Ubuntu Developers Still Thinking What To Do About Adobe Flash Support

Besides figuring out what to do about 32-bit Ubuntu, another session of interest today during the online/virtual Ubuntu Developer Summit was trying to decide what to do about Adobe Flash support on the Ubuntu desktop. There's three years before Adobe plans to end-of-life their support of Flash on Linux.

Ubuntu developers are figuring what to do about Adobe Flash support in general and specifically for Flash on Firefox. While Google has taken over Linux Flash support within their PPAPI plug-in for Google Chrome, Firefox users are still dependent on Adobe's NPAPI plug-in. It's for the Adobe.com plug-in that Adobe will no longer be providing updates -- including for security related matters -- after 2017. Those using Google Chrome shouldn't run into problems nor Chromium users if copying over the PPAPI Flash plug-in, etc.

Among the items being evaluated were defaulting to use the Chromium web-browser on Ubuntu rather than Firefox. This has been brought up from time to time but so far Firefox is still the Ubuntu default. It's unlikely core Ubuntu developers would want to switch to Chromium all in the name of Flash support. Another option talked about was seeing if Canonical could convince Adobe to distribute the NPAPI/PPAPI Flash via the Canonical paterners repository. Other alternatives are looking at open-source Flash replacements like Gnash, Shumway, and Lightspark. The other approach is just hoping Flash will be less relevant after 2017.

Find the Ubuntu Flash discussion in full at summit.ubuntu.com.