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Google Chrome Software

Adobe Makes Flash on GNU/Linux Chrome-Only 404

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the firefox-users-storm-headquarters dept.
ekimd writes "Adobe has anounced their plans to abandon future updates of their Flash player for Linux. Partnering with Google, after the release of 11.2, 'the Flash Player browser plugin for Linux will only be available via the 'Pepper' API as part of the Google Chrome browser distribution and will no longer be available as a direct download from Adobe.' Viva la HTML 5!" And it appears that Mozilla won't be implementing Pepper anytime soon.
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Adobe Makes Flash on GNU/Linux Chrome-Only More

Adobe Makes Flash on GNU/Linux Chrome-Only

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  • Re:Terminology (Score:2, Informative)

    by tepples ( 727027 ) <tepplesNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Wednesday February 22, 2012 @10:04AM (#39123973) Homepage Journal
    Probably someone who wants to distinguish the GNU/Linux environment, which uses Linux for a kernel and X11 for graphics, from the Android environment, which uses Linux for a kernel but does not use X11.

  • Re:And nothing of value of lost ... (Score:4, Informative)

    by Kjella ( 173770 ) on Wednesday February 22, 2012 @10:12AM (#39124073) Homepage

    In fact, I'm not sure I can name a single site I use that makes use of Flash.

    You must not get out much. I just checked BBC, CNN and they both use flash. If I go to the top three news sites in Norway (VG, Dagbladet, Aftenposten) they all use flash. Okay they all use them for ads but for a business based on showing people ads that's a rather essential use. Kill flash and the ads won't go away, they'll become HTML5 ads.

  • Re:Legacy works (Score:4, Informative)

    by L4t3r4lu5 ( 1216702 ) on Wednesday February 22, 2012 @10:13AM (#39124079)

    All the existing Flash animations and games on Weebl's Stuff, Homestar Runner, Kongregate, and Newgrounds are likely to keep SWF on life support for a very long time, be it through Adobe Flash Player or through Gnash.

    You're kidding, right? The games will become apps for Chrome or your mobile device, and the animations are already on YouTube. Go check JoeCartoon's offerings for examples (X in a blender etc).

    Flash is in its' death throes.

  • Re:And nothing of value of lost ... (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 22, 2012 @10:14AM (#39124101)

    Flashblock will play many of those things directly as HTML5, except the DRM encumbered stuff of course, which I don't care for anyway.

    Flash on Linux has been a pig since the day it was ported over. I for one, will be glad for the battery life improvements alone...

  • Err , not really (Score:5, Informative)

    by Viol8 ( 599362 ) on Wednesday February 22, 2012 @10:15AM (#39124105) Homepage

    rm -rf ~/.macromedia

  • Re:Legacy works (Score:5, Informative)

    by BenoitRen ( 998927 ) on Wednesday February 22, 2012 @10:21AM (#39124173)

    You do realise that not all Flash content will migrate, right? A lot of it isn't being looked after by their authors any more.

  • Re:And nothing of value of lost ... (Score:3, Informative)

    by MadMaverick9 ( 1470565 ) on Wednesday February 22, 2012 @10:21AM (#39124175)

    So you never use youtube then?

    you do not need a flash player to watch youtube videos.

    smplayer v0.7.0 [sourceforge.net] can play youtube videos just fine.

    http://smplayer.sourceforge.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=5255 [sourceforge.net]

    Support for youtube. Now you can open urls like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= [youtube.com]..... using the Open -> URL dialog or dragging a link from a browser to the smplayer window.

  • Re:Goodbye, Adobe (Score:5, Informative)

    by trnk ( 1887028 ) on Wednesday February 22, 2012 @10:29AM (#39124281)
    Goodbye Adobe? I must have missed all the articles recently where they announced their decision to mothball their industry-standard tools for image manipulation, post-production, print design, web-prototyping and image workflow.

    Flash is a tiny part of what Abobe does, don't expect them to be going anywhere soon.

  • Re:What about gnash? (Score:5, Informative)

    by risom ( 1400035 ) on Wednesday February 22, 2012 @10:31AM (#39124315) Homepage
    For videos it's quite fine (I tested youtube and vimeo), but most interactive stuff doesn't work, e.g. games or interactive charts etc.

