New Version Of Gnash Flash Player Published

[phoronix]

Phoronix: New Version Of Gnash Flash Player Published

Just days after Adobe announced their plans to abandon Flash Player support on Linux, the open-source Gnash Flash Player is out with a new release...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTA2MjE

[e8hffff]

I hope the Dev is fixing problems has he or she experiences them in use over the internet. That way the project will reflect a very workable product.

[Ibidem]

0.8.9+?????????? (the 0.8.10 preview) worked alright, Youtube worked even in Iceweasel 3.5, etc. There was an isssue with video scaling.
I might be tempted to reinstall gnash if it ever gets an XVBA backend that works with UVD1, so I can get some acceleration out of this HD3200.

[allquixotic]

OpenVG backend to Gnash + Gallium3d OpenVG state tracker + one of the better-supported g3d drivers (e.g. r600g) = ????

Anyone tested it? Does it kernel panic, freeze the GPU, or crash the browser, as I'd expect? Or does it actually work?

[DaemonFC]

February 15 is actually several days BEFORE Adobe made their announcement that they partnered with Google to lock Linux users into Google's spyware-laden keylogger. I mean, browser.

[ChrisXY]

OpenVG backend to Gnash + Gallium3d OpenVG state tracker + one of the better-supported g3d drivers (e.g. r600g) = ????

Anyone tested it? Does it kernel panic, freeze the GPU, or crash the browser, as I'd expect? Or does it actually work?

HD 6550, mesa git with all the cool featues like OpenVG enabled. I tried to build gnash git but it is still a mistery to me how to build it on a multilib system:

[...]
/usr/bin/ld: skipping incompatible /usr/lib32/libcurl.so when searching for -lcurl
/usr/bin/ld: skipping incompatible /usr/lib32/libcurl.a when searching for -lcurl
/usr/bin/ld: skipping incompatible /usr/lib32/libpthread.so when searching for -lpthread
/usr/bin/ld: skipping incompatible /usr/lib32/libpthread.a when searching for -lpthread
/usr/bin/ld: skipping incompatible /usr/lib32/libltdl.so when searching for -lltdl
/usr/bin/ld: skipping incompatible /usr/lib32/libltdl.a when searching for -lltdl
/usr/lib32/libcairo.so: could not read symbols: File in wrong format
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status

So I installed gnash 0.8.10 from the repo.

First test: Video on vimeo doesn't even show up. On flash I see an empty area where I need to click once to make the player appear. Doesn't work with gnash.

Youtube kind of works. 360p and 480p work, but 720p would not load (or play?). Performance of 480p on fullscreen is bad. Normal size is good though.

Video playing is still not better than in adobe flash with software rendering (!!)...

[DaemonFC]

HD 6550, mesa git with all the cool featues like OpenVG enabled. I tried to build gnash git but it is still a mistery to me how to build it on a multilib system:

[...]
/usr/bin/ld: skipping incompatible /usr/lib32/libcurl.so when searching for -lcurl
/usr/bin/ld: skipping incompatible /usr/lib32/libcurl.a when searching for -lcurl
/usr/bin/ld: skipping incompatible /usr/lib32/libpthread.so when searching for -lpthread
/usr/bin/ld: skipping incompatible /usr/lib32/libpthread.a when searching for -lpthread
/usr/bin/ld: skipping incompatible /usr/lib32/libltdl.so when searching for -lltdl
/usr/bin/ld: skipping incompatible /usr/lib32/libltdl.a when searching for -lltdl
/usr/lib32/libcairo.so: could not read symbols: File in wrong format
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status

So I installed gnash 0.8.10 from the repo.

First test: Video on vimeo doesn't even show up. On flash I see an empty area where I need to click once to make the player appear. Doesn't work with gnash.

Youtube kind of works. 360p and 480p work, but 720p would not load (or play?). Performance of 480p on fullscreen is bad. Normal size is good though.

Video playing is still not better than in adobe flash with software rendering (!!)...

You should opt into the Youtube HTML 5 test and then gnash will just serve as a backup for videos that aren't available as WebM yet. That way all videos will work and >90% of the time, you get a much better experience than gnash will give you.

gnash will use OpenGL ES through EGL if they're available. On proprietary display drivers they arent, so performance will likely be worse. You should dig arund to find Mesa's OpenGL ES packages for your distribution if you use open source video drivers. gnash should pick them up and use them from then on.

[ChrisXY]

You should opt into the Youtube HTML 5 test and then gnash will just serve as a backup for videos that aren't available as WebM yet. That way all videos will work and >90% of the time, you get a much better experience than gnash will give you.

gnash will use OpenGL ES through EGL if they're available. On proprietary display drivers they arent, so performance will likely be worse. You should dig arund to find Mesa's OpenGL ES packages for your distribution if you use open source video drivers. gnash should pick them up and use them from then on.

