Category: Linux
May 16th, 2008
Moonlight, the Silverlight for Linux project, releases first public version
Miguel de Icaza has announced that that the first public sourcecode release of Moonlight (CNET article)is now available. This version of Moonlight is based on Silverlight 1.0 and not the Silverlight 2 beta that is out now from Microsoft. It’s also not Moonlight 1.0 as it seemed early on. According to de Icaza’s blog:
This is not Moonlight 1.0, this is the first source code release that we are making of Moonlight for interested contributors and developers. This release is not even a Beta release, as we are not yet feature complete (missing components in media codecs, the media pipeline, as well as fixing about 70 known bugs). Apologies for any confussion.
So if you’re interested in contributing to the Moonlight project, you should now have your chance. The current build works on Firefox 2 as well as Firefox 3. There are some changes to Firefox 3 that require a simple Greasmonkey script to get working.
The team is simultaneously working on Silverlight 1.0 and Silverlight 2. The old 1.1 version isn’t being maintained as they transition the APIs to 2. I’ve always been a big believer in Linux as an important platform to support. Adobe hasn’t always had fantastic Linux support but with the newest versions of the Flash Player and AIR we’ve made an effort to quickly release versions for Linux. I think getting Linux users to buy into RIAs will bring dividends for everyone so I’m glad that the Moonlight project exists. They’re also doing some very interesting things in terms of expanding the capabilities of Silverlight, so it’s a project to keep an eye on.
July 25th, 2007
OSCON and rich internet applications
I just flew into Portland for OSCON and in looking over the session list it looks like it’s going to be a pretty good conference for rich internet applications. Adobe doesn’t have a booth, but James Ward and I are both going to be around and we’re hoping to hold a Birds of a Feather session about Adobe’s various open source initiatives. Between open sourcing Flex and the ActionScript Virtual Machine as the Tamarin Project to our use of Webkit in Adobe AIR, we’ve got a lot to talk about so once I have the date nailed down, I’ll let you know.
But there are a few other sessions that caught my eye and wanted to highlight for those RIA enthusiasts who are going to the conference this week:
- The Future of Rich Internet Applications with PHP - Looks like a good session for anyone evaluating backend technologies for their RIA solution.
- Cross Platform .NET with Mono - Not sure if they’re going to cover Moonlight (the Mono implementation of Silverlight) in this, but it’s worth checking out.
- Mozilla Firefox and the Internet as an Open Platform - A Good session for anyone in the RIA world to check out because Firefox is becoming a platform itself and the web is what we’re building all of this on.
- Hacking with (and on) Gears - Google Gears info
- Programming with SQLite - Since both Adobe AIR and Google Gears use SQLite, this is a great session to take in.
- RIA Platforms and Open Source - This is James’ panel, so it should be a worthwhile discussion.
- Open Source and Dynamic Languages on .NET - John Lam is giving this session and he’ll cover a lot of the stuff in the Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR).
Should be a good conference and I’m looking forward to chatting with people about open source and where Adobe fits. I’m excited about what we’re doing in the OSS community and so hopefully I can help spread that message.
June 20th, 2007
Silverlight to run on Linux as early as this week
According to a number of news sources, Novell is going to demonstrate Silverlight version 1.1 running on Linux this week at Microsoft’s Mix07 event in Paris. The event takes place on the 21st and the technology will be demoed by Miguel de Icaza, the vice president of development for Novell and the head of the Mono project, which is porting Silverlight to Linux.
According to the news reports the Mono team implemented the Silverlight code to Linux in 21 days and the demo that de Icaza is giving has most of the graphics capabilities, animations and video. The team consists of 7 volunteers and de Icaza described them as “working around the clock”. This is a pretty impressive achievement and is a good sign for Silverlight, especially if the video has been implemented. If it all works and the applications don’t need to be altered to run on Linux, this would make Silverlight as cross platform as Flash. The original discussion about the demo included the tidbit that Silverlight would run on the desktop and not as a browser plugin but these news reports seem to indicate it will be a demo inside the browser.
June 13th, 2007
Gnash, the open source Flash project, releases support for YouTube
I missed that the Gnash team had started a blog, but in going through my feeds I discovered it and found out that they’ve recently added support for viewing YouTube videos. Gnash is an open source project that aims to provide the functionality of the Flash Player. It has had some decent success and has become a fairly trendy project in the open source world.
