Adobe Releases Last Linux Version Of Flash Player

http://www.ubuntuvibes.com/2012/03/adobe-releases-last-linux-version-of.html

by wyclif • 14 years ago

120 71 14 years ago

Adobe fails to make any headlines that indicate they have any clue at all

batista8• 14 years ago

Well, on the positive side all the reviews for the new Photoshop CS6 have been quite glowing. A major new version, indeed.

Lightroom 4 was also a very good update.

Oh, and Premiere is in the right track.

Killing Flash is best for Adobe in the long term. That, more refinement for their CS suite, and some new HTML5 tools like Edge will keep them afloat for many years to come.

viraptor• 14 years ago

With every new edition of Adobe products we get more posts on http://adobegripes.tumblr.com/ to enjoy :)

nnnnni• 14 years ago

Good riddance?

j45• 14 years ago

Would be interesting if they could release the player as OS

jiggy20117• 14 years ago

So, what does flash actually run on these days?

Windows desktop PCs & laptops, on Mac desktops & laptops (for how much longer?) and that's about it.

Well , looks like everyone should sharpen up those JS skills.

icebraining4• 14 years ago

You do realize that those clients represent ~89% of all web usage, right?

jiggy20117• 14 years ago

That may well be true right now but of course we are in a time of transition right now and Adobe seems to be burning rather too many bridges.

If adobe wanted their runtime to survive (I'm not sure they do) they would be showing commitment to supporting their runtime in as many places as possible.

Right now the only place it really runs well is on Windows which means they are quite firmly shackled to Microsoft and it's not even clear that MS see flash as part of their vision for their products.

pooriaazimi• 14 years ago

...~89% of all web usage NOW (I'm not sure about the number though, but it seems legit and I take your word for it).

What about 2 years from now?

njharman• 14 years ago

Really, all smartphones, all tablets, all Linux is only 11%? I'm very doubtful and won't believe it without citation.

kolinko• 14 years ago

Well, the flash compiles to iOS binaries and I know at least one successful company who saved a ton because they didn't need a Cocoa programmer.

It seems that their strategy is to depreciate Flash Player and focus on compiling for js/iOS/whatever.

donteflon2• 14 years ago

It runs in desktop web browsers on Windows, Mac and Linux (soon only hosted in Chrome, but it will be there). It runs on iOS, MacOS, Windows, Android and Blackberry with Adobe Air and it's far better, faster and easier to develop for than any Javascript/HTML5 alternative. If you want to get a clue about how is Flash doing lately, just browse Flash Daily from time to time.

[1] http://flashdaily.net

jiggy20117• 14 years ago

It doesn't run on iOS , the version for android/blackberry is declared dead. Windows 8 will only support it in it's legacy "desktop" mode, it's shrinking to one browser under Linux and somehow I doubt Apple wants to keep in running under OS X for any longer than they have to.

shad0wfax3• 14 years ago

I cannot see how they can be serious about Flash if they are going to ignore Linux.

It makes sense from Adobe's point of view, because the adoption on Linux is minimal, but for someone creating content on flash (for example - for video, games, or even some old school websites), this is just making it harder. Now these content creators have to worry about their clients on Linux platform.

Adobe might as well say that Flash is done on all platforms.

Note: I am not taking sides, if Flash is good/bad but just trying to argue that if Adobe wants their Flash platform to be taken seriously on Windows/Mac, they really cannot ignore Linux this way.

snissn5• 14 years ago

Flash on linux has always been bugging and CPU inefficient..

shad0wfax3• 14 years ago

Yes, but if this is an admit of defeat by Adobe's engineering (like how to some extent you can say it was on Tablet/phone platform), it just is a bad sign for them.

