Adobe Flash Player 11 For 64-Bit Linux Is Christened

As we have been expecting since May, the next Adobe Flash Player release finally re-syncs the 64-bit build with the Flash updates in the mainline code available to 32-bit users. This is the first public beta release of the Adobe Flash Player 11 that offers both 32-bit and 64-bit binaries to Linux users, along with 64-bit binaries for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X users.

To cut to the chase, over on Adobe Labs is the Adobe Flash Player 11 Beta 1 (v11.0.1.60) where the 32-bit and 64-bit plug-ins can be obtained. Up until now, 64-bit users have been stuck with an outdated Flash "Square" Beta.

In poking around the libflashplayer.so binary from this first Flash Player 11 Beta, it doesn't appear that it yet supports the VA-API acceleration interface available to the open-source Intel driver and AMD Catalyst users, among other drivers/hardware. Nor does it support XvBA. It appears that for hardware-assisted video playback that, for the moment at least, it's still bound to NVIDIA VDPAU under Linux.

But one new addition to Flash Player 11 for Linux does appear to be Broadcom Crystal HD support, which was available in previous Flash Player 10 versions to Windows users. In today's Linux binary are libcrystalhd.so and Broadcom,H264, references.