OpenAL/OpenGL, SDL
Frankly though as others have stated.. if they went along with the "open source" community instead of just giving out binaries a lot of their problems might be solved. - robbyt, on 10/12/2007, -4/+19it sucks 10, and 20 percent more... respectively
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -4/+19It's things like this that are stopping Linux from going mainstream.
- jole, on 10/12/2007, -5/+19Sometimes I do wonder what we really use Flash for. Most websites now a days are XHTML/CSS instead of Flash to be more accessible anyways. It really does come down to Games and YouTube for actual usage. By being a Linux user, you give up your right to play commercial games anyways. (Not a critique, a fact)
As for Penguin.SWF's comments, I think he's trying to state that there are too many ways to implement the features. I'm no programmer, but if you take a look at all the Window Manager's available for Linux, there's a lot of choice. Which is probably why Linux is having a bit of trouble taking of as a Desktop distribution: there isn't enough consolidation into a "standard" way of doing things, if you will.
Don't get me wrong, I love Linux, but I think we should stop expecting Adobe to develop things for us, and focus on Gnash-type projects, and coming up with BETTER Flash alternatives that are supported across all platforms.
My 2 cents. - acketon, on 10/12/2007, -3/+17I didn't really want to post this, not that it was hidden or anything, I found the address with a few minutes on google, but a month ago I sent an email to Adobe's CEO, a very long one detailing my long history of use of Adobe products and my recent switch to Linux, and specifically how upset I was to see support for a Linux Flash Player that seemed like a joke. I got a short, one sentence response from Bruce, or at least his office, thanking me for my thoughts.
I'm posting the address I sent that email to, I encourage my fellow digg users to take a minute and write a short note to Bruce Chizen and let him know how much we desire a Linux Flash Player, maybe if he gets some more emails he will get some more people working on this. Whatever you do don't be an ass, don't be rude it won't get us anywhere.
bchizen at adobe.com (so spam bots don't pick it up) - chicken101, on 10/12/2007, -7/+20You know what adobe? The open source community is already making a replacement, so go ***** yourselves. Now, I wouldn't be mad at them for not making a version for Linux, but they basically lied to us.
*extremely pissed* - schmichael, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13UPDATE: This story is *inaccurate* because after it was posted the following line was added to the blog: "Undaunted, the ragtag Linux Flash team presses forth..."
My apologies. Please digg this comment up so people realize the article was changed. - zeldafan, on 10/12/2007, -1/+14Flash player ver 8 to ver 9 doesn't offer anything different really, but actionscript 3.0 will be coming out soon, so that's a very big something.
Flash 8 (both player and the software) supports a bunch of new things, better compression rates, and new video player software (hints the huge boom in using flash to playback video online). Also different visual affects, blur, emboss, bevel, glow, shadow, etc. are all new and only supported in 8.
But I must agree, shame on adobe and shame on macromedia for selling in the first place. - rishimaharaj, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13Maybe if they hired an experienced Linux developer instead of someone that is totally unfamiliar with the OS, the project wouldn't be having such problems.
- 16x9, on 10/12/2007, -2/+14> sark666 asked: "...wtf does flash 8 or 9 provide that 7 doesn't??"
The biggies are the new video codec and a ton of additional graphical tweaks that can be applied on-the-fly to graphics. There may also be other additions as well but as I'm pretty new to Flash development these are the only ones I know of.
I sure hope a bug-free Flash v8/9 Player for Linux is made created at some point (sooner rather than later). - Buelldozer, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12No kidding. I'd really like to have F7 compiled for AMD_64 arch!
- wrongway, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11Didnt they promise simultanious releases on win/linux. Then that changed. This is adobe just pushing people along. I wonder how much money adobe is taking from microsoft under the table. This is seriously the ONLY thing forcing MANY users to remain with windows.
I wonder if this intern developing flash for linux even realizes he is single handedly doing more to hold linux back than ANY microsoft employee ever has???
WHINE too many differnt ways to develop for linux
WHINE theres too much power avail in linux
Specially with FUDD like this... if you cant dev you cant dev.. dont go blaming this on linux you 3rd rate coder. - robbyt, on 10/12/2007, -2/+13not to diss on Mike here, in-fact quite the opposite! He's obviously the guy in the back who is shunned and banished from the rest of the company. I bet they don't even invite him out to lunch!
"hey we're all going to lunch!"
"shh! not so loud, or those unix guys might hear you!" - jbus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11There is hope... Adobe needs to come to the plate and give Mike some help. right now Adobe has only done the minimal amount of what is required so they can say "Yes we are working on Flash 9 for Linux".
What they need to do is either open source flash (Which they have stated will not happen) and get lots of assistance from the Linux community for free OR they can hire some devs that are familiar with Linux APIs. Not to discredit Mike, but he's no Linux guru. I think he can still get help/advice from the community, but that will be very hard without looking at the code. Finally they need to release an alpha of what they have RIGHT NOW whether it crashes or not so we can test it and provide feedback. - sark666, on 10/12/2007, -2/+12I tried flash + firefox the other day via the latest wine 0.9.17 in ubuntu and it worked, but slowed down to a crawl so bad that I thought linux actually locked up. It became responsive literally after about 4 minutes. I was trying to watch the first bit of scanner darkly.
Maybe it's just something with my system, could be alsa, haven't configured wine to use default yet. I'll try again but I'm curious if anyone else has it working smoothly. Damn flash.
Btw wtf does flash 8 or 9 provide that 7 doesn't?? - schmichael, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10Hi I posted this story with the "No hope" title because the title of the blog was "Stoppage." It seemed pretty obvious to me what Mike was saying.
However, he appears to have updated the blog by sticking the following at the end:
"Undaunted, the ragtag Linux Flash team presses forth..."
This was *not* in the original post. The original post made it sound like the issues were to great to workaround.
I'm sorry if I've mislead anyone, but perhaps Adobe should consider a better method of communicating with its userbase than one poor overworked developer's blog. - stmiller, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10Gentoo PPC is rock solid and hardware support is excellent for current apple machines. Lots of work in the current kernel has been for PPC. It's not dying at all.
- mdowney, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11THIS POST IS INACCURATE
Active development has not stopped. Nowhere in this post does it say that active development has stopped. Development is going stronger than ever before.
The title of the post is "stoppage" because Mike has run into a technical problem with his Linux distribution that has stopped his current task. He is course-correcting and development continues.
This is just an unfortunate misunderstanding. I will have a talk with our internal bloggers to remind them to be careful about how they phrase things when they post to public blogs.
- MD
Mike Downey | Sr. Product Manager, Flash | Adobe Systems - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11"but companies are not obligated to support Linux./ If they do not wish to develop for Linux, then that is their right."
Yet mysteriously, we who run Linux and are customers of technology too, with actual money to spend, suddenly loose the right to complain. Isn't that odd? - kubudubudubuntu, on 10/12/2007, -2/+12AAARRRRGGGHH!!!!
- antdude, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11Adobe, open source your Flash and Linux developers will find a way for you!
- Knilt, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10That's bullcrap. Adobe should have released a development version by now. We don't care if your Flash 9 for Linux crashes after a few moments. There are several people who would be happy to fix these "problems" that the writer mentions. Just mention what your problems are with Flash 9 and let the development community help you.
- robbyt, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10ppc-linux is fading? you better give ibm a call and let them know that...
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