back to article Adobe euthanizes Flash 10.1 for 64-bit Linux

Adobe has murdered Flash for 64-bit Linux. At least for the moment. On Thursday, the company took the beta tag off the 32-bit Flash Player 10.1 for Windows, Linux, and Mac, and it released a slew of security updates for versions 10.0.45.2 and earlier. But at the same time, it posted a statement to the Adobe Labs page …

COMMENTS

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  1. Wanda Lust

    Native and major

    Native support, as in not emulated or virtualised.....?

    Major as in v11, 12, 15 or 20?

    Does it matter as publishers must be eschewing Flash due to imagical and irevolutionary unsupportedness?

  2. This post has been deleted by its author

    1. Adam Williamson 1

      because the browser's 64-bit

      If you're running a 64-bit distro you want to run a 64-bit browser, so you don't wind up with a pile of 32-bit dependencies. And if you're running a 64-bit browser you want all your plugins to be 64-bit as well, because 32-bit plugins won't run in a 64-bit browser without a janky wrapper layer (nspluginwrapper) which is a pain to live with.

    2. pianom4n

      for 64-bit browsers

      It is a pain to use a 32-bit plugin in a 64-bit browser. It either needs a wrapper, which is buggy and inefficient, or run it in a different process, which isn't easy.

      This is especially important for Linux, where 64-bit OSes always come with a 64-bit browser.

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    3. Andrew Rodland
      FAIL

      It's called "actually working with browsers", bazza.

      A 64-bit browser can't embed a 32-bit plugin without using a an annoying lousy crashy thunking layer.

      1. This post has been deleted by its author

    4. Gerhard Mack
      Stop

      More to 64 bit than just register size

      32 Bit X86 is notoriously resister starved and a lot of speed is lost moving things in and out of what few registers it has. When AMD did the 64 bit design they added a number of new registers as well.

      More registers means better performance even if your working with smaller numbers and less than 4 GB of ram.

      1. This post has been deleted by its author

  3. Robert Hill
    FAIL

    Doing Steve's work for him...

    Really, can Adobe do ANYTHING more to help Steve???

    1. Giles Jones Gold badge

      Indeed

      I switched to OSX from 64-bit Linux years ago. It's stupid how 6 years ago they were having problems with 64-bit Flash on Linux and they still can't get it right.

      I'd love to know what it's like to work for Adobe. I suspect it's half as productive as Microsoft there and Microsoft aren't exactly efficient.

  4. Brian Miller

    Not too many flashturbation sites

    I normally surf with Flash off because it's too much of a nuisance. There aren't that many flashturbation sites that I need to visit.

    1. Steve Renouf
      Badgers

      DITTO!

      It's the bane of that net thingy - slows everything down and introduces security holes!

    2. Viv

      "flashturbation"!

      "flashturbation" thank you for expanding my vocabulary and adding some amusement to my Friday reading

  5. Ben 50
    WTF?

    The Cult of Flash Haters

    I used to feel like that, for a long time. I wrote DHTML toolkits in the early days, and tried to make SVG based image manipulation tools, and generally banged my head against moronic cross-browser incompatibilities (and please, don't try and tell me they have gone away. They haven't).

    At some point (as OpenLaszlo came out) I realised that my hatred was irrational. It was a hatred of advertisers, not the hatred of a technology. That was when I learned to love the bomb. Cross-browser compatibility, check. Half way sensible coordinate system based on the simple cartesian maths we've been using for centuries, check. Closer to being able to realise more then just CRUD admin sites with thicker clients that can really "do stuff", check.

    Ok, I've had a bit of a shock recently with 10.x *not* being cross platform compatible (at least with the new SPARK components from Flex) but by and large it is an excellent addition to HTML for doing the more complex bits which need rich user experiences for more than just admin sites.

    I don't want to lose that, and I don't want to work for Microsoft or Apple. As a plugin it serves a very useful purpose, it isn't attempting to replace HTML, and while it might be a bit of a Camel, it's not evil. Get over it.

    1. Volker Hett

      Yes, but

      It just got a little less cross platform compatible.

  6. Adrian Bridgett
    FAIL

    bin it

    Anyone with flash should remove it due to these dreadful (and never ending) security holes.

    Anyone who wants it can't get it.

    So basically any website which uses it is unusable.

    Looks like the (welcome) death of Flash to me.

  7. Shane Menshik
    Alert

    Flash 64Bit Linux Version Confusion - it was never 10.1 beta - was 10.0 beta

    Yah - it was 10.0.45.2 was latest version of 64bit flash - that had been just kinda a stopping point and put on hold as adobe has been focused on 10.1 development for 32bit all platforms. So they kinda just kept it around.. but now that a major security bug was found in 10.0.45.2, instead of going back and fixing the 64bit version of 10.0.45.2 they just took it offline all together.. SOoooo I'm betting now that 10.1 is official for 32bit / all platforms, they are close to putting out a 10.1 64bit alpha to get that ball rolling again.. Hence forget patching 10.0.x - lets work on new 10.1 and move foward... But I'd like to get some official word from adobe.

