Flash: I hate you
If there's a version of Flash on Linux that does not crash my browser multiple times per hour, I'd love to know where I can get it.
When I want to browse more than 2 or 3 movies on Youtube at once, I switch over to Opera, because at least when Flash crashes in Opera, it just turns into a black box and Opera keeps going. Firefox on the other hand shuts down entirely.
But sometimes Flash even manages to crash my X server. That takes real talent. Flash cannot possibly die fast enough. We've been dealing with this atrocity for over a decade now.
17 Comments
While we probably all agree that Flash sucks donkey balls big time (in all the other areas then crashing on GNU/Linux :P) ...have you tried the Gnash or SwfDec yet? The latest Gnash is supposed to be very improved and rather good.
I'll give gnash a try. Last I tried was years ago and it barely did anything.
Also sorry my blog mangled your name, I have an encoding problem apparently. Must fix that.
I recently learned that most crashes on Mac OS X are due to Flash, too. Not browser crashes - full system crashes. That's why Apple started isolating plugins into subprocesses in WebKit/Safari 4. I don't know how it helps about the system crashes (I almost never see these), but at least it helps about the browser crashes.
Ugh. Not surprising.
Just tried gnash, it's still mostly non-functional. Dies on Youtube, little hope of it working anywhere else.
There, fixed the encoding problem. やった
You're wrong about gnash and youtube - make sure that you tried an up-to-date version! It's fully supported, and runs like a charm (for me, anyway)
I also wanted to switch to it, but that flash-pdf viewer site (can't remember the name) doesn't work, and that was a deal-breaker for me
http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer10.html
@Jim I built a bzr trunk checkout myself, it now plays Youtube. I'll give it another shot.
@Brian: If you look at the b.g.o, you'll notice that there's still some bug(s) concerning the latest stable release of Gnash (especially getting it working in KDE4's Konqueror) to which some patches haven't reached the Portage yet.
Also it's a bit tricky to get the right USE flags, because it supports so many options. I know there's a trick that you have to use a certain combination that makes Flash videos work right, while others are erm less then optimal ;)
You'll either have to check the Gnash website(s) and/or their IRC channel, I think. I heard that once you get that done with, you've won :]
P.S. Thanks for the encoding fix ;) P.P.S. Sorry for not being able to help more. I'm (still/again) laptopless and am using a borrowed WinXP box with PortableApps :P
I also dont like flash, but honestly, there is no alternative. There is no open source project coming even near to what flash can do. Thats what companies want. And thats why Flash spread so far. It is comparably small, comparably efficient, works well on windows and sort of works on other common systems. The only thing coming a little nearer is Java.
Adobe release the flash 10 alpha for 64 bit 10 months ago (I think other versions too) and we still haven't seen a update yet. My worse problem with flash is that it is horribly insecure. I've heard reports of at least partial access to a users system through the use of flash. Hopefully ogg encoding in html5 will help. A new version of ogg video is supposed to be released soon. Hopefully companies/projects will find use in it. Looks pretty good so far.
@Cristoph: That's partially true.
The sad bit is that there's an awful lot of Flash usage where it's obsolete. Every time I see a Flash menu, I cringe. There's an amazing lot of pretty effects you can do with ECMA/Java Script and PHP!
Yeah, I also hope that Ogg + HTML5 will help out there. Maybe Matroshka is not a bad idea either.
Someone wrote that making java free software will extend its lifetime by 10 years. I'm afraid the same is true for flash and video.
Try YouTube Perfect: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/38074
It will add a number of links below the video, including a "Play MP4". You can then use mplayerplug-in instead of Flash to play the video.
A couple solution:
Try clive. It's a command line video extracter. Just go to the terminal and clive and the url and it does the rest.
Another option is to watch youtube via html5: http://neosmart.net/YouTube5/
A couple solution:
Try clive. It's a command line video extracter. Just go to the terminal and clive and the url and it does the rest.
Another option is to watch youtube via html5: http://neosmart.net/YouTube5/
A couple solution:
Try clive. It's a command line video extracter. Just go to the terminal and clive and the url and it does the rest.
Another option is to watch youtube via html5: http://neosmart.net/YouTube5/
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