the x86_64/firefox/adobe flash fiasco
lots of freakin web pages use flash. I'd prefer if they didn't, but they do. Some extremely poorly designed pages use nothing but flash for no practical reason. homestarrunner.com uses mostly flash, but it makes sense for a page centered around a flash cartoon.
adobe acquired macromedia or something, so now it's the adobe flash player. And adobe seems to be doing a much better job with the development - they have a flash player 9 beta for linux - it works pretty well. But not on 64 bit web browsers. They say they're working on a 64 bit version and that it's pretty hard because they have to rewrite a bunch of stuff to get it to work.
So in order to view flash on my athlon 64, I have to have a 32 bit version of the browser installed in a 64 bit operating system. No big deal, but now I got two versions of the browser (firefox) installed as I installed the 64 bit version before attempting the 32 bit install. They're both the same "version", just that one is compiled to 64 bit binary and the other to 32 bit binary. This is a bit more complicated than it sounds though because all the libraries and stuff that they use has to be compiled in the same format as the browser - so I have 64 and 32 bit versions of a bunch of libraries as well.
Now I just have to decide if I'll use the 32 bit version all the time or just when I want to watch some flash stuff - not very often since most of the flash I am routinely subjected to are advertisements. I'm not sure yet if there is a noticeable benefit to running the 64 bit version - speed wise.
The 32 bit version loads pretty fast and works pretty well, so I may just end up using it all the time for simplicity.
adobe acquired macromedia or something, so now it's the adobe flash player. And adobe seems to be doing a much better job with the development - they have a flash player 9 beta for linux - it works pretty well. But not on 64 bit web browsers. They say they're working on a 64 bit version and that it's pretty hard because they have to rewrite a bunch of stuff to get it to work.
So in order to view flash on my athlon 64, I have to have a 32 bit version of the browser installed in a 64 bit operating system. No big deal, but now I got two versions of the browser (firefox) installed as I installed the 64 bit version before attempting the 32 bit install. They're both the same "version", just that one is compiled to 64 bit binary and the other to 32 bit binary. This is a bit more complicated than it sounds though because all the libraries and stuff that they use has to be compiled in the same format as the browser - so I have 64 and 32 bit versions of a bunch of libraries as well.
Now I just have to decide if I'll use the 32 bit version all the time or just when I want to watch some flash stuff - not very often since most of the flash I am routinely subjected to are advertisements. I'm not sure yet if there is a noticeable benefit to running the 64 bit version - speed wise.
The 32 bit version loads pretty fast and works pretty well, so I may just end up using it all the time for simplicity.
posted by phil at 9:18 PM
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