Contributed by deanna on from the annoyances dept.
- www/opera-flashplugin - the full-blown official player from Adobe;
- net/yt - an app that will download youtube videos and convert them to more manageable formats;
- www/gnash - a standalone flash player and browser plugin.
www/opera-flashplugin
This port, the official answer to flash on OpenBSD as per the FAQ, is the proprietary Linux player from Adobe, which runs in emulation on the i386 platform only. It's useful for those who have i386 hardware and don't mind running non-free software. Those who can use it say that performance is decent enough. This port is recommended for those who just want to see some content, with as little hassle as possible. And unlike any of the other options, this one works with Homestar Runner, which I hear is extremely important to some. ;)
net/yt
yt, a lua script written by Pedro Martelletto, allows downloading and saving of flash video from youtube, and automatic conversion to more useful formats (by default, avi). Movies can then be opened in viewers such as mplayer and xine. This is very handy for non-i386 hardware and for saving movies to disk, and Pedro does a good job of keeping yt in sync with youtube's ever-changing URL schemes.
www/gnash
Gnash is a many-featured flash player and browser plugin; an official FSF project. It works with all flash versions up to, but not including v9. It runs as a standalone player with gtk or kde guis, as well as a plugin for firefox or konqeror. It's been reported to work on several OpenBSD hardware platforms, the source code is fully available, and our port requires no binary emulation.
Gnash is still alpha software, and needs some special care in order to be fully useful on OpenBSD. One of the biggest problems people encounter is the automatic loading of Flash v9 advertisements, which aren't supported and can drain huge amounts of resources if allowed to run.
The best way to deal with this is to install a few firefox extensions to prevent automatic loading of flash content. adblock and noscript work very well for this. The two combined will prevent the hijacking of your attention and system resources by blocking these buggy ads. They're very simple to install and configure, and are very important for making the gnash plugin more of an asset than a liability. I wouldn't recommend using gnash at all without these extensions installed.
Conclusion
It's understandable that many of us are annoyed by the very existence of flash, having endured the "Download flash or go away" messages that have been all over the net for years. In the past, we've been able to get by without it, since most of the content was simply entertainment, and we all have better things to do, right?
This isn't really the case any more, since youtube is becoming culturally important for more serious reasons. Take, for example, the recent incident where the Quebec provincial police planted agents provocateur in the middle of a peaceful protest, and a witness placed footage of the event on youtube for all to see. Or itojun's 5-part video series, ipv6 demystified. Hopefully this article has provided enough information for you to find a way to view these movies on OpenBSD. :)
(Comments are closed)
By grey (208.80.184.30) on
The email the email, it's all about the email. Strong Bad email that is.
Indeed, lunix flash in emulation has always been the answer (jsyn et al were running this long before the opera port iirc). At any rate a friend who pentests & audits code for Adobe once informed me that the linux stuff is the last to ever get updated or evaluated. So keep that in mind when you think of security ramifications.
Thankfully, you probably don't have to worry too much about security issues with sb_email, unless you're viewing this one:
http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail118.html
(Note, it works even better with pop up blocking disabled).
By Anonymous Coward (128.2.116.53) on
http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=116907154532729
Comments
By Anonymous Coward (24.22.214.92) on
>
Adobe has a compatibility program so it'd work with OSS, would it be usable on OpenBSD?
http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Flash_Player:Additional_Interface_Support_for_Linux
By Anonymous Coward (65.243.149.146) on
One other port for dealing with flash is VLC. It can play those pesky .flv files, although you may need to adjust the audio offset. I use this with the VideoDownloader extension in Firefox to get youtube videos.
I've been using yt for a little while but just recently it started giving me this error:
Line 42 seems to be looking for the video_id and not finding it. Guess they changed their format again?Comments
By Deanna Phillips (deanna) on
Right. The port has been updated to deal with this. Try installing yt-7.
Comments
By Anonymous Coward (65.243.149.146) on
>
> Right. The port has been updated to deal with this. Try installing yt-7.
I see. I guess the package hasn't made it's way out to the mirrors yet.
By Anonymous Coward (78.32.64.213) on
Comments
By Anonymous Coward (78.32.64.213) on
Oops, missed the first link.
By Deanna Phillips (deanna) on
On cbc, in the Toronto Star, etc.
Comments
By Brynet (Brynet) on
>
> On cbc, in the
> Toronto Star, etc.
They apparently confirmed the 3 men were "agent provocateurs"..
http://www.thestar.com/News/article/248608
By Anonymous Coward (68.100.130.1) on
And this way if YouTube changes their format, it's the KeepVid guys that have to worry about it, not me.
I've been doing this for almost a year now, BTW. I had no idea YouTube videos gave my fellow OpenBSD users trouble.
By Anonymous Coward (84.18.240.200) on
More details here:
http://blog.mikeasoft.com/2006/11/24/playing-youtube-videos-without-flash/
By Brynet (Brynet) on
Comments
By Hayden (67.41.218.43) on
How about this? At work I get paid to manage a large Cisco wireless system, with over 400 Cisco APs. The management software from Cisco is web based, and I can access it from OpenBSD+Firefox just fine. But part of the application uses Flash to graph usage and other things. If I want to get my work done, I have to use Flash.