    The really nice thing about gnash ist the platform independence. No problem to watch a video on an old iBook with a Power CPU running Linux. Try that with the adobe player :)

  • Re:What about gnash? (Score:5, Informative)

    by jelle ( 14827 ) on Wednesday February 22, 2012 @10:38AM (#39124399) Homepage

    It's not on the web page, but there is a 0.8.10 from a week ago:

    http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnash/2012-02/msg00000.html [gnu.org]

  • Five years from now (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 22, 2012 @10:41AM (#39124439)

    What the summary largely skips over is that this plan to abandon Flash on Linux is scheduled to take place five years from now. Adobe is planning to provide updates to their Linux Flash player until then. After five years it's likely HTML5 and Gnash will be up to the task of handling everything people currently use Adobe flash for.

  • Security support for 5 years (Score:5, Informative)

    by uberbrodt ( 1064400 ) on Wednesday February 22, 2012 @10:45AM (#39124487) Homepage

    From the press release:

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

    If we believe the (mainstream) migration from Flash to HTML5 will be accomplished in that timeframe, I don't see this being a big issue for Firefox or other Linux browsers not using the Pepper API

  • Re:Terminology (Score:4, Informative)

    by thesh0ck ( 1983948 ) on Wednesday February 22, 2012 @10:49AM (#39124545)
    http://www.gnu.org/gnu/why-gnu-linux.html [gnu.org]

  • Re:Chromium? (Score:5, Informative)

    by uberbrodt ( 1064400 ) on Wednesday February 22, 2012 @10:51AM (#39124573) Homepage

    Looks like they have an implementation of the PPAPI:

    http://www.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/pepper-plugin-implementation [chromium.org]

  • flash (Score:4, Informative)

    by aahpandasrun ( 948239 ) on Wednesday February 22, 2012 @10:52AM (#39124581)
    2 years ago, this would have been AN OUTRAGE! Now? Not so much. Just set your user agent to iPad, and a lot of video sites will work without Flash.

  • Re:Legacy works (Score:4, Informative)

    by Tim C ( 15259 ) on Wednesday February 22, 2012 @11:00AM (#39124669)
    No offence, but no it isn't - I also read "the games will become apps for Chrome" as "existing Flash games will be ported to Chrome apps".

    For what it's worth, I disagree; I can't see anyone that's making money from Flash games (e.g. Zynga) targetting a single browser, and most if not all of the Flash games I've played simply won't work on a smartphone. They might work on a tablet, but that's currently still a niche market (though one that is growing, I'll grant you).

    That's not to say that new games won't be implemented in HTML 5, but we're a fair way from that being practical either given the current state of HTML 5 support.

  • RTFA (Score:5, Informative)

    by IGnatius T Foobar ( 4328 ) on Wednesday February 22, 2012 @11:00AM (#39124679) Homepage Journal
    From TFA:

    As discussed in the just released Adobe roadmap for the Flash runtimes, Adobe has been working closely with Google to develop a single modern API for hosting plugins within the browser (one which could replace the current Netscape plugin API being used by the Flash Player). The PPAPI, code-named “Pepper” aims to provide a layer between the plugin and browser that abstracts away differences between browser and operating system implementations.

    In a typical Slashdot display of sensationalism, the headline reads "Adobe makes flash on Linux Chrome-Only" but they've announced nothing of the sort. Adobe is switching Flash from the increasingly outdated and cumbersone Netscape plugin API to the new PPAPI (Pepper). There is nothing stopping Mozilla from implementing this API. And that's probably what's going to happen. I'd be surprised if there isn't already a team working on it.

  • Re:Ahem (Score:5, Informative)

    by Baloroth ( 2370816 ) on Wednesday February 22, 2012 @12:07PM (#39125559)
    TFA is incredibly light on details, but it seems the main reason you won't be able to use Flash in Firefox is that Firefox won't have the Pepper API. Chromium will. So even if you can't download it directly from Adobe, it should be trivially easy to make it work with Chromium (should be plug-and-play), so people should be able to repackage it and download it using the package-manager of choice. Whether this will be "legal", IDK, it seems like it should. Oh and Adobe says they will continue providing non-Pepper installs on Linux security updates for 5 years, so everyone can just use the current version of Flash in any case.

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