Re: flash and firefox

M. Warner Losh wrote:
> In message: <17428.17308.781505.771684_at_roam.psg.com>
>             Randy Bush <randy_at_psg.com> writes:
> : > The problems with linuxpluginwrapper exist in RELENG_6 as well.
> : > Actually, I've had better luck with flash and linux-firefox on CURRENT
> : > than I have on 6.1-PRERELEASE.
> : > 
> : > The problems with acrobat reader are also in 6.1-PRERELEASE.  Running
> : > them both, one at home, one at work, I haven't found any real difference
> : > in how various ports work, save for the abovementioned, that
> : > linux-firefox works better with flash in CURRENT. 
> : 
> : how the heck did you get it to run at all in current?
> 
> I'm running -current with FreeBSD native firefox and acroread.  I'm
> able to read pdfs no problem.  Flash, alas, I've not managed to get
> working.

I get sporadically working flash support on FreeBSD.  On 6.0 RELEASE it
will occasionally work, but usually shows a grey box where the flash
application is supposed to be running. Right-clicking in this box does
bring up the "Settings" and "About Macromedia Flash" menus but the
application itself doesn't appear. I've adjusted libmap.conf, tried
different versions of ffox, flash, etc. but it seems that flash - and
especially complex applications like Flickr's "Organizr" application or
Google Video http://video.google.com) embedded Flash Video - is
difficult to get (and keep) working.

Working combinations of flash/ffox/skype/libmap.conf are easy to break
top - an enthusiastic portupgrade is all it takes :)  But when compat
apps don't run well "out of the box" - unlike most things FreeBSD which
seem to "just work", I'm not sure how to file bugs since the issues
often seem complicated and difficult to debug: e.g. related to threading
or ELF versioning or something that's tricky and time consuming for
developers to fix and might well be related to my own compat support
being hosed somehow. Compat support just seems hard to do :-\ I'm
impressed it is done as well as it is.

One other compat application that rarely works correctly on FreeBSD for
me is Skype. It could be a problem between screen and chair of course,
but if anyone with a working setup for these apps has thoroughly
documented how they did things, I'd gladly RTFM :)


--
Graham Todd