What as a consumer of flash platform I need form Adobe is clarity and commitment. Today I see it has gone another step backward. Just reinforces the public opinion of wanting to move away from Flash even more.

cpeterso• 14 years ago

When evaluating the bugginess of Flash on Linux, consider that Adobe was releasing a single libflashplayer.so with binary compatibility for a variety of Linux distros compiled with different versions of gcc, with different library versions, ALSA or OSS audio APIs, buggy OpenGL drivers, and NPAPIs for multiple versions of Firefox and Chrome browsers. And the Flash Player codebase dates back to FutureSplash circa 1993-1995. Developing "consumer" software for Linux is a challenging (and expensive) proposition.

batista8• 14 years ago

Now these content creators have to worry about their clients on Linux platform.

I don't thing many content creators worry that much about clients on the Linux platform.

Some don't even care about OS X clients (like those that rushed to adopt Silverlight back in the day), and that platform has 10x the Linux desktop share.

DrJokepu• 14 years ago

It's not like it matters anymore, but Silverlight worked just fine on Macs ever since it was originally released.

lparry• 14 years ago

"Now these content creators have to worry about their clients on Linux platform."

The sort of content creators who care about this (ie good ones) already had to worry about the tens of millions of ios devices out there. Linux is barely a blip on the content consumption radar

rdtsc2• 14 years ago

They in a bit of a difficult situation. Since there are so many mobile devices and so many of them are iPhones, anyone building websites will try to steer away from using Flash. So Flash is dying, fast.

The best they could have done is to completely open source it. Open source the spec fully, the players and the server. But even then, frankly it is too late. There are standards worked on that will completely replace it: Websockets, WebGL, WebRTC and so on.

It was interesting how in the WebRTC discussion they were absent. Google was there, Ericsson, but not them. They could have clearly provided some input or helped out with insight since they had a similar product for so many years.

They thought they would build a web platform and rule the world, but I think they failed in that.

What can they do? Well, I think they can make (and they probably already have it) a snazzy editor/creator to generate HTML5, javascript that would work with WebRTC, WebGL, etc.

jiggy20117• 14 years ago

Yes, that would make the most sense.

There are plenty of designers who like to use flash because they are familiar with the toolset, what they need is to use the same tools with a different output format.

Of course the killer app that is missing from HTMl5/JS seems to support for stuff like webcams/mics and being able to stream in realtime. That and of course Internet Explorer staying years behind everyone else.

beaumartinez• 14 years ago

Hopefully Mozilla's WebAPI[1] will bring us those.

[1] https://wiki.mozilla.org/WebAPI

rdtsc2• 14 years ago

WebRTC http://www.webrtc.org/ is there and is already baked into the latest development version of Chrome. We are talking realtime streaming audio & video. I think, in theory, that is the last puzzle peace that would create a pattern which will open the gates of hell and swallow Flash (metaphorically speaking).

stcredzero• 14 years ago

Since there are so many mobile devices and so many of them are iPhones, anyone building websites will try to steer away from using Flash. So Flash is dying, fast.

I'll call out Steve Jobs on this one. Another good one!

The best they could have done is to completely open source it...frankly it is too late. There are standards worked on that will completely replace it: Websockets, WebGL, WebRTC and so on.

"Incumbent" is a temporary state. "Leader" is a decoration that is assigned dynamically. You stay a leader by siphoning potential energy off of the commoditization of your current golden goose, to set up your next one.

Oh, and open standards trump proprietary defacto standards in the end. Ask Microsoft about that one. (And Apple: pay attention!)

rbarooah3• 14 years ago

What open standards should Apple be paying attention to that you don't think they are?

tiles• 14 years ago

I don't think Steve Jobs necessarily is responsible for this, but that he was aware that it was going to happen. If the iPhone had shipped with a poor implementation of Flash, which was all Adobe was capable of delivering, Flash would still eventually die off. Jobs was just aware that it was worth the sacrifice of political capital to do away with Flash, since in a few years it would be a moot feature.

fauigerzigerk• 14 years ago

I think it was the hard work of those who made browsers a viable alternative to Flash more than Steve Jobs' nyet. Without their work, not even the mighty Apple could have said no to Flash forever. But still, it was a good call by Steve Jobs, no doubt about that.

icebraining4• 14 years ago

Well, I think they can make (and they probably already have it) a snazzy editor/creator to generate HTML5

Yes: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/edge/

ktizo2• 14 years ago

Been working in flash since version 2 and years ago I wrote a 3d engine in flash mx by duplicating and scaling right angled triangles to draw all the polygons. Professionally, I am often the person who recommends what technologies get used when a site gets made.

