Flash Player 10.1 RC Arrives But Still Not In Tune

Adobe released Flash Player 10.1 Beta 3 in late February, which brought support for the Broadcom Crystal HD decoding for Windows but not Linux, and just some other general fixes and minor improvements.

Flash Player 10.1 for Linux also doesn't offer full-screen video acceleration support on the GPU for either ATI, Intel, or NVIDIA graphics even though this release presents such support on Windows. This lack of Linux video acceleration support is due to their Linux engineers not liking the Linux video APIs as their lead Linux engineer has ranted about the matter, even though VA-API and VDPAU have established themselves as front-runners that are continuing to be adopted within graphics drivers and media applications. Just earlier today we reported on XBMC now properly supporting VA-API.

Adobe's Flash Player 10.1 Beta 3 also didn't provide an updated 64-bit build, but it was left in an older alpha state.

Adobe has now released the Flash Player 10.1 release candidate for Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X, but none of these items have yet to be addressed on the Linux side. The Flash Player 10.1 RC for Linux has not hooked in support for the Crystal HD ASIC with its open-source Linux kernel driver, there still is no video GPU acceleration support, and the 64-bit Flash Player still hasn't been updated since early February.

Those interested in grabbing the proprietary 32-bit Linux plug-in for the Adobe Flash Player 10.1 release candidate can find it at Adobe Labs. The final version of Flash Player 10.1 is expected for release this quarter with the alpha/beta releases of this major Flash update going back to last year. After 10.1 is out, maybe we will see the Adobe Flash Player 10.2 receive greater love for Linux.