What is Digg?92 Comments
- Darkhacker, on 03/10/2008, -2/+96I'm really excited to see progress on Gnash improving. I know a lot of people may proclaim that "it doesn't matter because Linux already has a native flash player from Adobe." It does matter, because...
- Freedom. Not everyone is a Stallmanite but I always appreciate having access to the source code and being able to learn from it or modify it to suit my needs.
- Performance. Adobe has a monopoly on flash players and you all know how those tend to turn out. Gnash developers can improve performance and reduce memory usage. One can analyze the code and find the slow parts to fix them.
- Cross-platform. I hate to break it to you, but Linux isn't the only open source OS. What if I want to use something like BSD or Haiku? Gnash enables developers to port it to other platforms and even architectures such as x86-64.
- Security. Who knows what possible bugs or exploits lurk in the proprietary flash player?
- Stability. I know a lot of Ubuntu users are affected by a bug which causes their browser to crash when visiting a site with Flash. I personally have not had that problem, but I know it's a huge one that's affecting a large amount of users. - kaeppler, on 03/10/2008, -0/+35although I admit I do not use Gnash (yet), the idea of having a decent *free* alternative to adobe's flash player is worth a serious DIGG alone!
- inactive, on 03/10/2008, -1/+18And also, remember why Sun's official Java release became open soure?
- kaeppler, on 03/10/2008, -0/+14As a loyal ubuntu user since 5.04, I can confirm that Adobe's (Macromedia's, back then?) flash player has kept crashing Firefox ever since. They also never fixed the layering bug where a flash movie will hide important navigation elements like menus on DHTML pages. Enough reasons to appreciate a decent open source alternative.
- jjustin01, on 03/10/2008, -0/+14Will someone please fix transparency issues with Flash?!
Good to see someone is going to start giving Adobe a run for their money. Ever since they took over Macromedia, they've had thumbs up their asses (I'm not even sure it's their own thumbs either).
Good job Gnash developers! Keep up the good work! - Vinvin, on 03/10/2008, -0/+12Absolutely awesome to see progress in Gnash. Excellent project.
- sremick, on 03/10/2008, -0/+11Dugg you up for recognizing that not everyone runs Windows, Macs, or Linux. :)
- DarkStalker, on 03/10/2008, -0/+11Anyone tried this with Youtube yet?
- inactive, on 03/10/2008, -0/+10Adobe good with flash??? wtf
- sirhomer, on 03/10/2008, -1/+11The iPhone is plenty powerful enough to run Gnash. In fact Gnash was designed around the ability to work on low resource embedded devices.
- theaceoffire, on 03/10/2008, -0/+9I dream of a day when Adobe either releases a good linux client or releases information for us to make our own.
This seems to be a good step towards that. - bradpitcher, on 03/10/2008, -0/+9It actually works very well with youtube. Much better than 0.8.1.
- mickstephenson, on 03/10/2008, -0/+8Reading between the lines would get you there, but the reason is people were developing an open source version of java that was getting dangerously close to being as featureful as sun java, sun got scared and open sourced java.
- kevincannon, on 03/10/2008, -0/+8No need. Firefox & webkit and probably Konqueror are all heavily working towards SVG support.
- DarkStalker, on 03/10/2008, -1/+8The iPhone is powerful enough, since even the Nokia N800 has full Flash support. The issue is probably more like the extra battery drain caused by using flash (since the iPhone will have a much higher load and CPU use) was deemed not to be worth it.
- mikedoth, on 03/10/2008, -0/+7+1 for mentioning Haiku!
- elfprince13, on 03/10/2008, -2/+9why can't Gnash be ported to the iPhone, since Adobe and Apple obviously aren't showing interest
- DrDabbles, on 03/10/2008, -0/+7Or...and this is really going to bake your scrod...Adobe could release documentation so that companies like Apple and FOSS projects like GNASH could all write flash interpreters. Wouldn't just just be the wackiest?
I mean, they give the player away for free anyway, so there's no lost revenue. And they charge for the applications to actually produce flash...so they'd still have their money maker. - neko, on 03/10/2008, -0/+7Hope you're having fun with your 32 bits. It's a big number, 32.
- Breepee, on 03/10/2008, -0/+7Because the GNU Java runtime project had an almost (in this case, as good as finished) complete and workable VM for Java. Then there was no point in keeping the 'official' Java locked up for Sun.
- vibrokatana, on 03/10/2008, -0/+6And code magically grows on trees for developers to pick and deliver to the masses.
- directrix13, on 03/10/2008, -0/+6You need to spend less time "worrying" about how developers choose to use their time. Feel free to fund some dev time towards the goal of your choice.
- sremick, on 03/10/2008, -0/+6Adobe isn't doing a "great job with Flash" until they at least make it available on my operating system. Web technologies should be open standards, not proprietary things held ransom by the whim of some company who gets to play gatekeeper with who gets on the internet and who doesn't. Microsoft tried to do it with IE, and now Adobe with Flash. Both are evil.
- Disfnord, on 03/10/2008, -0/+6another option: start loading the embeded flash video, pause it, and type
mplayer -fs /tmp/Flash*
in a terminal. Should run the video through mplayer with much less cpu usage - mggs, on 03/10/2008, -1/+6Then don't use it idiot.