And I very much doubt with this recent news from adobe that I will bother to use flash for a commercial project ever again. Especially given what you can get canvas tags to do these days.

jlarocco2• 14 years ago

That's nice of you, but honestly I doubt this will have a very big impact.

Flash support has been poor on Linux for a very long time. For example, 64-bit Linux desktops have been popular for most of the last decade, and I'm not sure there's ever been an official 64-bit release. Sure, it's been possible to get it working, but it's a hassle. The poor Linux support is one of the main reasons so many Linux users dislike Flash and are always saying how it needs an open source alternative version.

Since Linux support has never been a big deal for people choosing Flash in the past, I can't see this having a big impact on their decisions now.

dfc3• 14 years ago

FYI: Flash for 64bit linux has existed for a while now. The first release was sometime around the financial crisi, I think october of 2008.

jiggy20117• 14 years ago

That's true, when I started using Linux there was no flash support at all, literally nothing.

That did not stop large numbers of sites being built around it though.

snissn5• 14 years ago

They're dropping support for firefox for linux it seems and will maintain support for chrome through their pepper api. Also they will maintain the latest binary release of flash for linux by pushing security patches. If anything they're dropping support for firefox and derivatives for linux and keeping support for chrome. But who uses firefox these days anyways?

astine3• 14 years ago

"But who uses firefox these days anyways?"

I am writing this reply from within Firefox.

snissn5• 14 years ago

Okay thanks for the downvote, astine. I was making a general point about its market share http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/01/chrome-vs-firefox-g...

bzbarsky2• 14 years ago

As far as I can tell from the communication coming out of Adobe and Google, Adobe is dropping support for Linux, period. _Google_ will be maintaining Flash for Chrome on Linux. Which they largely have been anyway, as far as I can tell; they certainly haven't been shipping vanilla unmodified Flash (as you can tell by the fact that the version numbers of what they ship with Chrome don't match the official Adobe releases).

astine3• 14 years ago

On the plus side, this move will push more people to replace Flash with other technologies and I may never have to use it again. It's been consistently the buggiest piece of software on my computer for years. I won't be sad to see it go.

dsolomon• 14 years ago

Thats a huge F* Y to a large customer base.

dfc3• 14 years ago

If only wishing made it so. I would love it if that was the case but sadly linux users running firefox, epiphany, etc are not a large base of anything and certainly not a large paying customer base....

batista8• 14 years ago

How are Linux desktop users a "customer" base?

For one, they are a very small niche. All "web stats" reports (the most accurate way of measuring such things) put them somewhere around 1%.

Plus, they are not paying for Flash. Flash, the paid-for tool, doesn't even run on Linux.

el_presidente• 14 years ago

1% = millions of users. Out of that 1% comes a significant portion of the people who run the sites that serve flash content.

batista8• 14 years ago

You know, it just occurred to me.

One benefit of Adobe abandoning Flash in the medium-term, will be a push for improvements on the functionality and speed of SVG.

Google (Chrome) seems to mostly care about the canvas, re acceleration and all, whereas Adobe has much more interest in SVG because it needs it as a vector replacement for Flash.

Case in point, this just came in today: http://blogs.adobe.com/webplatform/2012/03/30/svg-animations...

streptomycin• 14 years ago

I hope the bitrot doesn't happen as fast this time as it did the last time they dropped support for the Flash version of Linux. The last time they did this, it was right before everyone starting using ALSA, so we were stuck using Flash with horribly broken audio for a long time.

joeyh• 14 years ago

Would have been more appropriate to release it tomorrow.

bni• 14 years ago

I have uninstalled flash player on all my machines. If its flash and has no h264 fallback its probably not a video worth seeing anyway.

Just Do It.

Adobe Releases Last Linux Version Of Flash Player

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