Double dare ya, Fedora! And your art sucks!

[chasd at silveroaks.com]

On Mar 28, 2006, at 7:08 AM, Casimiro de Almeida Barreto wrote:

> Flash for Linux literally sucks... it is slow

As someone that has spent a good deal of time benchmarking Flash 
performance, this is not true. On the exact same hardware, the Linux 
Flash Player 7 plug-in plays as fast as the version 7 plug-in on 
Windows.

However, the Flash Player ActiveX control is more highly optimized than 
the plug-in, so if you compare Flash performance on Windows in IE to 
Flash performance on Linux with Firefox, Windows is faster in that 
case. If you use Firefox as the browser on both platforms, the 
performance is as close as my measurements could show. Since the 
current Flash Player for Windows is version 8, that throws another 
issue into the mix. My tests show version 8 to be up to 15% faster than 
version 7 using the same configuration. If you compare Flash 
performance using a Windows version 8 ActiveX control to a Linux 
version 7 plug-in, you are indeed comparing apples and oranges.

> and again there is no support for shockwave. People says that's
> due to the needs of using ActiveX for ShockWave run

Shockwave is available as both an ActiveX control and a plug-in on 
Windows. Unlike Flash, both versions have the same performance ( a 
plug-in is available for Macintosh too). The Shockwave group within 
Adobe is completely separate from the Flash development group. The 
usage base and defined goals of the Shockwave group must indicate 
little need for a Linux player. I of course disagree with that, but I'm 
not the Shockwave development manager ;)

For those hoping for a 64-bit Flash Player for Linux, the indications 
for the upcoming Flash Player 8.5 show no support planned for x86_64 on 
Windows, so I doubt it will appear on Linux.

Flash users on Linux should be aware that there is no plan for a 
version 8 Linux Player. The Flash group is working instead on a version 
8.5 Player. This effects Linux users because Adobe recommends upgrading 
to the most recent version 8 ( 8.0.24 ) to resolve several security 
issues. With the most recent issue ( CVE-2006-0024 ), Adobe is 
releasing fixes back-ported to version 7 players for depreciated 
platforms ( Win 95, Win NT, Mac OS < X ). Not included is Linux, which 
is not a depreciated platform ( which is good ). That means the Linux 
Flash Player version 7 has the above vulnerability, and a fix will not 
be available until Player 8.5 is available for Linux.

I know many of you won't touch Flash with a ten meter pole, but for 
those who do, be careful out there.


Charles Dostale
System Admin - Silver Oaks Communications
http://www.silveroaks.com/