May 29th, 2006
Wondering why we’re still stuck with Flashplayer 7 under Linux? Yeah, so was I. There’s a stopgap solution involving Wine but we shouldn’t settle for just that, especially considering the problems with sound remain.
The good news is that Adobe are at least trying to get a native port of the Flash Player to Linux. The bad news is that they seem to be dragging their heels. There are significant problems to do with code optimisation, which toolkit to use (Gtk/Qt etc) and which sound system (ALSA/ESD etc) but the project manager seemed confident that we’d be getting version 8.5 shortly after the Windows and Mac crowd do. That seems to have slipped away and now 8.5 seems to have morphed into 9. Now the project manager suggests that we’ll be getting this new release by 2007. By 2007! And even this release isn’t set in stone!
I’m sorry but this just isn’t good enough, I mean if Sun can make plans to fully open-source Java then surely Adobe could go some of the way to allowing the community to support Flash on systems that they seem so reluctant to develop on. For now be sure to keep abreast with matters at the new Adobe Flash Linux blog.
June 1st, 2006 at 5:33 am
I find it absolutely amazing that you can figure all this out… or something like that, and wonder why you can’t use certain programs. Maybe we should all just stick with Windows? Hehe..
DON’T SLAP ME!
October 20th, 2006 at 8:31 pm
[…] I’ve been following the native Flash update for Linux development blog since May. Up until now the whole atmosphere has been that of Adobe stringing along Linux enthusiasts for all it’s worth, with a tentative release date here and some development problems there. However on the flip-side at least the community has been getting that information; they didn’t have to write a development blog after all. By “they” I mean Adobe, but specifically Mike Melanson, the writer, who deserves a degree of kudos from not letting the “shoot the messenger” types interfere with the proceedings. […]