Gnash has been focused on implementing features from Flash Player 7 and being able to play YouTube videos is a substantial milestone. There were a lot of changes from Flash Player 7 to Flash Player 9, and with the release of the Linux version of the player, the need to download Gnash may be lessened, but it does provide a lot of Flash Player 7 functionality for those who want a true open source solution.
One thing I thought was interesting is that the Gnash team isn’t planning on using/implementing the new virtual machine that we (Adobe) released and used to create the Tamarin project. According to the FAQ, the team has been working on their own virtual machine “and most of the ActionScript classes have been implemented. Therefore there is no benefit in switching to Tamarin.”
If you’re looking for more information you can head over to the Gnash site. I also interviewed Rob Savoye, one of the main guys behind the project. The new version, 0.8.0, has a number of updates:
- Streaming video works with YouTube and Lulu.tv! This has been the
focus for the majority of the time since the last release. - Many core improvements in the VM as our understanding of Flash
improves. These all improve both the correctness of a movie that is
being played, but enables more movies to play that used to not work. - New FLTK2 gui support added.
- Simple Flash debugger added.
- Improved Darwin support that can use the system OpenGL.
- Flash extensions, direct support for file handling, MySQL access,
etc.. through plugins to the Gnash VM. Wrappers for any C/C++ API
libraries can be exported into ActionScript, and used as native
commands in a Flash movie. - Many new testcases! Support for testing with ming, swfmill, amd
mtasc compilers. - New drawing API for MovieClips.
- Updated manuals.
June 1st, 2007
Demo of Silverlight on Linux and running outside the browser coming in June
My partner in crime here at ZDNet, Dana Gardner, has the scoop on news that the Mono Project will be releasing an alpha demonstration of Silverlight, Microsoft’s browser Rich Internet Application technology, running on Linux. The demo, according to Miguel de Icaza, could actually have Silverlight running outside the browser because of the canvas capabilities. In the post, Dana said that de Icaza is expecting that Linux-based browsers could support Silverlight by the end of this year.
I recently gave Ubuntu a spin and I love it, so the more RIA tools and technologes I can get for Linux, the happier I’m going to be. This is definitely a good thing. Another thing that continues to impress me is the community efforts going into Rich Internet Applications. The Mono project has been developing a .NET runtime for Linux for a while, but they eagerly jumped on the RIA bandwagon with Silverlight and seem to be going full steam ahead.
January 16th, 2007
Flash Player for Linux Now Available for Download
The Linux version of the Flash Player is now available for download on the Adobe site. This isn't the beta version that has been on labs but the final release of a very long awaited Linux player. This is a big milestone for Adobe and Flash developers because it means that Flex 2 applications can run on all three major platforms, Windows, Mac and Linux. Linux users, I'd love to hear what you think about this compared to the beta version.
Update: I just noticed that Tinic had this covered last week. He also notes:
Alright, so far so good… That does not mean that this is a release which I consider feature complete. We do however consider this version to be vastly better than any previous Flash Player for Linux. Since customers were starting to ask for a final version we decided to feature freeze what we have. So two months ago we moved the Flash Player 9 for Linux code into a separate code branch for stabilization. QE (Quality Engineering) has been hammering on this branch for all this time. Every bug fix had to be approved by management. The build you can download now (9.0.31.0) represents that branch.
November 21st, 2006
Universal Desktop Daily - Tuesday, November 21, 2006
- There is a beta 2 version up for the Linux version of the Flash Player which fixes some audio issues. Emmy Huang, Mike Melanson and Tinic Uro all have information.
- There is an Apollo session online by Luis Polanco, Sr. Apollo Product Manager that gives some interesting information on the new runtime. If you're interested in Apollo, it's worth checkin gout. Thanks to TJ for the info.
- Marco Casario points out that Adobe now has a Fireworks Developer Center. At MAX there was a lot of talk about how Fireworks and Flex are going to work together and I think there are some cool things in store for the designer-developer workflow here.
- Scott Evans has created Applejuice, a photo gallery application in OpenLazlo. Information is over at the ">OpenLaszlo project blog, but it works with Scott's Picasa plugin.
November 16th, 2006
Interview with Rob Savoye of Gnash, the GPL Flash project
With Sun's recent announcement that they are planning on freeing Java under the GPL and Adobe's decision to open source the Actionscript Virtual Machine, I thought it would be good to take a look at other open source Rich Internet Application solutions. One of the most famous is Gnash, a GNU Flash movie player. I talked with Rob Savoye, the lead developer on the project, about what Gnash is and what the goals for this implementation for open source Flash are. If you are interested in trying it out, you can download Gnash here, and Rob said a new release is expected very soon.
