The future of adobe flash player in linux.

Discussion in 'all things UNIX' started by The Red Moon, May 21, 2015.

  1. The Red Moon

    The Red Moon Registered Member

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    Im sure this has probably been discussed before but a clear solution seems pretty vague.
    I use linux mint and i have a soft spot for firefox,but it seems that firefox is going to be locked in v.11.2 of the adobe flash player.
    The only way an updated flash player can be used is by either using chrome or using other methods of obtaining the chrome version.
    My dilemma is should i be okay to carry on using firefox with the outdated flash plugin and hope for a solution in the future or use chrome.(which im currently doing/).

    Any thoughts on this please.?.
     
  2. summerheat

    summerheat Registered Member

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    As outlined by Adobe in 2012, v. 11.2 of the "non-Pepper" Flash Player is the last version for Linux which gets security updates until 2017, though. Thus, it's not "outdated" from a security perspective. However, if you prefer a newer version you have to use Google Chrome or, alternatively, Chromium with pepperflash offered by most distros.

    But again, you don't have to worry until 2017 (apart from the fact that Pepperflash is more secure as it's running in a sandbox) - and the question is if the Flash Player will be needed thereafter (it isn't needed anymore on Youtube already). You might have heard that Mozilla is developing Shumway as a Flash Player replacement. I've recently tested Shumway in Firefox Nightly and I must say that it has improved a lot. It worked on all sites where I tried it. The only glitch I noticed was that it doesn't work in full-screen mode yet.
     
  3. valkun

    valkun Registered Member

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    The other alternative is to use pipelight. It uses wine to wrap windows flash into the browser, it can also provide silverlight and many other plugins.

    EDIT
    I run the standard flashplugin under xubuntu 14.04 and 15.04 with no issues, but my friend's firefox crashed everytime he used his flashplugin. Installing pipelight solved his problems
     
  4. vasa1

    vasa1 Registered Member

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    See http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2279160&p=13289663#post13289663

     
  5. summerheat

    summerheat Registered Member

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  6. The Red Moon

    The Red Moon Registered Member

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    In the aforementioned ubuntu link it would appear some users were having issues.Would there be any harm in merely carrying on with using adobe flash 11.2 and receive the security updates that adobe releases.
     
  7. vasa1

    vasa1 Registered Member

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    I'm sorry but I don't know. I uninstalled flash quite some time ago. If a YouTube video plays in Firefox without needing flash (and many do), that's fine. Otherwise, I open a terminal and use mpv. For large videos, whether they play in Firefox or not, I download them with youtube-dl and view them "off-line" with mpv or gnome-player.
     
  8. RoTom

    RoTom Registered Member

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    No need to go through the terminal: with the extension "Open with" you can call mpv,
    youtube-dl or whatever you want directly from the browser, with an entry in the right-click menu.
    You can have mpv invoke youtube-dl, but you need at least (mpv) version 0.7.2, if I remember correctly.

    In debian (iceweasel/seamonkey) I set three "open with" items:
    mpv
    youtube-dl
    gcap
    (youtube subtitles download)

    https://i.imgur.com/18eXs1v.png

    Now I no longer need FlashGot or Videodownload Helper...
    And obviously, I don't have flash plugin installed.
     
  9. vasa1

    vasa1 Registered Member

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    Thanks, that certainly is a useful extension.
     
  10. RockLobster

    RockLobster Registered Member

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    Adobe announced in 2011 they were phasing out flash player in favor of HTML5 solutions for web video this is why most youtube video's no longer require flash plugins.
     
  11. Amanda

    Amanda Registered Member

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    Brasil
    What do you use Flash for?

    For starters, Flash is both a privacy and a security breach in your computer. The only reason anti-viruses don't flag it as Malware is because so many people (think they) depend on it.

    For Youtube you can watch 100% of the videos with two extensions:
    1) Youtube ALL HTML5: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-all-html5/?src=api
    2) HTML5 Video Everywhere (works on Facebook too, although you shouldn't use Facebook): https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/html5-video-everywhere/

    I use mostly the first one because it's more modern and more customizable.

    For HD videos you'll want to install the following packages:

    Code:
    gstreamer0.10-plugins-base
    gstreamer0.10-plugins-good
    gstreamer-tools
    gstreamer0.10-x
    gstreamer1.0-libav
    gstreamer1.0-plugins-base
    gstreamer1.0-plugins-base-apps
    gstreamer1.0-plugins-good
    gstreamer1.0-tools
    gstreamer1.0-x
    libgstreamer-plugins-base0.10-0
    libgstreamer-plugins-base1.0-0
    libgstreamer0.10-0
    libgstreamer1.0-0
     
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