So, from my memory (I started with Linux in 2000 or so, haven't really stopped.) There was a flash player for linux, I want to say it corresponded with about v

So, from my memory (I started with Linux in 2000 or so, haven't really stopped.) There was a flash player for linux, I want to say it corresponded with about version 5 but don't trust me on that. It never really got any updates except perhaps the occasional critical security patch. Meanwhile, the Linux desktop moved on and the plugin got harder and harder to keep going. Things like sound required jumping through a few (extra) hoops to make work, I think it expected OSS but that faded out to be replaced with ALSA, so you had to add some thing to get backward compatibility for that, and it would tend to monopolise the whole sound device. Meanwhile, Linux became more and more 64 bit, but the flash plugin didn't. So you either had to run a 32-bit browser (because plugins were a library the browser loaded), or use some crazy proxy plugin thing (nspluginwrapper[1]) that someone made that was 64 bit at one end and 32 bit at the other. Also meanwhile, other platforms got Flash player 6, and 7, and beyond, and still Linux was stuck on 5 or whatever. Then Mike Melanson[0] came along and spent some serious time and energy re-porting Flash player to Linux and made a lot of people very happy because now we had AV sync and no 32-64 bit bodges and fewer and fewer crashes and so on. After a few years(?) he stopped, not sure why, and things slowed down. But by then it felt like flash was starting its decline, and what we had worked well enough, and Adobe seemed to be keeping basic updates happening anyway. Now more and more I forget about installing `flashplugin-installer` or whatever Ubuntu calls it these days and don't notice that it's not there. Note, aside from Mike's name, this is totally from memory so significant details may be wrong. Go read Mike's archived blog, it'll probably give you a much more detailed insight. Might do that myself. [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20120903074409/http://blogs.adobe.com/penguinswf/ https://web.archive.org/web/20120903074409/http://blogs.adob... - note that this is an arbitrary time snapshot that I picked at random. [1] https://www.linux.com/news/nspluginwrapper-cross-architecture-browser-plugin-tool/ https://www.linux.com/news/nspluginwrapper-cross-architectur... - total madness. But it (mostly sorta) worked.