digg

Join DiggAbout

Discover the best of the web!
Learn more about Digg by taking the tour.

Yes, Virginia, there will be a Flash Player 9 for Linux

weblogs.macromedia.com — Emmy Huang, Product Manager for Flash Player at Adobe, announced the Adobe is developing Flash player 9 for Linux. First heard about this in the Ubuntu forums in this thread http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=182445 : )

Bury
show profanity settings
expand all
  • skidzilla, on 10/12/2007, -1/+18Finally!
    • Killeroid, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Yes!!!!!!!!
    • skyshock21, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6Does this mean there will be a shockwave player? Or is that going to be conspicuosly missing still as it is now.
    • stmiller, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Will there be a PPC Linux version?
    • robbyt, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6ppc version? i doubt it. it's like pulling teeth to get them to keep the x86 releases updated...

      the lack of binary releases for ppc/sparc/arm etc. are one of the most programmatic arguments for open-source releases of software.

      macromedia!!! give us the source and we'll help maintain it and support it!!!
  • Lypsis, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6THIS is good news!
  • meefman, on 10/12/2007, -5/+8"It's a reference to the book titled "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus." Go look on Amazon for the "classic" edition." (taken from a reply in the link)
    • ejstacey, on 10/12/2007, -0/+14Actually, it's based on a letter to a newspaper a long time ago. A child wrote in asking if there was a Santa Claus. The quote "Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus" is from the editor's response.

      Books and CDs (and other things?) have used the phrase since.
    • yuckfou, on 10/12/2007, -14/+0ahh...Dear Abby rears her ugly head into our forum.

      sounds alot like vaporware to me. My 2 cents.
  • ejstacey, on 10/12/2007, -2/+15Hopefully it helps the audio syncing issue most (Linux) people seem to experience w/ their current version.

    Whatever the case, good job Adobe! Supporting Linux is a great move (in my opinion ;) ).
  • dshPls, on 10/12/2007, -69/+4Seems kind of a waste of time with linux not going anywhere.....except servers, which don't need to view flash movies.
    • psylence, on 10/12/2007, -1/+36Oh aren't you the cutest thing!
    • chicken101, on 10/12/2007, -3/+21You obviously have no idea what you're talking about.
    • seventoes, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11How about a little research before you say something stupid? Im on ubuntu linux right now as my primary OS. I have never had it crash (except once, on perpose (while(1) loop :)) and almost every application is free.
    • frankjmattia, on 10/12/2007, -21/+4hah. man, im so easily sucked in :) here goes.

      @psylence
      good comeback. not necessarily provocative... i like it.

      @chicken101
      nice way of adding something useful to an already useless thread. now what am i doing you ask? i'll be adding my useful part at the end after i get finished burning some karma... he has no idea what hes talking about as much as you have no idea how to form a complex thought and build it up with supporting facts.

      @seventoes
      yeah. so let me get this straight. because you use it as a primary os that hasnt crashed that means linux is "going somewhere". dude, my grandma uses a rotary phone that hasnt dropped a call or is even hard to program... but i dont see the rotary phone industry going anywhere important anytime soon. i love linux as much as the next guy but the only inroads its making right now are in the server market. with little to no oem support. a huge amount of mis-coordination... lack of funds... and people like you playing the zealot role like it was a day job... the linux desktop movement has been at a veritable standstill for YEARS. granted - gnome 2.14 looks a hell of a lot prettier than 2.8... runs a little smoother... and is a little easier to use. it hasnt gone anywhere. say what you will about how easy it is for you to use, but the fact that people like you find it easy to use and expect others to find it so equally easy is just one of the many nails in its coffin. stop focusing on what YOU find easy and build products for other people.

      linux is great for people with the know how to run a server/cluster etc... linux is okay for teens and post-teens who grew up in a computer savvy decade... as far as all the people who just want to check email and surf the web - theyre stuck with a crippled experience if they use linux. they have no knowledge of "security" or "stability"... they know they want to surf the web like all their friends.

