Friday, December 16, 2011 7:46:38 PM
vlc, FLASH, gecko-mediaplayer, performance
...
I recently came across this little gem,
"Free Youtube!" UserJS.
Originally posted by Script Summary:
Install and then use YouTube as normal, only without the flash. Plays videos with your local FLV-capable media player. Also rewrites common YouTube embed codes to be links to the video page on YouTube.
Read more...
Friday, September 23, 2011 7:25:35 PM
vlc, html5, FLASH, mintube
A little while ago I wrote about how to
use VLC to watch YouTube and get a nice performance boost over watching via the Flash Plugin.
Here is another option for those of you who didn't get VLC working with YouTube, or even those who did. Try
Minitube. A dedicated application for browsing and viewing YouTube. It seems to have decent performance (it uses GSteamer to play videos, whether they have a HTML5 video version available or not) and a nice and simple interface. So if you only had Flash installed to watch YouTube (as I have heard many users claim), here is another solution for you.
I should point out that I'd prefer not have a dedicated application with a totally different interface for every single web site or service out there. Indeed much of the benefit of a browser is that it provides a nice standards based way to access services and a powerful set of tools to manage them. A far better way to provide an alternative interface is via an extension or UserJS. It would also almost certainly be a lot easier to develop as well.
That said, when choosing between Flash and this clever little app, some might find this preferable, at least until more HTML5 Video content is made available on YouTube (come on Google, we're all waiting!). So I thought I would share it with you nonetheless.
Monday, August 29, 2011 3:49:38 PM
vlc, youtube, FLASH, button
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I'm probably the very last person to realise this, but just in case I'm not I thought I'd mention it. You can play YouTube URLs directly in VLC.
Read more...
Wednesday, June 29, 2011 10:18:08 PM
FLASH, GENTOO, Sabayon
It hasn't escaped my notice that quite a few Gentoo and Sabayon users are reporting problems getting Flash running. Odd problems with Flash are a fairly common occurrence but I am starting to get the feeling that almost nobody on Gentoo or Sabayon has working Flash under Opera anymore. I'd really like to get to the bottom of this. I have read quite a few threads and discussions but currently I'm having real trouble noticing a pattern. So I think it is time I asked for some help.
Read more...
Thursday, June 17, 2010 7:27:19 AM
NSPluginWrapper, FLASH, opensuse, 10.60
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This is not so much a new blog post but rather a follow up to my previous posting about
NSPluginWrapper and 64bit distros. Recently a few openSUSE users have complained of non functioning Flash for them, implying some issue that only shows up on SUSE systems. Whilst there may be some Flash issues of which we are unaware I still don't believe there is a
SUSE specific problem. We do test in numerous distros (SUSE included) and indeed my colleague
csant uses openSUSE as his main Linux environment.
Read more...
Thursday, April 15, 2010 9:08:44 AM
FLASH, 64bit
Adobe produce a 'Labs' (test) version of 64bit Flash for Linux, which tracks their stable 32bit version. Some distros (such as Archlinux) provide this Labs version in their primary Flash plugin package, if you run a 64 bit system. However many other 64bit distros (such as Ubuntu) instead provide the stable 32bit plugin, along with the needed 32bit libraries to run it. They also often also provide 'NSPluginWrapper' for the benefit of other browsers such as Firefox (Opera does not need NSPluginWrapper and indeed it can
cause us problems).
Personally I prefer to run native plugins, rather than 32bit ones. In addition to avoiding the problems highlighted in my previous blog post, I don't like to double up large amounts of libraries (i.e. 64 and 32 bit versions), as it saves space and keeps the system cleaner and simpler.
If you are a 64bit user on a distro that provides 32bit Flash you can manually switch to the 64bit test version by removing Flash via your native package manager and downloading the latest test version from
Adobe's 64bit Labs page (See the link at the very bottom labelled "Download 64-bit Plugin for Linux").
Read more...
Wednesday, April 14, 2010 2:20:05 PM
10.52, 10.04, FLASH, 64bit
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The problemWhen you attempt to install Flash on 64bit Ubuntu it installs the 32bit version and NSPluginWrapper is also installed. If you then try to run Flash in Opera, it fails!
The reason for this is that NSPluginWrapper 'wraps' 32bit plugins in such a way that other 64bit browsers can use 32bit plugins. It does this by creating a 64bit executable named 'npwrapper.
originalpluginname' for each 32bit plugin and this in term runs the real 32bit executable. This works very nicely for Firefox, which cannot handle plugins of a different architecture itself.
