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Honestly, I don't think I would have even noticed my tablet didn't have Flash. I don't have Flash on my Linux laptop (I use Chromium there) and haven't missed i

Honestly, I don't think I would have even noticed my tablet didn't have Flash. I don't have Flash on my Linux laptop (I use Chromium there) and haven't missed it --its nothing ideological: if I ever need Flash I'll install it right away. On the Windows netbooks we do have Flash but only because there we use Chrome instead of Chromium and it comes with Flash. I don't think I actually use it for anything other than playing video games with my son, which is not very often (his favorite games now are puzzle apps he plays on an iPod Touch, not that he plays those that much either). (Off topic: now that I mentioned it all, it felt like we have a lot of hardware, but then I realized altogether I payed less than the cost of a high end laptop for it.)

ta12121 14y ago
There do exist people that want to use YouTube and Hulu on Linux, and that's hard to do without Flash.
- abrahamsen 14y ago
  YouTube on Linux without flash works fine these days.
  - ta12121 14y ago
    It certainly didn't a few weeks ago when I tried it.
  - DeepDuh 14y ago
    Have they come around offering everything in html5 now? I tried it about a year ago and it only had a small percentage of the content I watch.
    - greyboy 14y ago
      My totally unscientific and anecdotal input is that, for what I end up watching (5-10 videos/week), it's in the 50-75% range (for HTML5 videos being available). Of course, that doesn't mean much and I always have a Windows virtual machine running for just these scenarios.
      - JoshTriplett 14y ago
        For videos unavailable via HTML5, try youtube-dl: https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl/ https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl/
        bsphil 14y ago
        No youtube video is worth that amount of time and energy. EDIT: That's probably why I can't convince myself to put Linux on my desktop as the primary OS. I just don't want to take the time to compile github scripts or scour the Internet for drivers/workarounds/fixes to make all of the basic computing functions I take for granted on Win7 work.
        greyboy 14y ago
        The link JoshTriplett gave is a simple script, nothing that takes any time to make it usable after you download it (assuming Python is installed). But, different strokes for different folks: and choice is usually never a bad thing. Of course, I learned long ago not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Personally, I have a few Windows virtual machines and an old, cheap Windows XP laptop around for those rare occasions as well as a Windows 7 dual boot install for .Net development. However (again, anecdotally), I've not had a problem with using Linux day-to-day. Nothing has been difficult and I appreciate the power the CLI affords me.
        bsphil 14y ago
        I run a Linux VM in Windows on my desktop actually, but it's my gaming machine too. Last time I gave it a shot as a full install, I couldn't for the life of me get a brand new USB wifi adapter to work in Ubuntu. All the searching on the topic seemed to indicate that 64-bit users are screwed (which was me), and 32-bit users needed to use a driver emulator and dig through generic broadcom drivers to test. I gave up.
        Ralith 14y ago
        It's often a good idea to research how well hardware will work for your intended use before you pay money for it.
- fosap 14y ago
  I'm a Linux user, have no flash installed and use Youtube. It's not as good as i could be, but it works. Most content is displayed with HTML5, for the other stuff i use mplayer witch is a bit hacky, but works for me.
  - ta12121 14y ago
    I don't use Linux because I enjoy annoying kluges.
bunderbunder 14y ago
I don't think I would have even noticed my tablet didn't have Flash. I noticed that mine did. It was impossible to ignore. My tablet would frequently become unresponsive when I went to sites that had Flash content. Or sites with Flash content would be unusable because they relied on mouseovers in a way that doesn't work with touchscreen devices. After a week I got around to figuring out how to disable Flash on the device. At which point my desire to give up on the Android tablet and get an iPad after all diminished considerably.

ta12121 14y ago

There do exist people that want to use YouTube and Hulu on Linux, and that's hard to do without Flash.

abrahamsen 14y ago
YouTube on Linux without flash works fine these days.
- ta12121 14y ago
  It certainly didn't a few weeks ago when I tried it.
- DeepDuh 14y ago
  Have they come around offering everything in html5 now? I tried it about a year ago and it only had a small percentage of the content I watch.
  - greyboy 14y ago
    My totally unscientific and anecdotal input is that, for what I end up watching (5-10 videos/week), it's in the 50-75% range (for HTML5 videos being available). Of course, that doesn't mean much and I always have a Windows virtual machine running for just these scenarios.
    - JoshTriplett 14y ago
      For videos unavailable via HTML5, try youtube-dl: https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl/ https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl/
      - bsphil 14y ago
        No youtube video is worth that amount of time and energy. EDIT: That's probably why I can't convince myself to put Linux on my desktop as the primary OS. I just don't want to take the time to compile github scripts or scour the Internet for drivers/workarounds/fixes to make all of the basic computing functions I take for granted on Win7 work.
        greyboy 14y ago
        The link JoshTriplett gave is a simple script, nothing that takes any time to make it usable after you download it (assuming Python is installed). But, different strokes for different folks: and choice is usually never a bad thing. Of course, I learned long ago not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Personally, I have a few Windows virtual machines and an old, cheap Windows XP laptop around for those rare occasions as well as a Windows 7 dual boot install for .Net development. However (again, anecdotally), I've not had a problem with using Linux day-to-day. Nothing has been difficult and I appreciate the power the CLI affords me.
        bsphil 14y ago
        I run a Linux VM in Windows on my desktop actually, but it's my gaming machine too. Last time I gave it a shot as a full install, I couldn't for the life of me get a brand new USB wifi adapter to work in Ubuntu. All the searching on the topic seemed to indicate that 64-bit users are screwed (which was me), and 32-bit users needed to use a driver emulator and dig through generic broadcom drivers to test. I gave up.
        Ralith 14y ago
        It's often a good idea to research how well hardware will work for your intended use before you pay money for it.
fosap 14y ago
I'm a Linux user, have no flash installed and use Youtube. It's not as good as i could be, but it works. Most content is displayed with HTML5, for the other stuff i use mplayer witch is a bit hacky, but works for me.
- ta12121 14y ago
  I don't use Linux because I enjoy annoying kluges.

bunderbunder 14y ago

I don't think I would have even noticed my tablet didn't have Flash. I noticed that mine did. It was impossible to ignore. My tablet would frequently become unresponsive when I went to sites that had Flash content. Or sites with Flash content would be unusable because they relied on mouseovers in a way that doesn't work with touchscreen devices. After a week I got around to figuring out how to disable Flash on the device. At which point my desire to give up on the Android tablet and get an iPad after all diminished considerably.