[kwlug-disc] Flash and Java

[Kyle Farwell]

I use IcedTea for Java, which from my understanding is a variant of
OpenJDK. I've only had to use it a couple times but it seemed to work
well.

For Flash I've used Gnash and Mozilla's player in the past but found
that they had very limited support. I think Chromium includes the
Pepperflash plugin which I've heard works better than Gnash, but not
perfectly.

Now I use Linterna Mágica <http://linternamagica.org/> with Gecko, which
replaces Flash content with normal HTML video that can be played with
free video plugins (Gecko, Totem, VLC, Xine). I haven't tested it a lot
as I usually just use mpv or youtube-dl, but it works in a similar way
(at least to youtube-dl, I'm not sure how mpv works) so it should work
in nearly all cases.


Thanks,
Kyle Farwell

--
I'm an FSF member -- Help us support software freedom!
<https://www.fsf.org/jf?referrer=12676>


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Date: Sun, 24 Aug 2014 10:32:19 -0400
From: Paul Nijjar <paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca>
To: kwlug-disc at kwlug.org
Subject: [kwlug-disc] Flash and Java



In thinking about this refresh with our installers, I am also
wondering about Java and Flash player for Linux. For years you had to
install both of these monstrosities if you wanted your users to be
functional on the Internet. Now it looks like Java is less widely used
(and the openjdk support in Debian looks pretty good), so there is no
need to install the Oracle versions.

Flash is more troubling. As far as I can tell there are a bunch of
websites that will not work in Linux no matter what you do. The 11.2
version of Flash that Adobe supports is not recognised on certain
pages. Chromium (or maybe just Chrome?) supposedly had Flash built in,
but my version of Chromium does not work with most Flash sites. 
I have not tried gnash and friends, but my understanding is that they
are not ready for prime time either. 

Here is a concrete example: the videos on http://kitchener.ctvnews.ca
. I am probably just being dumb, but I do not know how to trick this
site into playing videos for me under Ubuntu or Debian. Do you?
How do you deal with these kinds of situations?

If there is no trick then maybe not installing Flash is the way to go,
both for ideological reasons and practical ones. I do not have Flash
installed on my personal laptop, and although there are things I
cannot consume in most cases I am better off not consuming them.
(Hello, Vimeo.) 

- Paul 

-- 
http://pnijjar.freeshell.org


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