    The current site shows 10.1 beta for 64bit is now closed, when in fact there to my knowledge was NEVER a 10.1 beta, alpha or antyhing else for 64bit linux.. YET...That line on the site and all the news sites that picked it up on the net should state 10.0 Beta Is now closed for 64bit linux... and 10.1 64bit linux beta is not yet available...

    http://forums.adobe.com/thread/657569?tstart=0

    Former 10.0.x BETA page:

    http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer10_64bit.html

    1. Shane Menshik
      Thumb Up

      From Adobe info about 10.0 64bit Beta and 10.1 future 64bit beta.

      http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/000/6b3af6c9.html

  8. Joel Mansford
    FAIL

    x64 Flash for Windows?

    I've been waiting for x64 flash ever since I got my first 820 based cpu and ran XP x64 on it. I can't believe that Adobe _STILL_ haven't got support for x64. Now you can quite easily buy a machine with 4Gb RAM running Windows 7 - where's the x64 flash plugin? Still no where.

    Do Adobe have any x64 products?

    1. jonathanb Silver badge

      64 bit Adobe Products

      Yes, they do exist. Photoshop CS4 comes in both 32 and 64 bit flavours. I don't know if creative suite CS5 comes with any more additions to the 64 bit stable. The video editing tools could certainly benefit from > 4GB RAM.

  9. David Shanahan
    Thumb Down

    Death to the Great Satan Adobe

    SJ is just sitting there in his Californian lair laughing his head off. Everything Apple say about the disaster that is Flash is true, and then some. More security holes than Windows, crashes more often than Windows, and Adobe can't seem to get a 64-bit version out the door to save their lives. Adobe thought they'd really pulled something big off by buying Macromedia when in fact all they did was piss a whole load of money down the toilet.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    General flash related rant...

    I wish they would make a PPC flash for linux. My partner has a Mac G5 and, since the current mythtv client won't work on 10.4, the only reason that we use MacOS on it is for flash (basically iPlayer). Currently the machine is dual boot, but we'd dump MacOS for Linux in a flash (no pun intended) if there was a version of flash for it.

    (nb: We could upgrade MacOS to 10.5 to get mythtv but it costs £80 as opposed to 10.6 costing £25 and I can't help think that is taking the piss...)

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Happy

      Is this

      Macsturbation?

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Got bored of the patch treadmill

    So I had a think why I bother with flash. Youtube doesn't require it any more, Oracle support is available through supporthtml.oracle.com, don't timeshift with iPlayer - nope, can't see any justification for it at all any more. I block it in the browser as a matter of course anyway.

    Flash is gone. No longer on any of my machines on any OS. So long and thanks for all the crashes.

    If some random website requires flash I will just go elsewhere. If I ever actually need it for something important again I'll build a VM.

  12. simpfeld

    Slightly OT: How about Old Platforms stuck on FlashPlayer 9

    One issue is older platforms that Adobe only supports on FlashPlayer 9, for us RHEL4 (but also OSX 10.1-10.3, Win98/ME). Adobe directs you here:

    http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/406/kb406791.html

    Anyone know, if this Flash 9 version they are putting out is still vulnerable?

  13. simpfeld

    The only solution on Linux is to switch to a 32 bit browser

    We switched all our office 64 bit RH Linux systems to using the 32 bit Firefox and uninstalled the 64 bit one. This is the only really stable way (as stable as Flash gets) to get decent Flash.

    At home on Fedora 13 I was holding out with 64 bit Firefox and Chrome and testing the beta Flash but I've now switched that too to 32 bit browsers. (yum was my friend with all this)

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Stop

      @simpfeld

      What pray tell needs 64Bit support on the desktop? If you where after RAM just use the 32BIt Kernel with PAE to address beyond 4GB. Please reply I am genuinely intrigued. AC as not to show Linux Kings lack of knowledge.

  14. Mystic Megabyte
    Unhappy

    Flash crash

    On my 'buntu box Flash 64bit has been crashing Firefox every time I try to watch the BBC iplayer.

    However, for Google/youtube vids it works well.

    Something to do with my slow DSL connection methinks.

