Flash 8 for Linux?

August 29, 2006 8:57 AM

What is the story with Flash 8 (and 9) for Linux? I'm running into more and more sites that say that they only work with version 8 or just don't work at all and I assume that it is because I'm using version 7. Is there hope that Adobe will come out with a new version for Linux someday soon or can I get version 8 working through wine?

It looks like Flash 8 came out in September of 2005, so almost a year ago and we Linux users are still stuck with version 7. Should I try to hack something together with Wine and the windows version of 8 or should I keep waiting for version 8 for Linux? Or is there some other solution? I know that there is some sort of open-source clone of flash but from what I know it's pretty immature and incomplete so far so I don't think that's an option yet.

posted by octothorpe to computers & internet (8 comments total)

No answer for you, but I can tell you it bugs the bejeesus out of me too. This is where Linux users truly suffer- proprietary software that becomes industry standard and then the company ignores Linux support. From a biz perspective, Adobe is probably justified in not prioritizing this, but we're left us out in the cold.

I've come to the conclusion that ecommerce sites that insist on Flash 8 don't want my money, and non-commerce Flash 8 sites aren't worth my time. Same goes for .wmv files. Sigh.

If you are willing to shell out $, investigate crossover office, which is a robust implementation of wine to allow for MS Word/Excel/IE and other windows garbage. I've heard it works great. Wrangling the freeware wine itself into shape is pretty tricky, last time I tried.
posted by mcstayinskool at 9:25 AM on August 29, 2006

There will never be a Flash 8 for Linux, but I've heard from Adobe that they are planning on releasing Flash 9 for Linux sometime in the fall.

They didn't have much incentive to port Flash to Linux in the past, but with some of their new technologies (Flex) they need to cover all of the platforms going forward.
posted by minimal at 9:26 AM on August 29, 2006

I also ran across these instructions for getting Flash 9 working on Ubuntu through Wine today.

I haven't tried it, but it might be worth a shot.
posted by minimal at 9:31 AM on August 29, 2006 [1 favorite]

Here's the blog of the guy at Adobe working on it.
posted by togdon at 9:38 AM on August 29, 2006

togdon, thanks. I searched Adobe's site myself before I posted but didn't find that blog. It looks like they're pretty far along in the development of 9, hopefully they'll release it soon.
posted by octothorpe at 10:08 AM on August 29, 2006

Also, here's an interview with him that was just posted this morning.
posted by togdon at 10:35 AM on August 29, 2006

By coincidence, I just last night followed the directions minimal linked to. They work (though I had to look up current locations for the downloads.)
posted by Zed_Lopez at 10:51 AM on August 29, 2006

The BETA is live.
posted by togdon at 7:51 AM on October 19, 2006