Markus Thielmann

Adobe updated the Linux Flash 10 Beta today.

Fortunately, they fixed the windowless mode, one nasty issue with the previous beta version.

Have a look at the new features and the list of fixed bugs of this release.

I updated my Personal Package Archive (PPA) accordingly. If you already added my PPA to your sources list, you'll get the updated flashplugin-nonfreebeta within the next upgrade.

While testing Flash 10 installation success, I remembered having problems with Flash on Opera. It constantly showed some grey boxes and teiling me to "click to activate" which didn't work at all.

Canonical offers a special "partner repository", which contains Opera 9.27. Unfortunately, Opera seems to have some issues with Ubuntu's Flash version (and any newer one, too).

The solution is quite simple: Just update to Opera 2.50b2.

Since a few weeks I'm testing Flash 10 Beta and I'm really happy with it. There are some bugs with online games from time to time, but the overall performance is great. There's better (faster) fullscreen support and it seems Adobe worked really hard on Ubuntu compatibility and the sound issues.

I experienced very few Firefox crashes, even if I'm using the browser up to 16 hours a day, constantly playing at least one flash video.

I recently presented a few workarounds for the annoying Flash bug in Ubuntu Hardy. Since none of the workarounds really solved the issue, I decided to stop using the nspluginwrapper workaround with Flash 9 and keep using the Flash 10 beta. Fortunately, Flash doesn't seem to need libflashsupport any longer, even if your hardware doesn't support hardware mixing.

To make installation of the Flash beta more comfortable, I decided to modify the flashplugin-nonfree package to a flashplugin-nonfreebeta package. Since Flash 10 still crashes with libflashsupport installed, the package will remove it before installing the Flash beta.

I'm neither a Flash nor a packaging guru, if you're willing to give it a try, add the following line to your sources list:

Update the sources and install the package flashplugin-nonfreebeta. Due to Bug #125103 of the Launchpad service, you'll notice a message stating that this is an unsigned package.

I couldn't test the package on amd64 and lpia. Please report any installation issues to the comments, any Flash bugs to Adobe's bug tracker.

A few day ago, I reported how to work around a nasty bug in Ubuntu Hardy Heron related to Adobes Flash player.

Adobe today removed some license restrictions on it's flash related specification, which were formerly present to stop developers from creating flash player clones while using Adobes specifications.

The "Open Screen Project" covers in detail:

* Removing licenses from SWF (multimedia and vector-graphics)
* Removing licences from FLV/F4V (video)
* Offering device porting layer APIs for Flash Player
* Publishing specifications for the Flash Cast protocol
* Publishing specifications for the AMF protocol (exchange data with a database)

While it seems like a huge step towards an open source (and hopefully more stable) flash player, the concerning projects (swfdec and Gnash) are quite reserved with their statements.

While part of the Gnash developers still fear legal issues in general and especially patent issues, swfdec head Benjamin Otte states, that for his project "it means pretty much nothing. Swfdec already implements everything that is written down in that specifications".

Back in 2007, Rob Savoye expressed a comprehensible whish:

we'd love to see a public statement that Gnash developers won't be subject to a lawsuit.

I guess that a single statement regarding legal issues with open sourced flashplayers would had more impact for the open source community than the Open Screen Project currently has.

Ed Burnette posted a more detailed report on the background of Adobes decision: "Adobe opens up Flash, but leaves out Google and Apple".