Update: Gnash has a new release available on the Gnash homepage.
1. Can you talk a bit about the history of the Gnash project?
Gnash started life as GameSWF. GameSWF was a public domain Flash player project that I did some work on for a customer (I'm a consultant and contract programmer) about a year and a half ago. I didn't think much of it until one day John Gilmore asked if I'd make it a plugin for Firefox. I thought about that for a few months while I was busy doing Katrina relief work (I'm a search and rescue volunteer), and when I came back, I decided a free Flash plugin was a good thing. The maintainer of GameSWF had zero interest in a more actively developed project, so I forked GameSWF and made it into Gnash. Much of the GameSWF code has been rewritten to support new features and other improvements, but it was a good code base to start with. At this point in time, Gnash is substantially different than GameSWF.
2. How many developers contribute to the project?
Right now Gnash has several of us that are working on Gnash full time, and many more are contributing part-time. Being a free software project, we find we get contributions of code, patches, bug fixes, and user testing from the community. While there are probably about 6 core developers, we feel there are many more people all helping make Gnash into a better Flash player.
3. What are the goals of the Gnash project?
Well, our primary goal is to make a high quality Flash player, because the free software community needs one. I don't think we're trying to compete with Adobe at all. Now my personal interest as a long time embedded systems engineer is to see Gnash running on small devices, like smart phones, PDAs, etc… because Flash is a good graphical environment for UI developers. I've also seen a huge amount of support in the consumer electronics industry that endorses this idea as well. I think it's highly likely you'll start seeing devices shipping later this year with Gnash inside.
At the same time, many people want to use Gnash as a browser plugin, so we spend a lot of time improving functionality in Gnash to play random Flash movies off the net. So in the long run, we will wind up with a fully compliant Flash player at the v9 level.
4. How does Adobe's announcement that they are open sourcing the ActionScript Virtual Machine affect the Gnash project?
Very little, actually. Their released code will help Mozilla, which had a poor JavaScript engine, but not Gnash much. Tamarin is not a Flash player, it's not even close. It's probably about 10% of the code required for a Flash player. Many of the more advanced ActionScript classes, like SharedObj, NetConnection, LocalConnection, etc… aren't even in this donated code. Even when using Tamarin, you still need a rendering engine, graphics manipulation, etc… We will likely pick through the code to see what the v9 changes are, but that's about it. We still welcome Adobe's an announcement as a good thing.
5. Is there any possibility that Gnash will contribute code to the Tamarin project?
I seriously doubt it. We already have a good VM in Gnash, and we've already implemented most of the ActionScript classes. As we won't be using Tamarin, there really isn't anyway we could contribute. They're welcome to steal code from us though if they don't mind the GPL. :-)
6. What features does the current version of Gnash support?
We support a large chunk of ActionScript2 classes, and Flash v7 movies. There is some support for v8 starting to get added as it's not very difference from v7. Although streaming video currently works in CVS, it's not fully functional yet. I find that Gnash plays the majority of web pages Flash ads (unfortunately), and many movies randomly grabbed from the net. Many of us are using Gnash as our only Flash player without much trouble.
7. What is the near term roadmap for Gnash? What are you planning to implement in the next couple of versions?
The next release will be out any day now… and includes much better support for web page navigation using Flash, sound works, and you can cross compile Gnash and run it on your PDA. This release will also include a much higher performance 2D backend using AntiGrain, as often OpenGL is overkill, and many embedded targets only have a framebuffer.
The next release will have full streaming video support, more improvements for embedded targets, and will support Gnash "plugins" to add custom ActionScript classes, or extend Gnash much like Firefox supports extensions. This will enable Flash to become more of a general purpose scripting language than it is now, as it's possible to write wrappers for any development library much like Perl or Python supports.
Following that, v9 support finally lands on the TODO list, probably coming out sometime next summer. Our focus is currently more on making a higher performance Flash player, fixing existing compatibility issues with the commercial player, and refactoring of Gnash internally to support the new features we want to add.
8. What distros does Gnash run on?
Most all of them. :-) Currently Gnash is available for all the BSD variants, most GNU/Linux distributions, and the embedded versions of Debian. I don't really check that often, but it's also available with Fedora and Ubuntu. For anyone on a BSD platform, or running on a 64 bit architecture, Gnash is their *only* option for Flash.
9. The SWF SDK is only available under a license that forbids development of an alternate player. How do you work around that?
