Chrome 20 Takes Over Adobe Flash On Linux

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTEyNzc

by mdesantis • 14 years ago

79 57 14 years ago

what is this news? can somebody read and try to explain me/all what exactly is happening here?

nodata• 14 years ago

iirc Adobe has dropped NPAPI support for browsers on Linux, leaving Chrome on Linux as the only browser that support the new PPAPI interface.

So if you want to use new versions of Flash on Linux, you have to use Chrome.

makomk• 14 years ago

Obviously Chromium supports PPAPI too, but as far as I can tell the PPAPI version of Flash isn't available for it so the official Google-branded Chrome releases really are the only option for Flash on Linux.

Tichy2• 14 years ago

What will happen to Flash on the Ubuntu LTS releases? Will it be automatically removed at some point?

trotsky• 14 years ago

Adobe is still providing bugfix versions of the 11.2 tree for NPAPI linux.

jtsagata• 14 years ago

For one happy moment i was expecting a working open source implementation. Then i crashed on the ground...

hippich• 14 years ago

I played yesterday with some SVG demos again and with Raphael JS library. We need to invest more efforts into open source technology instead of trying to patch existing proprietary and inefficient solution.

randomfool• 14 years ago

Does this mean Flash is being executed in the native client sandbox as well? If so, hooray! (and can we enable this on other platforms)?

cpeterso2• 14 years ago

No. Adobe has stopped supporting Flash for Linux. Google has announced that they continue to maintain Flash for Linux, but only for Chrome. Google has been bundling Flash with Chrome for a while, so this announcement is simply that Google won't stop doing what they've already been doing.

eiji• 14 years ago

Google is so invested in Flash at this point. Why don't they just take over/buy "Flash" with it's engineers from Adobe? Probably hard to separate them from the Air team and all the other "products" from Adobe.

TazeTSchnitzel2• 14 years ago

Are they really? I'd say they are far more invested in WebKit, HTML5 and Java.

panacea2• 14 years ago

The only things I can think of are Flash in YouTube provides far more control over playback for things like downloading, ad delivery etc.

But fundamentally... Street View. I can't see how that will be delivered with high performance by HTML5 any time soon.

chao-• 14 years ago

Crossing my fingers that Chromium will stop finally yelling at me about my outdated* Flash.

*While providing a helpful link to solutions that don't work.

kintamanimatt2• 14 years ago

Yes, it stops moaning and groaning about that in v20.

On a side note, Google Chrome/Chromium's at version 20 already?

mas1n• 14 years ago

Welcome to the infinite version.

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/05/the-infinite-versio...

mrlase• 14 years ago

For what its worth, I have an Nvidia card and am running Ubuntu 12.04: Chrome's Flash plugin does not work very well on the latest dev build; it has some weird issue with playing flash at double speed or something. I had to switch back to Adobe's flash plugin until this issue is resolved... This could potentially be hardware specific in my case, but, just wanted to let others know that Adobe's plugin still works.

SkyMarshal2• 14 years ago

I had that same problem start occuring too, after a recent update. 12.04 x64, but with Intel HD3000 and no discrete GPU. However, a subsequent update seems to have fixed it, it's gone now.

fkn• 14 years ago

I've experienced the same issues. Some sites, like Udacity, is borderline broken for me. I applaud the effort to move off the Adobe plugin, but it's important to remember that to the end user, we just really care about how well it works. In the meantime, I've gone back to using Firefox.

qznc• 14 years ago

Does that include a fix for the smurf bug?

https://bugbase.adobe.com/index.cfm?event=bug&id=3109467

Unfortunatelly, the last and final release of Adobe Flash for Linux has a bug, which shuffles the colors in Youtube videos. So far it seemed they never fix that.

jiggy20113• 14 years ago

You can fix that by disabling hardware acceleration.

Right click on a flash element -> settings -> untick

kaolinite• 14 years ago

Took me 3 months of hallucinogenic youtube videos for me to discover that.

kayoone2• 14 years ago

Hopefully this will lead other browser makers to integrate Native Client as well which would lead to a world free of browser-plugins!

mccr8• 14 years ago

Native Client Flash isn't available for Chromium, which obviously implements NaCl, so I don't see why other browser makes implementing NaCl would let them use NaCl Flash.

obtu2• 14 years ago

PPAPI flash works in Chromium, scan this thread (unless that was your point). It's just that the fully open-source browsers aren't interested in setting up a distribution channel for it.

cpeterso2• 14 years ago

There is no such thing as Native Client Flash. PPAPI ("Pepper") is a replacement of the venerable NPAPI plugin API.

azakai3• 14 years ago

> Hopefully this will lead other browser makers to integrate Native Client as well which would lead to a world free of browser-plugins!

That is self-contradictory. Native Client is a browser plugin (it uses the PPAPI browser plugin interface).

kayoone2• 14 years ago

still native client is open source and could easily be integrated into every brother, just like chrome does it. This would eliminate the need for every other plugin.

freehunter3• 14 years ago

This is good news for Flash, but it does make me sad. Not because it means Flash will continue to be around, but because I really don't like Chrome on Linux.

