14 ms·

Chrome 20 Takes Over Adobe Flash On Linux

79 points by mdesantis 14y ago

usablebytes 14y ago
what is this news? can somebody read and try to explain me/all what exactly is happening here?
- nodata 14y 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 14y 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.
    - obtu 14y ago
      The only option to get newer versions of the Adobe plugin. The 11.2 branch will get security updates into 2017 (2012-03-27 + 5 years): https://blogs.adobe.com/flashplayer/2012/02/adobe-and-google-partnering-for-flash-player-on-linux.html https://blogs.adobe.com/flashplayer/2012/02/adobe-and-google...
    - sa1 14y ago
      You can use the PPAPI versions with Chromium if you want to. You just need to extract the so file from chrome package and use it for Chromium. There are readymade packages available in AUR for instance. Of course your point stands that officially Chrome is the only option left.
Tichy 14y ago
What will happen to Flash on the Ubuntu LTS releases? Will it be automatically removed at some point?
- trotsky 14y ago
  Adobe is still providing bugfix versions of the 11.2 tree for NPAPI linux.
jtsagata 14y ago
For one happy moment i was expecting a working open source implementation. Then i crashed on the ground...
- hippich 14y 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 14y 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)?
- cpeterso 14y 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.
kayluhb 14y ago
Maybe this is why my Chrome browser on Ubuntu has suddenly started being completely unresponsive whenever it loads Flash.
eiji 14y 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.
- TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago
  Are they really? I'd say they are far more invested in WebKit, HTML5 and Java.
  - panacea 14y 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.
    - TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago
      WebGL or perhaps fiddling with Canvas. It's only a matter of time.
    - jiggy2011 14y ago
      It doesn't seem that unlikely, street view is mostly a fancy slideshow.
      - recursive 14y ago
        It does some pretty sweet 3d-aware image manipulation. I wouldn't call that a slide show.
        jiggy2011 14y ago
        On the client end?
        14y ago
chao- 14y 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.
- kintamanimatt 14y ago
  Yes, it stops moaning and groaning about that in v20. On a side note, Google Chrome/Chromium's at version 20 already?
  - mas1n 14y ago
    Welcome to the infinite version. http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/05/the-infinite-version.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/05/the-infinite-versio...
    - kintamanimatt 14y ago
      I'm actually looking forward to running a v100 piece of software. I don't think I've ever seen software reach that monumental milestone, although I expect I will next year. I wonder whether Firefox or Chrome will win the race.
mrlase 14y 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.
- SkyMarshal 14y 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 14y 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 14y ago
Does that include a fix for the smurf bug? https://bugbase.adobe.com/index.cfm?event=bug&id=3109467 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.
- jiggy2011 14y ago
  You can fix that by disabling hardware acceleration. Right click on a flash element -> settings -> untick
  - kaolinite 14y ago
    Took me 3 months of hallucinogenic youtube videos for me to discover that.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
kayoone 14y 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 14y 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.
  - obtu 14y 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.
  - cpeterso 14y ago
    There is no such thing as Native Client Flash. PPAPI ("Pepper") is a replacement of the venerable NPAPI plugin API.
- azakai 14y 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).
  - kayoone 14y 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.
    - azakai 14y 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. First of all, being open source doesn't mean it is easy to integrate, either technically or otherwise (by otherwise, I mean that other browser makers have principles that determine what technology makes sense to put in their browser, and NaCl does not necessarily pass them). Second, how would this eliminate the need for every other plugin? Chrome has NaCl but it still has Flash.
freehunter 14y 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 https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=26140
- tjoff 14y 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.
  - ajross 14y 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).
naner 14y ago
Phoronix is currently down, but there wasn't much to this story to begin with: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.phoronix.com/vr.php%3Fview%3DMTEyNzc&hl=en&prmd=imvns&strip=1 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.
azakai 14y 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.

79 points by mdesantis 14y ago

usablebytes 14y ago

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

nodata 14y 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 14y 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.
  - obtu 14y ago
    The only option to get newer versions of the Adobe plugin. The 11.2 branch will get security updates into 2017 (2012-03-27 + 5 years): https://blogs.adobe.com/flashplayer/2012/02/adobe-and-google-partnering-for-flash-player-on-linux.html https://blogs.adobe.com/flashplayer/2012/02/adobe-and-google...
  - sa1 14y ago
    You can use the PPAPI versions with Chromium if you want to. You just need to extract the so file from chrome package and use it for Chromium. There are readymade packages available in AUR for instance. Of course your point stands that officially Chrome is the only option left.

Tichy 14y ago

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

trotsky 14y ago
Adobe is still providing bugfix versions of the 11.2 tree for NPAPI linux.

jtsagata 14y ago

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

hippich 14y 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 14y 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)?

cpeterso 14y 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.

kayluhb 14y ago

Maybe this is why my Chrome browser on Ubuntu has suddenly started being completely unresponsive whenever it loads Flash.

eiji 14y 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.

TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago
Are they really? I'd say they are far more invested in WebKit, HTML5 and Java.
- panacea 14y 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.
  - TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago
    WebGL or perhaps fiddling with Canvas. It's only a matter of time.
  - jiggy2011 14y ago
    It doesn't seem that unlikely, street view is mostly a fancy slideshow.
    - recursive 14y ago
      It does some pretty sweet 3d-aware image manipulation. I wouldn't call that a slide show.
      - jiggy2011 14y ago
        On the client end?
        14y ago

chao- 14y 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.

kintamanimatt 14y ago
Yes, it stops moaning and groaning about that in v20. On a side note, Google Chrome/Chromium's at version 20 already?
- mas1n 14y ago
  Welcome to the infinite version. http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/05/the-infinite-version.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/05/the-infinite-versio...
  - kintamanimatt 14y ago
    I'm actually looking forward to running a v100 piece of software. I don't think I've ever seen software reach that monumental milestone, although I expect I will next year. I wonder whether Firefox or Chrome will win the race.

mrlase 14y 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.

SkyMarshal 14y 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 14y 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 14y ago

Does that include a fix for the smurf bug? https://bugbase.adobe.com/index.cfm?event=bug&id=3109467 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.

jiggy2011 14y ago
You can fix that by disabling hardware acceleration. Right click on a flash element -> settings -> untick
- kaolinite 14y ago
  Took me 3 months of hallucinogenic youtube videos for me to discover that.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]

kayoone 14y 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 14y 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.
- obtu 14y 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.
- cpeterso 14y ago
  There is no such thing as Native Client Flash. PPAPI ("Pepper") is a replacement of the venerable NPAPI plugin API.
azakai 14y 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).
- kayoone 14y 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.
  - azakai 14y 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. First of all, being open source doesn't mean it is easy to integrate, either technically or otherwise (by otherwise, I mean that other browser makers have principles that determine what technology makes sense to put in their browser, and NaCl does not necessarily pass them). Second, how would this eliminate the need for every other plugin? Chrome has NaCl but it still has Flash.

freehunter 14y 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 https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=26140

tjoff 14y 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.
- ajross 14y 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).

naner 14y ago

Phoronix is currently down, but there wasn't much to this story to begin with: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.phoronix.com/vr.php%3Fview%3DMTEyNzc&hl=en&prmd=imvns&strip=1 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.

azakai 14y 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.