We use Ming to generate Flash movies for testing purposes, plus collect Flash movies off the net. Now that Adobe has donated code to Mozilla, we hope they'll publically support the creation of other free Flash players, like they supported other free PDF or Postscript viewers. If anyone that uses the Flash IDE can't work on any Flash technology, then I doubt the Mozilla team will find there will be no comm unity involvement. Finding engineers that haven't purchased the SDK is very difficult, which I'm sure is the purpose of this clause in the license. It turns out it's actually unenforceable in many countries.
If Adobe is truly supportive of open source, they should publically announce there is no problem for Gnash developers to use the Flash IDE. Otherwise, I think that even Mozilla developers can't use the Flash IDE to work with Tamarin. So in this case their donated software isn't really free of issues for developers.
10. If Adobe become consistent in releasing the Linux version of the Flash Player, does that make Gnash less important?
I don't believe so. For one thing, Gnash supports more platforms than Adobe's player. Adobe is moving in a direction of bigger and better with Flex or Apollo. Gnash is moving in the opposite direction, smaller, more portable, and flexible. It's important that the free software community has it's own Flash player, just like we need a browser, office software, etc…
11. Are you planning to still support SWF 8, or will you go right to SWF 9?
We're slowly implementing v8 features. Most of v8 were internal changes in the Macromedia Flash player. Our main use of Tamarin will be to see what the new opcodes are, and the other differences between v8 and v9 so we can implement them. In the embedded world, the version of the player is much less important as the movie will likely be tailored to the player.
12. Have you looked at implementing SWF 9? Will it require a rewrite of the code in Gnash so far? Do you plan to incorporate the open AVM?
To start, the open AVM is a tiny subset of what is needed for v9. It doesn't even cover all the classes used by the Flash player. Gnash already has support for all the classes in Tamarin, so there really isn't any reason to use it as is.
The Adobe v9 player has two VMs inside, one for v9, and the other for older movies. I personally think this is a design mistake. Our plans are to extend the Gnash VM to handle any Flash version. I have enough experience with VM design that I'm not that worried about it based on my initial research.
13. Since Gnash has become one of the Free Software Foundation's high priority projects, have you seen an uptake in interest on the part of both users and developers?
Oh yes. Having the support of the FSF is very useful, because it encourages people to contribute. And it's user contributions that really help make a project like Gnash a successful project.
A big thanks to Rob for taking the time to talk with me and answering my questions.
November 2nd, 2006
Microsoft and Novell do Linux deal, snowball's chance suddenly looking better
Wowza! I just sat in on the announcement between Novell and Microsoft that they are partnering around Linux. There are two main biggies for me. The first is that this announcement provides some patent protection from Microsoft for open source developers building for Suse Linux. Developers can focus on building software and companies using Suse Linux can breath easy because lawsuits from Microsoft won't be forthcoming. The second thing that is important is the interoperability both between the operating systems and applications like Open Office.
This is a huge announcement, and it shows that Microsoft is taking the open source movement very seriously. I think this was a great way to jump in. Microsoft is still a business, and it has some valuable intellectual property that it has created over the course of its life. But the open source movement thrives off of free flowing ideas and when you run into patent barriers, it limits what you can do. But Microsoft can't open the floodgates, because it would spell disaster for the company.
But this came from the customers, and it goes to show that Linux has made big inroads into corporate computing. We are going to look back at this and realize that this was one of the big moments in making the operating system irrelevant. Windows and Linux will both be around for a long time, but if you are going to build software, you need to make sure it will run on both operating systems. Web based applications have started us along that path, but Rich Internet Applications are set to bring us into the next generation.
Microsoft is now on the track. I think as Novell and Microsoft work together to build and promote joint solutions, Rich Internet Applications will play a big part in that. Microsoft has some great engineering talent, and RIAs make for a great gateway into the world of cross-platform applications. I hope this means we'll see WPF/e on Suse Linux.
October 18th, 2006
Flash Player 9 Beta for Linux is available
Just got word from Mike that the Flash Player 9 beta is now available on Adobe Labs.
Update: I just saw that Tinic Uro has a great post about the release. His intro:
To quote someone well known, 'hell froze over' and we finally released a beta of the GNU/Linux version of the Adobe Flash Player 9 (look for the "Linux version" download link). It did take more to get to this point than you might expect. And no, Mike is not the only engineer working on it. Currently I count 6 engineers working on the GNU/Linux platform, even more have GNU/Linux boxen and/or VMWare images now. And there is still a lot of work left to do before I consider this penguin version not a beta anymore.
