Adobe pinballs 64-bit Flash Player 10 alpha into Linux orbit

Adobe Systems has spun out an alpha version of its Flash Player 10 technology for 64-bit Linux software users today, to satisfy the needs of freetards everywhere. The multinational said it has done so to underscore its “commitment to the Linux community” which is ahead of Windows and Apple Mac OS X in the 64-bit processor …

[Poopie McStinklestein]

As a 64-bit Linux Freetard

As a 64-bit Linux Freetard who occasionally watches stuff in Flash, I'm glad. Now, if Sun would release a 64 bit JNLP (Java Web Start) proggie for 64bit Linux, we'd be doing well.

[James Le Cuirot]

Wow

It's been a long time coming, too long really, but this is still out of the blue. I thought it would be at least another six months. I think I'll give this a try.

It's unclear whether you were saying that you needed a 32-bit browser until now. That's not been true for a while. Firefox uses something called nspluginwrapper and it didn't take long for Opera to support it because it always ran its plugins through a wrapper anyway.

[Anonymous Coward]

Transparency next...

Would be great if they could offer wmode transparency next...

I've just moved away from 64bit ubuntu back to 32bit because of the flakyness of the 32bit emulation crashing firefox every 5 minutes..

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah

Ah, but have they bothered to make it play flash video in full screen? The show their commitment to the linux community by releasing buggy software IMO. Flash video works fine in fullscreen on my W2k3, XP, Vista and G5 Mac, but not my Fedora box. Grr.

[Frank Seeger]

Only Linux. Well, it's a start, but...

...will they ever bother to release a nativeFreeBSD version?

[Roger Williams]

'Freetards' again?

It's about time for El Reg to either retire the overused and misused 'freetard' -- or only use it where it actually means something (e.g. the 60% of the net community convinced that they should be able to download their music for free). The growing Linux market share has little or nothing to do with the purchase price of the OS.

[paul]

Times they are a changing

Commerical Linux support everywhere is increasing , this is just another example.

Linux , no longer last in the queue. Its now at the front.

[Eddie Edwards]

Not really

"to satisfy the needs of freetards everywhere"

Surely that would require them posting the source?

[Peyton]

So that's why the long wait

To get the Linux community so eager for 64-bit support that they'll do all your alpha and beta testing for you... beats having to hire extra devs for the job.

My guess is this is linux-only because there are linux peeps that have 64-bit only systems, which I don't think is the case in the Windows/Mac worlds - so not so much demand there...

[Anonymous Coward]

commitment?

That would be the same commitment that left us 64bit users out in the cold for entire versions of flash player for linux.

Perhaps they should get themselves a dictionary and select a more appropriate word such as "acknowledgment" or "apology to .. [for ignoring you so long]".

[Anonymous Coward]

"provide feedback to the company"

Dear Adobe,

Where's the fukken' source?

luv,

the freetards

[James Le Cuirot]

@ Fraser

Full screen has always worked fine for me since it was introduced to Linux. I've never heard anyone else complain about it?

[Chris]

finally

took them long enough

and I never had any problems with fullscreen flash in SuSE

[Tom]

Oh great

just what I dont need - another pointless development.

I hope my FlashBlocker still works on it.

If people want me to watch pointless presentations and unfunny adverts please save us all a lot of time and money and computer resources and use open standards please.

[Tom Simnett]

Full screen and wmode transparent

These both work in the 32bit version of Flash for Linux. I've been using it since it came out and rather happy about these! Just the codecs to go, and we're all done on 32bit! :)

[Henry Wertz]

Flash!

"Ah, but have they bothered to make it play flash video in full screen? "

Yes. Flash 9 seemed to really burn CPU cycles to fullscreen, as near as I can tell it was probably scaling within flash and just sending a video that's like 10x by 10x as big to the poor X server. It worked for me, but I can easily see it not working, it was noticeably inefficient even on a 3.0ghz box.

Flash 10? I think it might hook into like ffmpeg and SDL or something (since they're designed to decode video and get it on screen, why reinvent the wheel?). Fullscreen behavior is WAY different, I can tell it is probably sending the original-sized video to X and letting the card scale it, it looks better and plays smoother. It still burns more cycles than mplayer for instance, but it's far better than it was.

So, I don't have any 64-bit systems, and have heard of nspluginwrapper, but am nevertheless pleased that Adobe is putting out 64-bit flash. 64-bit Linux users already have it FAR better than those using 64-bit WIndows especially, but this'll make for the "icing on the cake" if they don't even need 32-bit compat installed eventually.

[Anonymous Coward]

@james Le Cuirot

There are plenty of hits on google, I'm interested which versions of linux/flash you're running?

[Mostor Astrakan]

@Roger Williams

Well, you see... Everybody keeps yelling at them: "Eff off, retard!" for obvious reasons, and they didn't catch that the F isn't part of the Retard bit. That's the danger in using other people's insults.

[Anonymous Coward]

@Roger Williams

I second that. Freetards are music priates. Linux users just want a stable OS.

[Steve Anderson]

Well, I'm happy.

Flash 10 player for Linux runs fullscreen fine. I know Flash 9 player was hit and miss (depending on the version you got). As a professional Flash developer and happy happy freetard at the same time, it's nice to be able to get what I create in my Windows dev environment running on my Eee.

[Anonymous Coward]

Some of us......

would really like a shockwave client for vanilla 32 bit linux.........

[P. Lee]

now all we need...

is for firefox to adopt chrome's one-process-per-tab model so that when flash crashes it doesn't take the entire browser down...

[Alistair]

Is good so far

Yeah - 64bitGentootard here.

it works as advertised so far. No comment on stability 'till the kidlets hammer on it later this week.

Now, did someone mention ShockWave?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why did this take so long?

Can someone explain to me why on earth this is such a big deal? Pretty much everything else I want is there already for 64bit Linux.

Forgive my ignorance, but don't you just, well, er, compile it on a 64 bit machine? I'm prepared to believe there could be a bit more to it than that, but for a product as important and well funded as Flash, this has to be 99% about market manipulation. and 1% technology... - doesn't it??

You need an "I don't get it" icon. I guess PH will do for now.

[Anonymous Coward]

@Roger Williams

You never heard about PRESSTARDS?

[carlos]

@Roger Williams

i third that (if possible, that is).

what's the point on making an insult out of people who don't or can't pay for something? and further more why would you want to call linux users something in the lines of "retard"?

do windows users have a cute nickname too? or are they OK because they pay (I'm sure most of them don't) ?

[Anonymous Coward]

64-bit Vista

You might be surprised at just how widely used 64-bit Vista is. HP offer it as an option on all their systems, and judging by posts in Windows forums, a lot of people seem to have selected it, and it doesn't seem to have caused any more problems for users than 32-bit vista.