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BIG SURPRISE Adobe Flash for linux x86 64

November 18th, 2008

This is incredible! Stop the press! Finally the giant hurdle which has caused so many open source 64 bitters grief could finally be over - there IS a light at the end of the tunnel.

Want me to be more specific? Sure, no problem. First, a little history.

Linux on the desktop is still in its infancy, but its been possible for quite some time - say 5 or 10 years for the adventurous. Within the past couple of years, its become attractive, user friendly, and even easy to install. When it comes to the oil and water stuff - like the proprietary binary blobs which cause dedicated kernel hackers to get the willies - Ubuntu has crossed the "picket line" and attempted to make installing unsupported software easier, which makes a practical difference for those who want fast 3D performance (this is changing too though - thanks to some open source drivers in the pipeline).

But anyway, back to Flash. For awhile (even with Macromedia I think) it was possible to use the proprietary Flash installer on linux, but only the 32bit version, not the 64 bit. For reasons unknown to me, the conversion of the plugin from 32 to 64 bit was a serious issue. It was possible to use nspluginwrapper, or Gnash, but I tried both of those with mixed results.

Today, one day after its release, I installed the Adobe Flash Player 10 for 64-bit linux. How's it work? For me so far its worked fine. Hulu, YouTube, and even the tricky Google Analytics and Google finance charts work! I don't think that the plugin is open source, but at this point, I don't mind. I still have to say it: Bravo Adobe, bravo!

Flash Player 10 Prerelease

Related to Flash on Linux

Gnash, Adsense Firefox3 iframes, Analytics

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