Adobe resurrecting Flash Player on Linux

[bill]

https://blogs.adobe.com/flashplayer/2016/08/beta-news-flash-player-npapi-for-linux.html [blogs.adobe.com]

Beta News – Flash Player NPAPI for Linux

Linux users have access to both NPAPI and PPAPI versions of Flash Player. However, for the last four years, the NPAPI version has been held at 11.2 and regularly updated with only security fixes while the PPAPI version (used in Chrome and Chromium based browsers), is in line with the standard Windows and Mac releases.

Today we are updating the beta channel with Linux NPAPI Flash Player by moving it forward and in sync with the modern release branch (currently version 23). We have done this significant change to improve security and provide additional mitigation to the Linux community.

[graeme_p]

Translation: "we are desperate about diminishing support for Flash, and realised we cannot afford to lose any more users than we have to".

[mack]

A lot of Linux users have long since removed Flash from their systems because it was seen as a massive security hole. Will they be keen to accept it back? Personally, I won't, but many may. HTML5 means that not having flash installed is not such a limiting factor.

Adobe left it way too late. Linux releases have been years behind the Windows platform.

Mack.

[bill]

I have a few Linux VMs with Flash installed just for testing or emergencies, but I prefer not to use them for much more than that. Just too many security concerns for me with Flash installed. It's rare that I run into something that won't work without Flash, but there are notable exceptions, like some banks, that prevent me from getting completely rid of it.