Adobe Makes Flash on GNU/Linux Chrome-Only 404
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.
Why no PPAPI? (Score:5, Interesting)
"And it appears that Mozilla won't be implementing Pepper anytime soon."
Why?
And nothing of value of lost ... (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh, sure, I'm sure some people will complain that their favorite game or whatever runs on Flash, and therefore it's a horrible and tragic loss.
But for some of us, it's a performance hog, a security risk, and a general nuisance. I've been avoiding the use of Flash whenever I can get away with it for over a decade. I associate it with annoying ads and ever-cookies more than I do anything useful. In fact, I'm not sure I can name a single site I use that makes use of Flash.
I look forward to the demise of Flash. Sorry that some of you will miss out of Super Duper Happy Fun Cow Clicker or whatever, but I personally will not mourn its loss.
Re:Terminology (Score:5, Interesting)
If you care enough and agree with RMS about the "GNU/Linux" naming issue, you shouldn't have been running Flash in the first place.
Re:And nothing of value of lost ... (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, no apparently. And, if I do, I have native apps on my iPad for them ... none of them are running Flash.
My work computer has Flash, because that's part of the build, but I haven't had Flash on a machine I own in at least 10 years.
I don't see the attraction to You Tube for the most part (oooh, another cat video, I believe I'll vomit); I've got a PVR; and I've been meaning to watch a TED lecture but somehow never gotten around to it.
It may be hard to believe if you use Flash regularly, but some of us actually manage to exist without using it, and have for quite some time. It's literally not installed on my personal machine, and I believe never has been on this one.
I might have a VM that has it installed on it in case I find I absolutely do need it, but it would have to be something quite specific to make me go looking for something which will run Flash.
Re:Legacy works (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Did you read my post? Adobe itself is migrating to HTML5. Adobe offers a tool (currently in beta) to convert Flash animations to HTML5: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/wallaby/ [adobe.com]
I bet it'll be part of -- at the latest -- CS7.
Re:And nothing of value of lost ... (Score:4, Interesting)
See, I don't consider CNN to be worth reading -- they lost anything like journalistic integrity years ago in my opinion.
And, I don't give a damn about the ads people are running. All I see is Ad Block Plus or NoScript telling me that "this rectangle contains something you didn't want to see anyway". It was ads that made me hate Flash in the first place.
Let me clarify ... sure, sites that I use have Flash crap on them all of the time. But I don't have a player installed, and any of the stuff they are using Flash for has so far failed to make me think "oooh, I gotta get me some of that". It's just the crap in the corners I wasn't going to look at anyway. If I can't see the rest of your web page without it, I'll find another one.
In fact, every time I am forced to use a browser that does have Flash on it, it makes me want to kill someone from Adobe.
I'm not interested in their ads, and I'm sure as hell not giving them CPU cycles to animate some fucking monkey. :-P
Please, enjoy Flash to your heart's content ... but for me, it is, and always has been something I don't want on my machine. As such, I simply don't use it.
Re:Legacy works (Score:3, Interesting)
Frankly I'm amazed that I had to make that distinction; I guess my grammar isn't as good as I thought.
Re:Legacy works (Score:2, Interesting)
Nobody does flash animations anymore. Why would you torture yourself for weeks to do that when you can use a modern rotoscoping app for animation and create a mpeg4 file in 1/10th the time.
Then embed it in a flash wrapper to play the video file to confuse fans that want the video file on their local drive.
Flash as a browser plug-in is deprecated. (Score:5, Interesting)
In Adobe's announcement regarding the end of mobile Flash support, they stated that they were conceding to HTML5 in the web browser and will be focusing on moving Flash to desktop platform application development. While I suppose it was subtly stated, the implication was that they intend to phase out Flash as a browser plug-in entirely. Linux/X11 was already the most difficult for them to implement and had the highest cost/benefit, so it makes perfect sense for it to be the first to go. I imagine Google wants to keep Legacy Flash for Chrome on Linux if for no other reason than to secure another leg up on the browser competition. Overall, Google probably would just assume Flash die off, but if they can get buy-in from Linux users and push WebM and Dart in the process, then it's worth the effort.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Meh... (Score:4, Interesting)
Odd. The only two sites I've run into in a long time that required flash -
Square-Enix has some sites. Oooh, "big" loss there.
Oracle's support site that they just recently replaced - and there was a flash-free alternative that they tried to avoid telling people about.
Many video sites now have non-flash based players (H.264) too.
Honestly, flash isn't the big needed thing it once was. Hopefully it continues to fade into oblivion.
Re:Terminology (Score:4, Interesting)
Guess you don't know about this:
"Luckily for those who run Linux, the H.264 codec (also known as the Advanced Video Codec, or AVC) has a successful and effective open-source implementation known as x264. In fact, the x264 Project won the Doom9 2005 codec comparison test (see the on-line Resources). x264 continues to make progress and improvements, and it remains an active project."
Nothing to do with HTML 5 (Score:4, Interesting)
Whilst I share your concern on the use of H.264 with regard to free and open access to all, this has nothing to do with HTML 5 in the slightest. The codec issue has been with us for years, regardless of platform or delivery method. Your rant should be directed at browser and web developers instead.
I'd go as far to say HTML5 is pretty much the only hope you have for a free and open codec to become widely adopted, in that it does not discriminate between formats. Only web developers (the encoders) and web browsers (the decoders) do that, so we should go bitch at them.