Flash playback using Ubuntu on an amd64 computer still painful
Once again I tried to come up with a good flash playback option for my desktop which is running Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) amd64. And once again I’ve failed to find an option that I can call good. The only benefits I can see about Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) is that there will be newer versions of swfdec (0.5.4 up from 0.5.1) and gnash (0.8.2 up from 0.8.1) and that users will be able to use the update-alternatives command to switch between them. However I’m not convinced that either version will be usable though I’m really ready to be done with having a ton of extra packages installed to use nspluginwrapper.
swfdec
I tried swfdec first and got the 0.5.4 version from Stéphane Loeuillet PPA. There were missing dependencies and I installed gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly for audio and gstreamer0.10-ffmeg for video. One critical test for usability is to view streaming flash video. I found that such videos were unwatchable with this configuration. They would peg 1 cpu core at 100% and the video would be stutter quite a bit. I’ve read that 0.6.0 is better but given the poor performance of 0.5.4 I cannot say I’m anxious to take the time to build it from scratch. If a package becomes available I’d be willing to try that. If 0.6.0 is better than Ubuntu should really get it into the hardy backports as soon as possible.
gnash
I tried the gutsy version of gnash (0.8.1) and found it to be pretty buggy. Video playback was much smoother than swfdec but controls were often misplaced and would disappear. There were lots of glitches in the flash display. I also noticed that it would hang when playing certain videos and some videos would not play at all. Still I’d say it is somewhat more usable than swfdec. I can only hope that 0.8.2 is an improvement.
update-alternatives
With the more recent swfdec, but not the gutsy version, it is possible to switch between the 2 flash players using the following command:
sudo update-alternatives --config firefox-flashplugin
This makes testing and comparisons far easier.
nspluginwrapper
I was happy to see nspluginwrapper included in Ubuntu 7.10 as it offers the option to use the 32-bit Adobe Flash plugin. I have found using that plugin is extremely buggy as well. And it requires a large set of additional 32-bit libraries to be installed on the system. I’d really like a pure 64-bit system and the ability to view flash animations and video. I would say that for now Gnash is the best option.
Sorry am I missng something?
Are you looking for an "Alternative" flash player? if so ok, if you arelooking for A flsh player, I'm using Ubuntu Gutsy, AMD64 and can report, that, it err works.
Ok a few months ago there were issues with the release, however they are fixes, so Open your Firefox, go to Youtube, install Flash player.. Done.
The title of this blog is degrogatory, and makes it seem like it doesn't work, IT DOES, as does playing all other media WMV, MPG, AVI QT, RM, takes about 5 minutes to get it working on AMD64 systems. Its not difficult, well not if you can follow instructions..
Yes you are missing something, thanks for asking
You'll note that nowhere did I write that flash doesn't work. It simply does not work well. There are 3 options: nspluginwrapper+adobe flash, gnash, and swfdec. Each one of those options has failings on my system. Using nspluginwrapper+adobe flash will cause Firefox to consume large amount of memory as well as spontaneously crash when viewing flash content or when flash content is opened in a window or tab (and also requires a number of 32-bit libraries to be installed). Gnash plays video content acceptably but fails to display most other flash content. Swfdec is much more accurate with flash content but cannot play video well since it consumes all the processing power of a CPU and playback stutters.
There is, of course, another issue which is that many people use Ubuntu or other GNU/Linux distributions because they do not want to use proprietary software. So for those who do not want to use Adobe's 32-bit flash plugin, it would be nice to have an open source alternative that was as good as or better than the proprietary option. We will get there, but we're not there yet.