blog/data/2010-09-04-flash.txt

   1 Title: Some notes on Flash in Debian and Debian Edu
   2 Tags: english, debian, debian edu, web, video, multimedia
   3 Date: 2010-09-04 10:10
   4
   5 <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
   6 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
   7 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
   8 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
   9 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
  10 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
  11 installed.</p>
  12
  13 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
  14 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
  15 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
  16 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
  17 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
  18 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
  19 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
  20 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
  21 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
  22
  23 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
  24 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
  25 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
  26 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
  27 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
  28 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
  29 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
  30 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
  31 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
  32 pages they want to visit.</p>
  33
  34 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
  35 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
  36 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
  37 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
  38 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
  39 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
  40 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
  41 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
  42 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
  43 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
  44 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>