      that doesnt mean theyre dumb and should need a license to use computers... it means that we're still not smart enough (or that we are too smug) to build up the OS for them while still retaining OUR security and stability.

      now lets talk about me. i regularly use final cut pro on mac. soundtrack on mac. autocad 2006 on windows.. solidworks on windows. and i like to surf the net, look at porn and check my email... since i can only do one or two of those things on my linux box whats my incentive to use it? none excet as a file server... i run gentoo, the latest kernel & latest gnome... i do nfs... and i run an webserver colocated in california... would i trust a windows machine to do any of that.. not on my life.

      so cool.. now would you be so kind as to show me how linux is actually going somewhere? i didnt think so.

      research is cheap.. how about you go do some.

      ps: my windows machine has NEVER gotten a virus or spyware.. it runs the now much talked about symantec 10.x and windows defender beta.. thats it... no spysweeper, no spybot s&d nothing. it sits behind a openbsd firewall/nat (because i could NEVER get thruput like this on a linux machine with ip-masqwhatever) and thats it.
      ok /end rant
    • trib4lmaniac, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8@frankjmatia: Ubuntu combined with Automatix makes configuring Linux for use by a novice user with basic needs a snap.

      The only real downside of using Linux (and any other OS that isn't Windows) is the lack of compatibilty with existing hardware and software; e.g. my Logitech G5 :'(
    • Zippo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13n00bs say the darndest things.
    • inkubux, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1I think you forgot your pills...

    • seventoes, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1frankjmattia: How long did you take typing that? about 10 minutes? half hour? You should have spent that time trying out ubuntu for once. GNOME was made for simplicity. The only time a person who "just wants to surf the web and check email" will have to use the command line is if they want to install automatix/easyubuntu from the command line, which is avoidable. Firefox is included. Evolution is included. Everything is made so that the user who "just wants to surf the web and check email" should never have to open the command line.
      [/flame]
  • chicken101, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12"Yes, Adobe is actively working on the Linux version of Flash Player 9. We expect to make a pre-release version available on Adobe Labs for early feedback and testing before the end of the year, with the full release expected in early 2007*"

    We still have to wait 6 months-1 year.... I HATE Flash 7.
    • nuclearpenguins, on 10/12/2007, -47/+1You could always get a real OS instead of hamstringing yourself with Linux.

      But hey, zealotry + complaining works too I guess.
    • pwill, on 10/12/2007, -2/+18Good idea, because having Flash 9 is more important than not having 3 billion viruses.
      < Ubuntu 3
    • robbyt, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7@nuclearpenguins: ever run linux?

      i didn't think so...
  • psylence, on 10/12/2007, -7/+7I thought this was announced months ago?

    Yup found it http://www.digg.com/linux_unix/_Flash_Player_8_for_Linux_*news_from_macromedia_adobe*
    • Clbck, on 10/12/2007, -3/+15One's Flash Player 9, and the others Flash player 8.
    • psylence, on 10/12/2007, -20/+10And if you read more than the title of the article you'd see:

      "from the site of Tinic Uro : "...Instead of releasing a 8.0 version we will directly move to 8.5 on Linux. This will avoid even more delay after we ship Flash Player 8.5 for Windows and Mac."

      And, 8.5 == 9. Therefore you suck at life and this was announced in December.
    • Clbck, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8Yes, I totally suck at life. I am such a failure for not understanding those facts.

      No, never mind. I don't care about flash player version 8.5 or 9.

      Maybe you could have explained instead of going into asshole mode?
    • psylence, on 10/12/2007, -12/+0Nah I'm good, thanks though, have a good weekend.
    • macewan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2it was announced *somewhat* in the last few weeks
  • sbovisjb1, on 10/12/2007, -5/+2Awsome
  • andrewmp, on 10/12/2007, -2/+14Just make us a 64-bit version already!
    • KillSudo, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3Agreed
    • idonthack, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Yes! A 64-bit version is nessecary. All the peoples with 64-bit procs are being forced to install 32-bit compatability packages if they want to use Flash.
    • mwales, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5I would have strongly considered learning how to program Flash, until I had the experience of usinga 64-bit desktop. Flash is the LAST thing holding my browser in a 32-bit chroot. WTF are they waiting for?