So you would quit rather than use Flash, be my guest....
I have tried OpenBSD+Opera+Flash and it works fairly well, but I have had the app crash before on random occasions. So I end up bouncing between Windows and OpenBSD. I hope this effort produces a viable Flash viewer that would eliminate the Windows.
Comments
By Anonymous Coward (172.143.16.19) on
>
> How about this? At work I get paid to manage a large Cisco wireless >system, with over 400 Cisco APs. The management software from Cisco is >web based, and I can access it from OpenBSD+Firefox just fine. But part >of the application uses Flash to graph usage and other things. If I want >to get my work done, I have to use Flash.
Cisco network academy's online curriculum and exams are entirely flash based. This means I need flash for College :(
By Anonymous Coward (128.171.90.200) on
it was inevitable that someone would say that on this thread eventually.
I think Deanna's point is fairly valid, it wasn't so important before, it is becoming more important now. Admittedly it would be better if it didn't exist and there was something better in it's place, in fact I encourage it. I hate Flash, but unfortunatly it is an evil we have to live with.
At least we don't HAVE to have closed source solutions.
By Pizza is your friend (68.124.164.168) on
Thanks for linking both videos. I wasn't aware of the IPv6 videos by Itojun and it's always welcome to have video evidence of police tactics.
By Andrés Delfino (201.212.70.53) adelfino@gmail.com on
http://swfdec.freedesktop.org/wiki/
It can play YouTube videos.
Comments
By Anonymous Coward (121.116.246.187) on
It supports only ALSA, doesn't it?
Comments
By Forth (88.177.57.12) on http://ophane.net
>
> It supports only ALSA, doesn't it?
No, it does support OSS to :
--with-audio=[auto/alsa/oss/none] audio backend to use
Comments
By Anonymous Coward (121.116.246.187) on
Thanks! I built it with a few lines of hack.
But Swfdec is much slower than Gnash at last.
For those who try to build swfdec-0.5.2:
#define NAN (0.0/0.0)
#define isfinite(a) finite(a)
#define INFINITY HUGE_VAL
#include <soundcard.h> (not sys/soundcard.h... and you need -lossaudio)
and replace fpclassify with something like if-else.
By Anonymous Coward (70.173.172.228) on
port:
http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-ports&m=117823330919828&w=2
nspluginwrapper page:
http://gwenole.beauchesne.info/projects/nspluginwrapper
Comments
By Anonymous Coward (84.44.139.72) on
Comments
By Deanna Phillips (deanna) on
What do you mean by "isn't working"? It should work with at least one of these methods, and, more likely than not, all three. As long as you're not on a VAX, that is. :)
Comments
By Anonymous Coward (84.44.136.86) on
I mean the nspluginwrapper with linux_flash_9, the youtube flash begins to load, the controls are shown but when the video would normally start, the whole flash is greyed out.
Comments
By Anonymous Coward (70.173.172.228) on
> I mean the nspluginwrapper with linux_flash_9, the youtube flash begins to load, the controls are shown but when the video would normally start, the whole flash is greyed out.
You can combine opera-flashplugin with the nspluginwrapper port, it works a lot better but obviously doesn't support as much.
By Anonymous Coward (87.230.108.20) on
> I mean the nspluginwrapper with linux_flash_9, the youtube flash begins
> to load, the controls are shown but when the video would normally start,
> the whole flash is greyed out.
Works just fine with 4.1-stable tho, after backporting...
By Anonymous Coward (157.164.136.71) on
>
> port:
> http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-ports&m=117823330919828&w=2
> nspluginwrapper page:
> http://gwenole.beauchesne.info/projects/nspluginwrapper
After correcting the dependency on rpm2cpio which caused a conflict with rpm (Can't install rpm2cpio-1.2 because of conflicts (rpm-3.0.6p4)
/usr/sbin/pkg_add: rpm2cpio-1.2:Fatal error)
It does not compile under 4.2-current
===> Configuring for nspluginwrapper-0.9.91.4
GLIB 2.0 environment not usable
*** Error code 1
By sepp0 (sepp0) sepp0@openbsderos.org on http://www.openbsderos.org
http://www.openbsderos.org/wiki/index.php?title=Flash
By Anonymous Coward (65.34.99.75) on
By Anonymous Coward (128.118.75.199) on
By Anonymous Coward (128.2.116.53) on
Comments
By Deanna Phillips (deanna) on
0.8.1 was released broken on OpenBSD. There are some serious regressions, and no new features worth having, anyway.
For more info see #20880 on savannah, and the OpenBSD sections of the gnashdev wiki -
http://wiki.gnashdev.org/index.php/Gnash
By spirit (spirit1939) spirit1939@gmail.com on http://spirit45.icpcn.com
#make instal
too slow~ 8-[
In windowsxp i using opera it can play flash on some websites
And !some cannot..
What's is the reason.. i think it is version of falsh plugin...