Flash on Linux Server

Question

Hi,
I'm a Flash fanboy and want to hear that Flash works well with a Linux Server. How is Flashes performance in a Linux environment?

I'm ignorant about servers and linux, but should have an answer. I'm trying to be objective.
Thanks,

REQUIREMENTS:
• First prove Flash without a media server 'just flash runtime AVM2'
• Have an answer for how it performs
• Furthermore, know what happens when Flash communicates server scripts, dll, etc.

USE:
I want to run animations, and have Flash communicate
and send and receive messages.

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COMMENTS: 'from penguin.swf'

-Browsers
seems to work in opera but crashes konqueror (may be my configuration)

-64Bit
When can we expect a native 64-bit version of Flash Player? It's almost unbelievable how slow proprietary closed source applications are when it comes to native support for 64-bit technology.

-FullScreen
I don't understand this fullscreen acceleration problem. On youtube.com, fullscreen videos are mostly unwatchable with the new player, but the old player they play fine. Why can't you force acceleration???

-CPU
Just updated from the previous stable to this new one and I'm seeing some horrible cpu usage. On a 7600GT with latest stable nvidia drivers it uses 40% cpu to merely show a video, and jumps up to 80% when full screen (on a dual core x2 @ 2.2ghz). If I turn off hardware acceleration while a video is playing I get one cpu maxed out at 100% and the other at 80%. The videos I tested were just on youtube. I'm using a 32bit firefox (2.0.0.11) on x86_64 gentoo. Hope you can look into this.

The comments about Flash not being 64bit, taking up CPU, and choaking in fullscreen don't seem unique to Linux

Answer 1

There is a 64-bit Flash player for Linux... unfortunately though, you can't seem to get it from Adobe right now. They have stripped the beta site for flash player 10 64-bit and put up an unhelpful message: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/64bit.html

If you have a distro like Ubuntu (or Ubuntu Server) they tend to use the ndiswrapper to use the 32-bit flash player. I've found this to be VERY unstable. The 64-bit version I've had no stability issues with.

There is VERY little difference between Linux Desktop and Server builds as far as Flash is concerned. It runs in the browser and as long as you have a browser installed (I've only used Firefox/Iceweasel for Debian) Flash will work the same on a Server as it does a Desktop. If you can get the libflashplayer.so for 64-bit it can simply be dropped in the plugin folder of your browser and should work. Different browsers have different folders. ( Firefox in Ubuntu is /usr/lib/firefox-addons/plugins and Chrome is /opt/google/chrome/plugins )

There is no hardware acceleration in the beta Flash 10 player, that explains the full screen tearing issues and the CPU performance you stated. (All rendering done in the beta player is using full CPU, including video decompresion. CPUs suck at doing these things.)

As far as how it communicates? It communicates just as it does in the Windows client. You can use ExternalInterface to communicate with javascript on the page or if you are hosting it on Coldfusion you can use Remoting just as you can on Windows servers. If you are using a Linux Server as the media host, it will work just fine for Windows clients and they will still have video acceleration. The hosting server has no real impact on the Client performance as far as that is concerned.

If you like to be optimistic, the site I linked above does state that there will be a new version coming... but there's no release estimate for that.

I work in Flash for work, advocate Linux for people who don't game a lot, and generally think the situation with Adobe right now is pretty much crap... but I'm holding out hope that they have something up their sleeve.