Well, I compile mesa with this:

   ./autogen.sh --prefix=/usr \
   --with-dri-driverdir=/usr/lib/xorg/modules/dri \
   --with-gallium-drivers=r600 \
   --with-dri-drivers= \
   --with-egl-platforms=x11,drm \
   --enable-texture-float \
   --enable-gles1 \
   --enable-gles2 \
   --enable-osmesa \
   --enable-egl \
   --enable-xorg \
   --enable-xa \
   --enable-xvmc \
   --enable-vdpau \
   --enable-gallium-g3dvl \
   --enable-glx-tls \
   --enable-glu \
   --enable-gbm \
   --enable-gallium-gbm \
   --enable-shared-glapi \
   --enable-xorg \
   --enable-gallium-llvm \
   --enable-openvg \
   --enable-gallium-egl

Also, Colortiling2D patches in the 3.3-rc4, but that shouldn't do much here.

I also already use firefox nightly + youtube html5 (nightly can actually do fullscreen with html5). Performance per CPU time of html5 video is still not great I think but at least it looks good already. But as I have said, even with pure software decoding + software rendering the flashplugin has much better video playing performance than gnash, but it's only really noticeable in fullscreen.

(Yes, I am working on this notebook and it is stable most of the time ).

Out of curiosity I tried it also with kwin gles compositing:

OpenGL vendor string:                   X.Org                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
OpenGL renderer string:                 Gallium 0.4 on AMD REDWOOD
OpenGL version string:                  OpenGL ES 2.0 Mesa 8.1-devel
OpenGL shading language version string: OpenGL ES GLSL ES 1.0.16
Driver:                                 R600G
GPU class:                              EVERGREEN
OpenGL version:                         2.0
GLSL version:                           1.0.16
Mesa version:                           8.1
X server version:                       1.11.4
Linux kernel version:                   3.3
Direct rendering:                       yes
Requires strict binding:                no
GLSL shaders:                           yes
Texture NPOT support:                   yes

But it didn't change the fullscreen performance.

So I have looked at how Arch builds gnash:

./configure \
    --prefix=/usr \
    --sysconfdir=/etc \
    --with-plugins-install=system \
    --with-npapi-plugindir=/usr/lib/mozilla/plugins \
    --enable-gui=sdl,gtk,dump \
    --enable-media=gst,ffmpeg \
    --enable-renderer=agg,cairo \
    --enable-device=x11

I guess I will try --enable-renderer=all and --enable-device=egl. Let's see if I can build this...

[e8hffff]

February 15 is actually several days BEFORE Adobe made their announcement that they partnered with Google to lock Linux users into Google's spyware-laden keylogger. I mean, browser.

HEEHehheh. I distance myself from Google where I can too. Microsoft is already in my trash can.

[ChrisXY]

Wel... I "solved" the linker problem with /usr/lib32 by moving /usr/lib32 away for building gnash.

But...
How do I configure the gles renderer?
(cached) configure: error: invalid renderer specified: opengles1 given (accept: (opengl|openvg|cairo|agg|all)

By building renderer = all I get this:

 LC_ALL=C gnash --help | grep -A1 renderer
  -R [ --renderer ] arg (=agg)  The renderer to use
                                agg|cairo|opengl|openvg,|opengles1

 LC_ALL=C gnash -R opengles1 choudanse7.swf
Error: Non-existent renderer opengles1 specified

 LC_ALL=C gnash -R openvg choudanse7.swf
Error: Support for renderer openvg  was not built

So I built again with

  ./configure \
    --prefix=/usr \
    --sysconfdir=/etc \
    --with-plugins-install=system \
    --with-npapi-plugindir=/usr/lib/mozilla/plugins \
    --enable-gui=sdl,gtk \
    --enable-media=gst,ffmpeg \
    --enable-renderer=agg,cairo,opengl,openvg \
    --enable-device=egl,x11

The OpenVG renderer doesn't work. Only outputs sound and tons of debug messages:
started with: EGL_LOG_LEVEL=debug LIBGL_DEBUG=verbose gnash -R openvg choudanse7.swf

http://pastebin.com/Qn6dKQJx

The opengl renderer at least displays something and it is even mostly right wit only minor corruption. But it doesn't use EGL/GLES I guess.

http://pastebin.com/W66UGvfC

The cairo renderer works but is a bit flickering but since arch's system cairo is not build with gl or gles support it's not accelerated much (just xrender I think?). Maybe I could use egl/gles through cairo when building cairo with --enable-gl and --enable-gles?