      5,000 signatures later (http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?lin64swf) and over 6 months of bitching (http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/19/1959200), and they still haven't released a 64-bit version. Every new processor from Intel and AMD is going to have 64-bit from now on.

      They need to fix the current version of flash before I even begin to care about their next version.
    • robbyt, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3how about just giving up the source and letting the community make the 64bit version for them? They're obviously a little confused on how to get it to work...
  • mkpeaches, on 10/12/2007, -5/+3FINALLY!!! :-D
    About time too
  • TheAttacks, on 10/12/2007, -5/+4they said they were going to release flash 8 for linux, what happened there?
  • endgame, on 10/12/2007, -12/+3Yes Virginia! The DRESDEN DOLLS ROCK!!!!

    http://www.flashenhanced.com/dresdendolls/ecard/
  • shakin, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8They skipped version 8 altogether and made a lot of Flash video not work with Linux, so I'm not letting them off easy. I use Linux as my desktop system at work, so when it came time to evaluate options to stream about 30,000 different videos I though Flash would be a great option. No such luck because I couldn't even test Flash 8, which has all the good features to compete for the streaming market. I figure if they won't support Linux very well then how can I be sure they'll support other platforms? What if they invent something new and abandon Flash altogether? I had better luck viewing WMV streams on Linux than Flash.
    • FreyrVanir, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5aterm -e mplayer -dumpstream mms://stupidstream.com/WMPSucks.wmv for the win ^.^
    • drzeus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1They moved their codebase for Flash 9 to an open source development environment. While I understand your frustration over missing Flash 8, you'll actually get Flash 9 faster than you would have 8 because it'll be easier to finish the port with their new system.
  • JackAxe, on 10/12/2007, -5/+1So what happened to 8.5 then? I have the beta player running on my Powerbook. It introduces AS 3.0, which is much improved over AS 2.0 in robustness and performance. Blah

    http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer8_5/
    • idonthack, on 10/12/2007, -1/+18.5 is now 9.0
    • drzeus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+18.5 was just numbering they used for the betas. It was always going to be 9 by release time.
  • gerkin, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2It was worth a digg just for the first comment in that blog :D
  • aThing, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Hooray for buggy and/or outdated binary blobs that you can't customize!

    Help free yourself by helping Gnash (http://sv.gnu.org/projects/gnash/ )!
    • trollenlord, on 10/12/2007, -11/+2Hooray! Down with the open source crap!
    • aThing, on 10/12/2007, -13/+1I agree. Open source sucks.
    • inkubux, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5^^
      You both suck.

      Without Opensource you wouldn't even have windows and internet at the same time .... guess wath a big part of the networking stack in windows comes from BSD
    • aThing, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Why would you want windows and the internet? Why would you want windows at all?
    • IMesh, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2"guess wath a big part of the networking stack in windows comes from BSD"

      They removed the BSD code from the net working stack a long time ago. Though I have heard from a dev who works at MS that there is BSD code elsewhere.
  • drzeus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3In case anybody missed it in the post, there's a new blog for one of the Linux Flash engineers. You'll probably get more status updates here: http://blogs.adobe.com/penguin.swf/
  • rosshosman, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Bout time
  • michaelstone, on 10/12/2007, -11/+1Windows people laugh at Mac people for not having enough programs. Everyone laughs at Linux people.
  • AnusBreaker, on 10/12/2007, -9/+3can we get a native freebsd version? without the linux wrapping gay faggot *****?
  • hobophobe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2While it will hopefully be a good thing, it is a shame they are waiting until after the Windows & Mac versions are released (even if those versions are already in beta). It seems to be in Adobe's blood to do things this way. They are doing the same with the Intel macs for photoshop, etc. aren't they?
    I'd much prefer to see an open format take the place of flash on the web, one that the free, open source operating systems can make their own full versions of. That's the goal, after all: entirely free software from soil to sky.
  • j.carcinogen, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3" By the end of the year"
  • midwinter, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Flash is awful.
    • TheMJ, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I agree that flash for the most part sucks ass, especially when used to make full websites.
      It cripples just about every browser functions (back/forward, bookmarking), in addition to being far slower.

