Comments on: Gnash Gives Me Nightmares

By: Sunny Rabbiera

Sunny Rabbiera — Thu, 22 May 2008 07:00:41 +0000

The thing is that gnash and SWFdec have come about as a result of adobes inaction during the development of flash 8 and 9, especially flash 8.
gnash is a blessing to some folk, especially AMD users, as there is no 64bit support for flash…

By: Jed Wood

Jed Wood — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 13:48:12 +0000

Sorry I'm a little late in this conversation. By odd coincidence, I had dinner with the lead developer of Gnash just a couple days after Jesse posted. A few insights that might be useful:

None of the developers on the project are Flash developers. They're just now starting to try and get more input from real Flash folks.
They have no plans to entirely replace Adobe Flash. Desktop Linux isn't even the #1 target. Think embedded systems. Then think of issues around using Adobe Flash for embedded systems. Mmmhmmm.
The above item aside, don't be too blown away if you see Gnash shipping by default with certain other open-source desktop apps within the next year
The project is picking up serious momentum. The publicly released stuff you see is only so-so, but behind the scense these guys cruising. Keep an eye on it!

By: DannyT

DannyT — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 09:14:06 +0000

The topic of flash on linux entertains me, if ever I miss some slashdot patheticness I pop over and have a read on penguin.swf. For a ‘community’ there’s more bickering and bitching than an episode of footballers wives.

Linux devs seem to think Adobe have missed the boat on Flash player deployment, Adobe seem to think they haven’t and the numbers game works in favour of SLL (Support Linux Later). I put confidence in the fact that the Adobe business heads are clued up enough to budget time, resources and dates for the best time to release the player over the extremist ‘I use Linux to decide what to wear’ crowd in terms of business sense.

As far as Gnash goes, even if it does pick up pace, it’ll be dropped by most when Adobe launch the official player until (if and) when Gnash supports all flash player features or there is another delay in the next version. It’s a good initiative and its a shame flash player takes so long to get to Linux but I’m sure as long as the Linux numbers keep going up so will the Linux Flash Player efforts.

(BTW, I use Windows and Linux machines on a daily basis and am considering a Mac for my next notebook, I hate none and enjoy using all)

By: Lee

Lee — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 14:39:03 +0000

Ok, YAFP (Yet ANnother Flash Player). I have to agree with most of the comments. SO What? Big Deal….. Adobe has been SSSLLLLLOOOOWWW to get more pfFlash players out on different platforms so this is bound to happen. Frnakly, they should make the SDK more easily available and let people pay for certification of their player. We NEED Flash on Linux. Linux is being used in toys (see Leap Frog), Set Tops and other consumer devices that would benefit from a Flash player. Sometime Adobe contradicts itself, they want the player everywhere but make developers and OEMs go through pretty expensive hoops to get there.

An oh, BTW, the SDK is always at least 1 generation behind the released player! What’s with that!?! They are not even eating their own dog food. So to speak……..

By: Jensa

Jensa — Sun, 24 Sep 2006 13:28:30 +0000

JD, what I meant is that Adobe will hardly target all Linux distributions (http://blogs.adobe.com/penguin.swf/2006/08/across_the_distros.html) and that Gnash can be a solution for those on one of those not covered, can’t it?

I work with several Linux users on a big project and several features does not work in the current Flash Player 7 that they use. Transparency and rendering of device fonts are two things that fail. These users really hoped for a bugfix through Flash Player 8 for Linux, but that never came. I know that the next version will be sort of a replacement, but it’s been a long time for them with only a buggy version 7 to use.