Every time Flash and Linux are mentioned breath, someone surely responds with "but Flash Player 9 doesn't run on 64 bit Linux." Sure it does... and you can install it with one line.
For some background... I dual boot my laptop with openSUSE 10.2 64-bit (x86_64). I love using Linux.. I want to use Linux and it's emerging technologies like XGL. It's fun, and I enjoy the level of customization available. I've been trying to make the switch to Linux full-time, but I'm too reliant on Adobe's FlexBuilder, and unfortunately there isn't a Linux version. With a bit of hacking, a Chinese blogger managed to get FlexBuilder 2.0.1 to run on Linux, but I don't think that's a usable (or even legal?) solution.
I can still use the free command line SDK to compile and run Flex 2 applications though, so all is not lost.
Anyway, I digress... enough rambling. As James already mentioned, getting Flash Player 9 to run on 64 bit Linux really isn't that hard. His post demonstrates the installation process of Flash Player 9 using Gentoo Linux. Since I'm using a different disto, the steps are slightly different. Are you ready?
- sudo cp libflashplayer.so /usr/lib/browser-plugins/libflashplayer.so
That's is. One line. Granted, the very first step, which I've omitted, is to download the tarball from the Adobe website - http://www.adobe.com/go/getflash - and extract it so you can copy the file... but there it is, in one easy line.
That's all I had to do to get the 32 bit Flash Player 9 to run on 64 bit Linux. It runs my Flex 2 applications just fine, and works great in all of the testing I've done. It's probably slower than if it were a native 64-bit binary.. but really, I didn't have to do anything in regards to the Netscape Plugin Wrapper or worry about any of the 32 bit / 64 bit incompatibilities.
"It just worked" - and that's the way it should be.
Update: As of November 2008, Adobe has released a beta version of a 64-bit Flash Player 10 for the Linux Platform. More information here: http://www.kaourantin.net/2008/11/64-bits.html.
4 Comments
Hi Darron, thanks for the perspective. Is your browser a 64-bit one? That seems to be the core objection I hear next. Is my understanding accurate?
tx, jd/adobe
Posted by: John Dowdell | February 20, 2007 10:32 AM
To mirror John's statement, I'd like to know as well if you double-checked to see if your browser is indeed 64bit - if it is then the 32bit Flash plugin won't work (doesn't for me or our users). Most of our users are on Linux and need to install the 32bit version of FireFox in order to use the 32bit Flash plugin successfully.
If your browser is 64bit and the 32bit plugin is working then you have some serious mojo, that or we missed something along the way.
Posted by: Simon Lord | February 20, 2007 11:36 AM
@ John - As far as I'm aware, I'm using a 32-bit version of FireFox and a 64-bit version of Konqueror. After I installed the Flash Player with the steps above, it works fine in both browsers without any extra steps.
Hi Simon, what distro are you using? My 64 bit version of Konqueror runs Flash Player 9 just fine. I'm sure there's something going on behind the scenes, but honestly it "just worked" with openSUSE.
Posted by: darron | February 20, 2007 1:02 PM
RHEW 4, but we only tried Firefox because we limit our testing to what Autodesk ships on their systems. This is good to know...
Posted by: Simon Lord | February 20, 2007 2:15 PM