Adobe Flash Alternatives: Light-Spark and Gnash Plugins

[Brahim Salem]

"Adobe has now announced that they will remove Flash Player for Linux and make it available only for Google Chrome. Adobe agreement with Google to release a plugin dedicated to Chrome (available for both 32-bit and 64-bit) through Pepper Plugin API (PPAPI) with which they can benefit other browser. In the next few hours Flash Player for Linux will be removed from the official repositories of Adobe." that's what noobslab says here [url]http://www.noobslab.com/2012/02/no-adobe-flash-on-linux-except-chrome.html[/url]

The question is whether they are better alternatives for flash?

Why doesn't Linux Mint iclude them by default as part ot mintplugins?

[craig10x]

There probably aren't...i read some reviews of these two "alternatives" posted by reviewers in the ubuntu software center that have tried...sounds like generally their experience has not been so hot...

If you want up to date flash, you will likely HAVE to use Chrome...as HTML-5 for general web use may still be a number of years away...

I love Chrome myself so for me it's no big deal but for you firefox and chromium fans...well...you will just have to try to keep chugging along with the old flash that was the last one adobe produced for linux in general...(2 years ago)

That's not a new article...this has been known for quite some time...adobe has an agreement with chrome for it...other than that...no further new versions are available...

[dee.]

Just another reminder that Google is no friend to Linux, even though some people see them as an open source savior... They're a greedy corporation, a marginally better option than MS or Apple, but still a corporation that should not be trusted.

This kind of power-grabbing exclusive deal move is disgusting and right from the book of Microsoft.

[nomko]

"Adobe has now announced that they will remove Flash Player for Linux and make it available only for Google Chrome. Adobe agreement with Google to release a plugin dedicated to Chrome (available for both 32-bit and 64-bit) through Pepper Plugin API (PPAPI) with which they can benefit other browser. In the next few hours Flash Player for Linux will be removed from the official repositories of Adobe." that's what noobslab says here [url]http://www.noobslab.com/2012/02/no-adobe-flash-on-linux-except-chrome.html[/url]

Old news.... Why brining up old news?? There are a lot of topics to be found on this forum about this issue with Adobe Flash... Stick to actual news and not to oputdated, old news everybody already knows about......

Just another reminder that Google is no friend to Linux

In what way Google is no friend of Linux? I think you miss the point here of Google Android is basically Linux... Can you support your quote???

[craig10x]

Google IS a friend to linux...without Chrome we would have no current and updated flash on it...

I love my Chrome, Gmail and up-to date flash plug in so they may not be YOUR friend but they sure are MINE

[teatime]

You can use the pepper plugin in chromium too and therefore I do not have to install Google chrome - a howto from Arch but it works on Mint too: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ch ... gin_API.29

[ajgreeny]

You can also add the pepper flash plugin to chromium using a ubuntu ppa at https://launchpad.net/~skunk/+archive/pepper-flash/ which will also work in the appropriate Mint versions, of course.

[dee.]

In what way Google is no friend of Linux? I think you miss the point here of Google Android is basically Linux... Can you support your quote???

Android uses a (modified) Linux kernel but is entirely its own animal, quite separate from what most people call Linux distributions (or Gnu/Linux, if they want to be anal about it). Android uses bionic instead of glibc, SurfaceFlinger instead of X/Wayland, everything is developed in-house, almost all the hardware drivers are proprietary, there's closed source firmware with backdoors, the Google Play app (which is proprietary) has a backdoor that can be used to remotely uninstall apps from the user's device without the user's permission and also supports DRM...

Google uses and contributes to Linux when it suits their goal of monetizing their users, ie. turning every one into an ad revenue generating data mine. The rest of the time, they support it when they feel like it - there's plenty of Google software that is still only available for Windows/Mac but not Linux.

[craig10x]

Yeah i know you can add pepperflash to Chromium but it' s a bit complicated...i would rather have it already installed and with Chrome it is...
I also like the built in pdf reader which enables me to look at pdfs and not have to download them to my drive...but i still have the option to do that if i desire...

[teatime]

In what way Google is no friend of Linux? I think you miss the point here of Google Android is basically Linux... Can you support your quote???

Android uses a (modified) Linux kernel but is entirely its own animal, quite separate from what most people call Linux distributions (or Gnu/Linux, if they want to be anal about it). Android uses bionic instead of glibc, SurfaceFlinger instead of X/Wayland, everything is developed in-house, almost all the hardware drivers are proprietary, there's closed source firmware with backdoors, the Google Play app (which is proprietary) has a backdoor that can be used to remotely uninstall apps from the user's device without the user's permission and also supports DRM...

Google uses and contributes to Linux when it suits their goal of monetizing their users, ie. turning every one into an ad revenue generating data mine. The rest of the time, they support it when they feel like it - there's plenty of Google software that is still only available for Windows/Mac but not Linux.

Good post but there are other technolgies where you get limited from Google: Google play services, Google Maps API, Google Cloud Messaging - that's all services which are out of Androids source code and closed source and that's are the interesting bits where Google controls everything. I think what you want to say is that's not enough that you throw code to developers as some people have really the impression everything is open sourced and therefore Google as a friendly company and as soon you play with self built android releases you realize how tight Google controls most important parts of certain features. That's one of the reasons why I do not use chrome and have chromium only to test web pages as Mozilla do not try to manipulate people with their browsers. I do not know whether people followed carefully the ongoing dicussion about cookie and browser identification but that's technolgies which are very important for Googles advertising business to make tailored advertising for the browser user - it's only to identify a single user but all this technogly could be used also against users. Therefore in case I used something closed source I have to ask myself what I gain from this software and what's does the company gain in case I use it's software.