      However it has some useful applications like flash games and secure audio streaming.
      most of its other applications are better left to javascript
  • raynevandunem, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Umm, what about SVG?

    Yes, I know that Macradobe are (and, separately, were) the trend-setters of digital media (for both text and imagery), but even I find their attitudes to open standards (not just open source) to be obnoxious (even though PDF is an open standard on the client side, while SWF is an open standard on the creation side). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWF#Licensing

    Heck, even Apple (which based Quartz, the very graphics platform for Aqua, on the paradigms of Adobe's PDF) has been trying in recent years to push Adobe further and further off of Mac OS X with the bundling of competing in-house creative apps (probably in retaliation for the increasingly-greater portion of Adobe's attention span being directed more and more to Wintel), in a similar way as to how IE and WMP on OS X ceased development last year (Safari and iTunes/Quicktime come to mind). And, surprises of all surprises, they are utilizing open source (KHTML, then Webcore) and open standards to do it (whatever advances them the most, costs them the least, and gives them the upper hand in development command); ISV's (Adobe and Microsoft included) will definately be increasingly wary of Apple, especially after the transition to Intel is complete. See http://news.com.com/2100-1012_3-5181434.html

    For the GNU/Linux base, I would rather see an open-standard (especially open-source) competitor to Macradobe's line. In fact, I would like to see a *W3C-compliant* (web-ready) desktop graphics platform come out, using such things as XWT, XUL, SVG, ODF, and even (for the developers out there) o:XML (yes, there IS an OBJECT-ORIENTED XML; http://www.o-xml.org ) in order to render valid web-graphics natively on the desktop. I would hardly consider anything put out by Macradobe to be web-ready.

    So a Flash Player for Linux? Nah, not really looking forward to it.
    • Smily, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1"in order to render valid web-graphics natively on the desktop"

      yay, more compatibility and rendering problems! :)
    • raynevandunem, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1@Smiley

      Care to back that statement up?
  • TheMJ, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3Half of me is like "hell yes, FINALLY," and half of me is like "2007?!? ***** you!"
  • linuxrebel, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Coool ... now I'll be able to play Duke Nukem Forever on Linux... no wait... well maybe if one gets released so will the other.
  • antdude, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1End of year is so far!!
    • antdude, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Also, I hope they don't keep delaying it too because we got delays for 8.0 and 8.5 in the past. :(
  • jbus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I'll see it when I believe it.
  • jsusanka, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2now if they would only do a ppc version and a x86_64 version. I think it blows they only support one architecture - support more or quit making software.
    • evilgod69, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1you can ask them for x86_64 & a ppc version in the new blog dedicated to flash on linux
  • aussiehuw, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Not until 2007? F U in the A, Adobe.
  • alexvalentine, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Can we please have an AMD64 version of flashplayer for linux as well? Considering the growth of the AMD64 platform, you think Macromedia would have release a 64 bit binary by now.
  •  

    Login or register to add a comment

    Create a new account or login to join in the conversation on Digg. You'll also be able to Digg stories to help promote things you like.


© Digg Inc. 2008 — Content posted by Digg users is dedicated to the public domain.
DIGG, DIGG IT, DUGG, DIGG THIS, Digg graphics, logos, designs, page headers, button icons, scripts, and other service names are the trademarks of Digg Inc.