It is only the 32 bit version. I've been trying to track down information on a 64 bit player but haven't gotten anything tangible yet. I would love to get the response from the Linux community about the new player once you grab it. Are you using it just to watch videos that require Flash 8? Are you checking out Flex 2 apps? Leave your thoughts in the comments.
(note to the update: Tinic also mentions 64 bit - "What about 64bit? There is no Windows 64bit or OS X 64bit version either right now. As I said before it is not a question of 'recompiling' the source code, there is lots of generic non platform specific work which needs to be finished first. We will ship a 64bit version for Windows, OS X Leopard and GNU/Linux. It will happen. When? … When it is ready."
This is a big milestone for Flash. I know the Linux users have felt like second class citizens when it comes to Flash, and that they were skipped for an entire version. Finally, with the release of the beta, Flash is cross-platform. Hopefully this will prompt Microsoft to give some WPF/E info.
Ryan Stewart, a Rich Internet Application developer and industry analyst, recently joined Adobe's Platform Team as a Rich Internet Application Evangelist. full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
Subscribe to The Universal Desktop via Email alerts or RSS.
SponsoredWhite Papers, Webcasts, and Downloads
- Reducing Server Total Cost of Ownership with VMware Virtualization Software VMware VMware virtualization enables customers to reduce their server TCO and ... Download Now
- The True Costs of Virtual Server Solutions VMware In an economic environment that is repeatedly heralding the message "do ... Download Now
- VMware Infrastructure: A Guide to Bottom-Line Benefits VMware Frustrated by the costs of maintain ever larger data centers?or building ... Download Now
Recent Entries
- So long and thanks for all the fish
- RIA technologies and the downturn
- The iPhone conference cometh: 360|iDev March 2-4
- The mulitouch future of RIAs
- No more free Sprout Builder
Blogs From Our Sponsors
Top Rated
Premier Vendor Content Whitepapers, webcasts & resources from our Power Center Sponsors
- New Online Dashboard for IT Leaders
-
Read about top issues IT decision-makers face every day, plus get cost-effective solutions to real-life IT problems.
- Learn more >>
- The more you simplify, the more you save
-
When you transition from your existing Red Hat environment to SUSE Linux Enterprise from Novell, you can recognize dramatic cost savings, perhaps as much 50%
- Learn more >>
- Learn more about tools to grow your business
-
The Business Essentials Guide provides you useful tools and templates to help grow your business and save you time with automated shipping solutions.
- Save time with the UPS Business Essentials Guide
- Keep Up With The Latest In Document Management with The DocuMentor.
-
Doc delivers the scoop on today's enterprise content management, printer maintenance, and all other issues related to document management. It's the DocuMentor Blog.
- Learn more >>
- Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online - Free Six-Month Trial for Eligible Organizations
-
Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online provides fast online access, simple contact management and better sales performance for a low monthly cost - the best value on the market today.
- Learn more about the free, six-month trial offer>>
Archives
ZDNet Blogs
- All About Microsoft
- The Apple Core
- Between the Lines
- BriefingsDirect
- Collaboration 2.0
- Dev Connection
- Digital Cameras & Camcorders
- Ed Bott's Microsoft Report
- Emerging Tech
- Enterprise Web 2.0
- Forrester Research
- Googling Google
- GreenTech Pastures
- Hardware 2.0
- Home Theater
- iGeneration
- Irregular Enterprise
- IT Project Failures
- Laptops & Desktops
- Lawgarithms
- Linux and Open Source
- Managing L'unix
- The Mobile Gadgeteer
- On Sustainability
- Rational Rants
- The Semantic Web
- Service Oriented
- Smartphones and Cell Phones
- Social Business
- Social CRM: The Conversation
- Software & Services Safari
- Software as Services
- Storage Bits
- Team Think
- Tech Broiler
- Technology and the Global Supply Chain
- Tom Foremski: IMHO
- The ToyBox
- Virtually Speaking
- The Web Life
- ZDNet Education
- ZDNet Government
- ZDNet Healthcare
- Zero Day
White Papers, Webcasts, and Downloads
- Can your business work smarter? IBM Today, productivity is at a premium and IT budgets are at a minimum. Work ... Download Now
- Three Steps You Need to Know to Stop Data Loss Varonis Sensitive data exposed to misuse or loss... it is the stuff of nightmares ... Download Now
- Virtualization: Architectural Considerations And Other Evaluation Criteria VMware Of the many approaches to x86 systems virtualization available in the ... Download Now
Popular Sanity Saver Videos
