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Flash For Linux Will Only Be Available For Chrome

blogs.adobe.com

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Re: Flash For Linux Will Only Be Available For Chrome

#91

Post by justinschuh »

shimon_e wrote: post #74
gcp wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the except of Chrome due to a new API This is what's hard to understand: they are not dropping NPAPI on Windows, so it's not like the Chrome API is the enabler here.

From the press release it seems NPAPI is OS dependent while Pepper is less so. This all assume there is actually going to be something more than security updates after 11.2 for other platforms. And that it is going to be something we would want on Linux.

>From the press release it seems NPAPI is OS dependent while Pepper is less so.

Correct. The NPAPI version of Flash is very platform-dependent; whereas Pepper Flash is almost completely platform neutral, and Chrome OS needs most of the same Pepper platform bits anyway. So, our maintenance overhead for Pepper Flash on Linux is very small. On top of that, Linux is broadly deployed throughout Google (and is very popular among Chrome developers), so we're scratching our own itch a bit.

Re: Flash For Linux Will Only Be Available For Chrome

#92

Post by justinschuh »

coffeeaddicted wrote: post #78

The part I'm not yet getting about Pepper - does it only support those native client objects as described here? https://developers.google.com/native-client/overview Or do plugins like flash have the choice between native client and just using a shared library as they did and Pepper also supports that? In the first case it would basically mean that flash would run sandboxed (and maybe on every system supported by Pepp…

We use Pepper to sandbox some fully native plugins, where NaCl is not yet a good option due to things like codebase incompatibilities and startup performance. Two examples of this are the native PDF reader (on all platforms) and Flash on Chrome OS.

Re: Flash For Linux Will Only Be Available For Chrome

#94

Post by Estragon »

gcp wrote: post #40

I can't make much sense of this. Adobe declared Flash dead. Apple declared Flash dead. Google declared Flash dead in Chrome for Android. Now, they're going to continue working on Flash, but only on a new API that is implemented only in a single browser in Linux (and from statements from Apple and Mozilla, will stay that way), but keeping it compatible with the old NPAPI on Windows? What I don't even.... Edit: Could i…

  > Google declared Flash dead in Chrome for Android.
I'm not part of Google, but i have been studying Native Client pretty closely. I think Google's interest here is that Native Client is designed from the ground up for security. They are happy for Flash to operate through Native Client (which is what the "Pepper" API interfaces), because that largely obviates the security issues it poses.

This is excellent news for web security. It will force other browsers to at least implement the Pepper API. Hopefully it will encourage them to use Native Client as well.

Re: Flash For Linux Will Only Be Available For Chrome

#95

Post by Estragon »

shimon_e wrote: post #59
gcp wrote: post #40

I can't make much sense of this. Adobe declared Flash dead. Apple declared Flash dead. Google declared Flash dead in Chrome for Android. Now, they're going to continue working on Flash, but only on a new API that is implemented only in a single browser in Linux (and from statements from Apple and Mozilla, will stay that way), but keeping it compatible with the old NPAPI on Windows? What I don't even.... Edit: Could i…

They are basically saying due to Pepper there is no or little work in getting flash to work in Chrome on Linux... so there will be continued support. The real question is if this is true, why are they dropping flash for android?

Probably because Native Client on ARM isn't as well-developed.

http://www.chromium.org/nativeclient/reference/arm-overview#...

Re: Flash For Linux Will Only Be Available For Chrome

#96

Post by justinschuh »

scythe wrote: post #90

The one thing where Flash is still apparently unavoidable is something like tinychat.com (or chatroulette) which does web-based videoconferencing. The last time I checked, it isn't possible to replicate that without Flash.

WebRTC http://www.webrtc.org/> development is ongoing between Google, Mozilla, and Opera. You can try it out in the latest Chrome canary/dev channel.

Re: Flash For Linux Will Only Be Available For Chrome

#97

Post by stanleydrew »

aninteger wrote: post #81
bwarp wrote: post #6

I get the feeling this isn't going to be that much of a problem. I've not got the flash plugin installed in Firefox and I'm not finding any great hardship these days. Perhaps it'll kill Flash a bit quicker considering the amount of Kiosks and Internet cafes running Firefox+Flash on Linux.

I run ArchLinux, use Chrome, and have the flashplugin-prelease installed. This is version 10.0 of Flash. Because this plugin is out of date Chrome will disable flash on all websites I visited that use Flash. It would then show a little bar at the top indicating that my flash plugin is out of date and therefore disabled. If I wanted to run Flash anyway it gave me the option to run it for the current page. I noticed th…

There's no reason to run an out of date flash plugin. You can enable click-to-play for flash in the chrome settings. It's in the content settings area of the "under the hood" section I believe.

Re: Flash For Linux Will Only Be Available For Chrome

#98

Post by [deleted] »

Estragon wrote: post #94
gcp wrote: post #40

I can't make much sense of this. Adobe declared Flash dead. Apple declared Flash dead. Google declared Flash dead in Chrome for Android. Now, they're going to continue working on Flash, but only on a new API that is implemented only in a single browser in Linux (and from statements from Apple and Mozilla, will stay that way), but keeping it compatible with the old NPAPI on Windows? What I don't even.... Edit: Could i…

> Google declared Flash dead in Chrome for Android. I'm not part of Google, but i have been studying Native Client pretty closely. I think Google's interest here is that Native Client is designed from the ground up for security. They are happy for Flash to operate through Native Client (which is what the "Pepper" API interfaces), because that largely obviates the security issues it poses. This is excellent news for w…

[deleted]

Re: Flash For Linux Will Only Be Available For Chrome

#99

Post by bzbarsky »

Shank wrote: post #73
slowpoke wrote: post #23

Dear Adobe: just kill Flash already, for good. The world (wide web) will be a better place.

In effect they are. No android support, now nothing except Chrome support on Linux. I'd assume that if my theory is true, Mac OS X will take a similar route(why it didn't happen first is beyond me) before Windows finally meets a similarly gimped fate.

Mac OS X probably didn't happen first because there are way more desktop Mac OS X users than there are desktop Linux users...

Re: Flash For Linux Will Only Be Available For Chrome

#100

Post by bzbarsky »

Tichy wrote: post #80
melling wrote: post #79

Why is there so much noise over this? How many times does Flash have to die? Yes, the Flash plugin will be with us for another decade, but shouldn't most of us have moved on? I uninstalled Flash on my two Macs in December. I'm doing fine so far. Sometimes, I need to switch over to Chrome for video, but so far I'm not missing it.

I have relatives on Linux and this will complicate things for me. Basically I have to install Chrome and explain why videos and other stuff work only on Chrome. However, it is the way I prefer it by now anyway: use a Firefox without Flash for daily browsing and Chrome for Flash things. Don't underestimate how complicated it might be to explain this to "noobs", though.

> Basically I have to install Chrome and explain why videos > and other stuff work only on Chrome.

Starting 5 years from now, when Adobe actually drops support for Flash on Linux, right?

We'll see how much video and other stuff still requires Flash in 5 years. With any luck, not much.

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