alternatives to adobe flashplayer?

[shantiq]

after the latest update SMURF fiasco i am asking aloud are there ways to avoid using adobe flashplayer or has this company got a stranglehold on us Ubuntuers watching YT videos and other media online

i heard about something called Lightspark but i c ould not get it going



Any of you run it? Are there any other FULLY-FUNCTIONING routes


I personally would be more than happy to be shot of anything ADOBE and use something fully linux

[lovinglinux]

About an hour ago I added the SMURF fiasco to the Pepper Mozilla bug. It is just informational, because Mozilla won't implement Pepper. This article explains well their reasons.

Flash is still working, but for how long? The SMURF fiasco was a warning that it might stop working sooner that we expect. The issue is clearly related to hardware acceleration, which has been crippled in the Linux version a couple of versions back. It probably won't be fixed, so we can expect "SMURF 2: The Resurrection" any time soon.

Adobe already removed the Flash Beta page and Linux is not included in the Adobe Flash Player Incubator page. Furthermore, Adobe is refusing to address Linux bugs reports, stating Linux is no longer supported.

I don't see much alternative. Lightspark and Gnash cannot fully replace flash yet, since they don't work on every site.

There are some alternatives, like my FlashVideoReplacer, but it just cover a few web sites. There are some greasemonkey scritps that can provide similar functionality for other web sites. For YouTube, you can also use Minitube.

I am really concerned. I hate the idea of using Chrome, specially after this Adobe+Google move. However, it seems it will be the only real long term alternative, unless Lightspark or Gnash receive a boost and become usable on most sites.

BTW, there is an interesting project supported by Mozilla to play SWF using HTML5, but I don't think it will play flash videos: https://github.com/mozilla/shumway#readme

[shantiq]

thanx man that is a whole lot of info [Muito Obrigado]

i tried Lightspark on Opera [ my favored browser for the last 6 month/ trying to have nothing to do with Google as far as i can]

i think it was on YT and it showed a black rectangle where the video was


so back to the drawing board


in effect you are saying no FULLY FUNCTIONAL alternative as yet and it looks as if flashplayer is about to snub us bigtime

I could not program myself out of a room if all i had to do was to open the door so i shall make an offering to the Gods of Linux programming


and hope for better



Corporate software is what we try and shun in my horizontal democracy new world


so anyway thank you for a very thorough reply to my question

[lovinglinux]

thanx man that is a whole lot of info [Muito Obrigado]

i tried Lightspark on Opera [ my favored browser for the last 6 month/ trying to have nothing to do with Google as far as i can]

i think it was on YT and it showed a black rectangle where the video was


so back to the drawing board


in effect you are saying no FULLY FUNCTIONAL alternative as yet and it looks as if flashplayer is about to snub us bigtime

I could not program myself out of a room if all i had to do was to open the door so i shall make an offering to the Gods of Linux programming


and hope for better



Corporate software is what we try and shun in my horizontal democracy new world


so anyway thank you for a very thorough reply to my question

You are welcome.

Unfortunately, I never was able to make Lightspark work. Gnash is functional, but mostly for YouTube. Last time I checked it didn't work on a few sites I needed. It is time for a new series of tests.

[sdowney717]

Linux support is dead.
After yesterdays update, for me, flash only works on Google Chrome and not firefox.

Hugely buggy and vulnerabilities were being covered up by Adobe. sooner the better it goes for everyone.

http://9to5google.com/2011/08/10/goo...h-player-bugs/

Linux support gone.
http://9to5google.com/2012/02/22/pep...load-on-linux/

[Kimm]

Its pretty old news that Flash support is being dropped for Linux (in fact there was a thread about this not long ago). As the article states though, it will still work in Chrome, and I believe Firefox will be implementing the technology in due time as well.

Tbh, its about time that Flash died! Only time I ever use it these days is to view videos on YouTube, and that can be achieved just as easily using HTML5.

[sdowney717]

I just started experiencing this last couple days with flash failing on Firefox and inverting the colors on Chrome. Blue colored Smurf like people. You get this effect with the Nvidia driver, but the bug is in the Adobe flash program. I cant even watch flash on Firefox now. And I see a lot of recent posts where people did updates and flash wont work anymore.

[Erik1984]

I'm not sure if I'm on the latest version but I fixed the smurfs by unchecking "Enable hardware acceleration".

[lovinglinux]

Linux support is dead.
After yesterdays update, for me, flash only works on Google Chrome and not firefox.

This bug only affects nVidia users. It is working fine for me on Firefox, Opera and Chrome.

Its pretty old news that Flash support is being dropped for Linux (in fact there was a thread about this not long ago). As the article states though, it will still work in Chrome, and I believe Firefox will be implementing the technology in due time as well.

Tbh, its about time that Flash died! Only time I ever use it these days is to view videos on YouTube, and that can be achieved just as easily using HTML5.

It is not being dropped, it has been dropped already. Adobe is not even helping Linux users anymore. Any bug report gets a standard message that Flash is not supported in Linux. However, they promissed security patches for 5 years. Not very helpful, if hardware acceleration doesn't work and won't be fixed.

Google will implement Flash via Pepper API, but Mozilla and Opera are against Pepper and won't implement such technology. So, as long as flash lives and the current version gives problems, people will have to switch to Chrome.

For more info, see second post in this thread.

[souravc83]

What if I stop updating?
Maybe I will reach a point where my old versions are not supported by Youtube or other sites, but that's like if I don't update for 2 years.
I had a friend, a big linux geek. His idea was that once you have got a stable system, that you know works, you should never update.
He had an old fedora build, and he never updated unless it was really necessary. I was reminded of him yesterday, when the smurf fiasco happened.
While updates are the only way to improve your system, they can also end up breaking your system. If all you really care about is basic functionalities, that work well, it might be a reasonable idea to stick to the current versions of chrome,firefox, flash. that way, you are safe unless anything major changes, that is not supported in your old software.
I switched to Ubuntu not long ago, and this is something that has got me thinking.