Don't get me wrong, I love Chrome. I use it on Windows all the time. But Linux has this little niggle I can't stand with default browser behavior: Firefox calls it "browser.urlbar.clickSelectsAll". And Firefox allows you to change that to true or false.

I'm not often changing small bits of a URL; when I click the URL bar it's for the specific intent of removing what is there and replacing it with something completely different. I understand the arguments for both use cases. Firefox does as well. The Chrome developers don't. In searching their bug tracker, you find the Chrome guys don't consider this a bug [1] (it's really not) but worse yet, don't plan on having the option to change this behavior. That's poor customer service, and inconsistent with Chrome on Windows. When I switch between OSes as often as I do, the last thing I want to worry about is how my browser will behave on this machine vs that one.

So now if/when I want to use Flash, I have to switch from Firefox to Chrome. When I'm done using Flash, I have to switch back. Google, please... please don't tell me about your keyboard shortcuts, don't tell me to click three times, don't tell me to click and drag... if you're making me use your browser, let me use it the way I want to. The way it works on Windows or even in Firefox.

[1] https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=26140

tjoff2• 14 years ago

A bit beside the point but why don't you just use alt+d ?

It will perhaps feel a bit weird at first if you're used to go to the address-bar with the mouse but really, since you are going to type an address you are still going to use the keyboard anyway.

ajross2• 14 years ago

Keybindings are weird animals. I've always used Ctrl-L for that, which focuses the URL bar and selects it. I note that Alt-D will not remove focus from an existing text widget, so it doesn't work as reliably. Where does Alt-D come from? I guess it's a vestige of an earlier browser?

Also, as the OP is using a mouse action, it's worth pointing out that triple-clicking the URL does a select-all (by analogy to selecting the whole "line" in other apps).

freehunter3• 14 years ago

In the bug tracker discussion, they mentioned keyboard shortcuts. In my post, I mentioned I didn't want to use them. My hand is on the mouse to navigate the page, it's on the mouse to get to the URL bar, and it's on the mouse to click it. Often times I can type the URL with three fingers and three keys via muscle memory, then click the result when it pops up. That takes one hand on the keyboard, and no concentration.

Chrome on Linux is the only browser that breaks this. Instead of me having to change how I browse in every browser, why doesn't Google simply add the option to change like Firefox does?

SkyMarshal2• 14 years ago

Do not try and bend the spoon. That is impossible. Instead, only try and realize the truth - there is no spoon. Then you will see it is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself.

Eg - when you can't adapt the world to yourself, adapt yourself to the world. Don't get emotionally affected by every little annoyance in the world and especially technology, that way madness lies.

Eg - pick a workaround, go with it, habitualize it, then move on. Personally I like click address bar, then almost simultaneously CTRL+a. tjoff's ALT-d is awesome too, didn't know about that one.

nkurz• 14 years ago

Don't get emotionally affected by every little annoyance in the world and especially technology, that way madness lies.

Madness, but occasionally madness and change. The OP and his angry cohort are trading their collective sanity for thousands of mostly invisible minor improvements that make the world a better place.

I mainly use Chrome on Mac, but also hate this behavior. Yes, clicking on an insertion point, cussing, and using Ctrl-A works if I want to select the beginning of the URL, but if I wanted to do this I would have stuck with the keyboard and not bothered carefully selecting my insertion point.

Rage on OP!

jdpage• 14 years ago

Double-clicking also selects the entire address bar.

heretohelp• 14 years ago

You should learn to code.

drivebyacct23• 14 years ago

Doesn't... double clicking the URL bar solve this problem?

freehunter3• 14 years ago

please don't tell me about your keyboard shortcuts, don't tell me to click three times, don't tell me to click and drag... if you're making me use your browser, let me use it the way I want to.

The problem is it's inconsistent with other platforms.

Tichy2• 14 years ago

I usually select all by clicking and dragging upwards a bit. Works on OS X at least.

naner• 14 years ago

Phoronix is currently down, but there wasn't much to this story to begin with:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.pho...

Google's Chrome web-browser reached version 20 yesterday and for Linux users this marks the point that the web company has taken over Flash Player support on Linux from Adobe using its PPAPI implementation.

As shared back in February, Adobe is abandoning support for Flash Player on Linux. However, they are allowing Google to continue the Flash Linux support via a PPAPI (Pepper) plug-in, which right now is a plug-in API only implemented by the Chrome/Chromium web-browser.

In March Adobe pushed out the last major Linux update meanwhile today with Chrome 20 we have the Google-maintained Flash by default for Linux x86 and x86_64 users.

The Google Chrome 20 release announcement can be found on their blog, but it's not too exciting. Aside from supporting the new Flash implementation for Linux users, there's bug-fixes and the usual round of other enhancements.

azakai3• 14 years ago

This is exactly why relying on plugins and closed-source components for the web is dangerous. Adobe can just decide to stop supporting a platform (Linux), and only companies partnering with Adobe (Google) get to keep using Flash.

Chrome 20 Takes Over Adobe Flash On Linux

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