- directrix13, on 03/10/2008, -0/+5Is that a question or a statement? You are not the kind of person that would try something else. Why are you even reading this article? But to answer your question for other people. Flash does not support amd64, crashes all the time on Linux, and isn't ported to all the targets that could potentially need it. Also, Flash is completely proprietary meaning that it just working relies completely on the fact that they choose to just make it work for now. Future support is never guaranteed and should not be relied upon for anything requiring long term support.
- Thugacation, on 03/10/2008, -2/+7You're probably being an ignorant ass just for the hell of it, but I'll let you know that this is a work in progress. Firefox seemed a bit redundant in comparison to Netscape in the beginning. Look at it now.
- sembetu, on 03/10/2008, -0/+5Just a thought: It would be nice to eventually see a free alternative to Flex come up. With the availability of the Gnash source, you would think it would be a natural next step, once Flash Player v9 is supported. Would be really sweet to have Eclipse rocking with the ability to author RIA's without having to use Flex. I know the Flex SDK is free (beer/speech), but Flex isn't, so we're still stuck at Adobe's Ground zero for any improvements/enhancements. I guess you could take the SDK and with Gnash as the player, build an implementation of Flex. Like I said, just a thought.
- boobsbr, on 03/10/2008, -0/+5what if gnash killed flash in the long run, because it would do everything flash does and then some more, and became an open standard in the web? wouldn't everyone profit?
- neko, on 03/10/2008, -0/+4I use 64-bit Ubuntu 7.10 at work, and I've been pleasantly surprised that more and more of those embedded Flash videos are working (with Gnash) these days.
Can't comment on whether the adverts are compatible, because I use AdBlock and NoScript ;) - smotpoker, on 03/10/2008, -0/+4Anyone messed with this on amd64 recently? Last time I tried it (shortly after forking from gplflash) it didn't work so well
- bj1989, on 03/10/2008, -0/+4Forget about that, regular windows users are never going to use Gnash. And why should they? Except for some of the reasons stated in the first post, the windows version of the flash plugin is good enough.
- commentbot, on 03/10/2008, -0/+4The next version of the Flash Player is going to have DRM so Gnash will be a good alternative.
- theaceoffire, on 03/10/2008, -0/+4On a side note, I came up with a solution for people who run on Ubuntu or other Distros who hate watching videos without full screen and/or with 90% cpu usage:
Online Video Stripper: Rembeds the video your watching as full screen
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/23747
Online Video Stripper2: Replaces the page with a link to the FLV file, to play in VLC (No cpu usage!)
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/23751 - rmtatum, on 03/11/2008, -0/+4Flash is not supported natively on any 64 bit platform. Ubuntu uses nspluginwrapper to make flash work on its 64 bit versions.
- sark666, on 03/10/2008, -0/+3details plz. in linux, adobe's flash doesn't seem to work fullscreen with xv acceleration. does this? stability? any info would be great
- inactive, on 03/10/2008, -0/+3I cant get it to work with yellow dog on the ps3 , the movie loads, but when i hit play nothing happens. Ahhh well
- CarzorStelatis, on 03/11/2008, -0/+3The reason Apple aren't putting Flash on the iPhone is that the main use for Flash at the moment is streaming video, and Apple are still clinging to the notion that Quicktime can actually compete in that area.
- markoa, on 03/10/2008, -1/+4swfdec is so much better.
- Disfnord, on 03/10/2008, -0/+3Which real flash player actually works? You must use windows.
- theaceoffire, on 03/10/2008, -0/+3I haven't had issues with walking. Why get a car?
- kevincannon, on 03/10/2008, -2/+5Why was that?
- theblt, on 03/10/2008, -0/+3Yeah, and it won't be able to play that DRM'd content.
- boobsbr, on 03/10/2008, -0/+3good to hear there's even another project taking on flash!
- DarkStalker, on 03/10/2008, -2/+5No, actually. I don't. Do you?
- DrDabbles, on 03/10/2008, -0/+3...flash is a standard. The problem comes when people writing interpreters try to enhance that standard. See: Internet Exploder
- kahrn, on 03/10/2008, -1/+4Then why are government websites using non open standards? Or sites funded by taxpayer money? Should they not all be open for all people, and not require you to use a certain product but rather.. have choice?
- trogdoor, on 03/11/2008, -0/+2Gnash does not have this bug ( just a hell of a lot of others :)
- sremick, on 03/11/2008, -1/+3Yes, they are very transparent: they are trying to own the web. They try to get everyone to use their technology (Flash) on their websites, allowing them to then control the turnstiles for web access (what browsers/OSes they choose to make a Flash player for).
Unlike standard web technologies, where the specs are fully open and documented, allowing anyone to make software (such as a browser) to utilize them. Compare HTML, an open standard which allows me to have native apps such as Firefox, Epiphany, Konqueror, Opera, etc... to Flash, which allows me to have.... what? Gnash? Which hardly works because it's a reverse-engineering hack that just barely supports Flash 7 when most sites require Flash 9?
If Sun can allow me to have a real Java plugin, Adobe can do the same with Flash. Until then, they are scum and Flash is evil. - Moby22, on 03/11/2008, -0/+2What I really want is a good, FOSS Flash layout and design tool.
-
Show 51 - 92 of 92 discussions
Browsing Digg on your phone just got easier with our enhancements to the 
© Digg Inc. 2009
— Content created and posted by Digg users is