Flash works on Linux
I never thought I’d actually see the day, but its happened. Flash actually works on my Linux desktop! For a long time the flash player 7 was unstable and problematic with a lareg number of interactive website elements to the extent I had to block all flash images and view them in a different browser if I really wanted to see them to avoid firefox crashing and me losing all my open tabs.
Now that flash player 9 has finally been released things work properly. My browser is no longer trying to use flash 7 to open flash 8 files and committing suicide. 100% CPU utilisation for anything which plays sound or has remotely interesting animations is also a thing of the past. I can honestly say that I may well be unblocking flash if this good behaviour continues.
As for if I’ll start using YouTube the answer is no – browsing it can potentially be a huge waste of time and as such I only believe in its use for the purposes of embedding video on blogs and such, although even then a download of an .mpeg or .avi file would be preferable. Being able to use flash properly does of course mean I’ll be able to view embeded YouTube videos on blogs which is a superb development. I have to say I’m quite excited by it all.
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Niall Said,
March 3, 2007 @ 8:47 am
it’s been out for months on Adobe Labs…i meant to tell you about it, sorry mate!
Kieran Said,
March 3, 2007 @ 7:18 pm
No worries, its all working for me now so I’m happy. Someone did point me in the direction of the beta ages ago but because of reported problems I actually feared it might be even worse. When firefox offered to install it automatically I assumed it might actually be better than my current setup, and I was right 🙂
Chris Worfolk Said,
March 4, 2007 @ 4:01 pm
You seem to be missing the point of YouTube – it’s supposed to be a way to waste time :p.
Though I think you’re possibly missing how power of distribution of YT and the very well designed community aspect.
Kieran Said,
March 5, 2007 @ 1:55 pm
I can see the community aspect is important, I just don’t think its a productive use of peoples time as it encourages the viewing of videos simply for the sake of viewing them, unlike say google search which forces you to specifically enter something you are looking for before displaying content.
Anyhow, it is just my personal opinion and I don’t resent people who enjoy using YouTube for recreational purposes.