Opera however, doesn't need NSPluginWrapper and indeed all it does is serve to cause our own wrapper (which performs the same purpose) to get confused, since we detect the architecture of the NSPluginWrapper (64bit) instead of the actual plugin (32bit). What we need to do is ignore all NSPluginWrapper wrapped plugins by default and indeed there is a bug filed suggesting we do exactly that. In the mean time we do have a system for setting certain plugins to be ignored.
Read more...
Monday, December 14, 2009 12:52:31 PM
FLASH
Below is a very quick guide to resolving the most common Adobe Flash problems on Linux.
Read more...
Tuesday, July 21, 2009 5:39:35 PM
UBUNTU, FLASH, opera
Looking at recent incoming Opera Linux bug reports and reading online forums (including our own) I see a number of Ubuntu users reporting problems with Flash. Initially one might think we should get our act together and sort things out ASAP. However digging deeper the situation is slightly more complex. Not all of the problems we see are Opera issues, in fact I might even go so far as to say that the majority are probably not. Many of these users appear to have one of the alternative Free Software Flash plugins installed (SWFdec or Gnash). 'So what?' you might ask. Well, whilst the alternative Flash plugin projects are both quite impressive, and have great potential for the future, there is a problem: SWFdec and Gnash's current state of Flash compatibility is sub par when compared with the official plugin from Adobe. Additionally we have a known bug with SWFdec meaning that it will not work under Opera at present (DSK-212990). You may be wondering why we have not fixed this yet. I guess the main reason is that SWFdec and Gnash are currently alpha software, hence we have focused on other more pressing issues (incidentally Gnash does work with Opera).
The next question that springs to mind is why do so many of these users have an alternative flash plugin installed? If they were users who avoided all non Open Source software it might be understandable but they are Opera users.
Nope, the reason would appear to be something else.
I suspect it is 'how' users going about enabling Flash support. On a clean install of Ubuntu 9.04, Firefox is the default installed browser. Navigating with Firefox to a flash site for the first time will cause a missing plugins message to be displayed. Sounds good right? Sure, but the problem is that clicking on this will display three possible Flash plugins. The default listed is the SWFdec Plugin (a.k.a. the swfdec-mozilla package) rather than one of the Adobe packages. I would imagine that many users will therefore simply pick this. Another way to install Flash support is via "Applications > Add/Remove...". However this lists SWFdec and Gnash above 'Adobe Flash 10' (a.k.a. adobe-flashplugin) or 'Macromedia Flash Plugin' (a.k.a. flashplugin-installer, flashplugin-nonfree) when sorted by popularity. (Why there are two packages [with three package names] for Adobe Flash plugin I don't know but lets leave that to one side for a moment.) These two issues increase the likelihood of an Ubuntu user installing an alternative flash plugin instead of the official one.
In addition to the fact that SWFdec/Gnash have less compatibility with Flash sites, another problem is that if a user realises that he/she does not have an official Flash plugin installed, fixing the situation is not as straight forward as you might imagine. Many users would try to remedy the situation by installing Adobe's plugin. However there is a fair chance he/she will fail. Why? Well, if either of the swfdec-mozilla or mozilla-plugin-gnash packages is already installed then they will remain the default Flash plugin listed in /usr/lib/mozilla/plugin/ (flashplugin-alternative.so is a symbolic link to the default flash plugin). Installing the 'Macromedia Flash Plugin' (flashplugin-installer, flashplugin-nonfree) package on top will result in the plugin only being placed in /usr/lib/flashplugin-installer/. Installing the 'Adobe Flash 10' (a.k.a. adobe-flashplugin) package on top will result in the plugin only being placed in /usr/lib/adobe-flashplugin/. Neither of these paths is scanned by Firefox or Opera by default and hence they are not detected. This can be manually remedied in Opera by navigating to 'Tools > Preferences > Advanced > Content > Plug-in options > Change Path... > Add...' and adding /usr/lib/adobe-flashplugin/ or /usr/lib/flashplugin-installer/ as appropriate but that would not be immediately obvious to most users. Many would simply assume everything went to plan and then be disappointed with the fact that they still encounter problems.
The only way to ensure that Opera 'automatically' picks up Adobe Flash is to first make sure that both swfdec-mozilla and mozilla-plugin-gnash are removed before installing flashplugin-installer, flashplugin-nonfree or the adobe-flashplugin packages.
My Opera