  15. TJ 1
    Thumb Up

    Lightspark, LGPL, a viable alternative

    Blurb:

    * JIT compilation of ActionScript to native x86 bytecode using LLVM

    * Hardware accelerated rendering using OpenGL Shaders (GLSL)

    * Very good and robust support for current-generation ActionScript 3

    * A new, clean, codebase exploiting multithreading and optimized for modern hardware. Designed from scratch after the official Flash documentation was released.

    http://lightspark.sourceforge.net/

  16. GumboKing
    Flame

    Cruel Irony

    As I load this comment page in my 64 bit version of IE on Win7 (the default browser shipped with that OS) I get my old friend "This website wants to install the following add-on: 'Adobe Flash Player Installer'" Too bad those lazy sods at Adobe have not got one to install. While I usually don't miss the ads, there are times when you need it, so then I must switch back to 32 bit FireFox.

    Remind me again how long Windows 7 has been out.

    1. Ken Hagan Gold badge

      Re: Cruel Irony

      "Remind me again how long Windows 7 has been out."

      Is that really relevant? If you are a developer making an in-process component for IE, the writing has been on the wall since sometime in the last century when MS started talking about the Win64 API. Early versions of XP shipped around 2002/2003 and the "current" version of XP64 dates from around 2005.

      However, it is *equally* true that Microsoft have pushed very hard for the 32-bit edition of IE to be the "usual" browser on Win64, and just recently have issued an official recommendation that the 32-bit version of Office 2010 be the one that OEMs pre-install on Win64. In both cases the rationale is that in-process components are still generally unavailable in 64-bit flavour.

      To be honest, there is very little reason to port anything to 64-bit on Windows. Almost no applications actually benefit from the extra memory. The extra registers make no difference if your performance bottleneck is memory access rather than instruction dispatch, which has been the almost universal experience for the last few years outside HPC. In fact, pushing 64-bit addresses around all the time probably makes that bottleneck worse. There is a small cost in the WOW thunking layer, but all those managed apps that MS have been pushing in recent years have far higher memory and CPU overheads and apparently *that's* acceptable.

      So what needs to be 64-bit? Well, first up let's note that unless you have over 3GB of installed RAM there's no benefit in running a 64-bit OS anyway, aso 32-bit builds of popular OSes will be with us for some time yet. For the larger machines there's device drivers, coz they have to work in the 64-bit kernel address space. There's database servers, and oh lookie here, all the main DB vendors have already ported that for you. There's video editing. That's really about it. There's plug-ins, iff you insist on using a 64-bit port of the host application, but unless your host application needs to be 64-bit then you are just willy-waving by running that version.

      I'm afraid it is all just *completely* different from the 16->32 transition. *Then*, just about every serious application was using more than the 64K addressable limit. *Now* hardly any are using more than the 2-or-4GB addressable limit. Your OS certainly does benefit. Your apps, probably do not. Give the number of apps that are already running within some sort of or virtual or scripted environment, without objectionable performance penalities, you shouldn't be worrying about the WOW overheads, which (because of reduced memory pressure might actually be negative).

      From the developer's point of view, taking a valuable 32-bit codebase and spending a long time porting it to 64-bit makes no commercial sense. It doesn't add any new features or any new target platforms. No new customers: no business case.

  17. skellious
    Thumb Up

    This does not appear to come from Steve Jobs.

    :D This line MADE the article for me :)

  18. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Ffffffffff

    Could someone please explain exactly why providing a 64 bit version of flash is such a huge f**king problem for Adobe? Just recompile and link the bloody thing against the 64 bit libs and you're done? Unless there's insane crap in the code like casting pointers into 32 bit numbers and back again, what on earth is such a problem that years on and it's still not done?

  19. JMD
    Unhappy

    That's a shame...

    All 38 users must be pissed of.

    :)

  20. tempemeaty
    Joke

    Thank you. *(^o^)*

    I would like to publicly thank Adobe for contributing to the open source communities efforts in removing bugs and security risks. Thank you for removing the Flash 64 bug/security hole. :P

    ((( Hugs. )))

  21. Robert Ramsay
    Megaphone

    If you really want to complain about non-availability of 64-bit Flash...

    log onto Adobe's bug site and give them shit:

    https://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/FP-570

  22. takuhii

    Why?

    How come some people find it REALLY easy to support 64-Bit and others don't??

  23. Fred Mbogo
    Jobs Halo

    F*** THEM!

    I really hope Jobs manages to sink the fecal scraping that is Adobe. Thanks to those arse bandoleers I have to use 32bit software whenever I head for youtube. We hate them, we hate them forever, preciousssss!

    PS: I hate Apple.

  24. Michael Fremlins

    What about gnash?

    There was me thinking that freetards could fix everything. What about the 10th rate heap of nonsense called gnash? Like GNU Hurd, it'll be ready some time next century.

    Understand this: Adobe doesn't have to build a product for you. Your market share is miniscule. Don't like it? Too bad. Pay up, like Sun did for a Solaris version of Flash. Or shut up.

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