Linux Flash Player Is GPU Accelerated

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Linux Flash Player Is GPU Accelerated

Adobe has been using the GPU to accelerate the Flash Player when displaying full-screen content since their December '07 Flash Player update, but with the Flash Player 10 Beta, new GPU acceleration modes are supported -- even on Linux. While the Windows version of Adobe's Flash Player is using DirectX for acceleration, the Linux version is hooking into OpenGL. In a new posting on the Adobe Penguin.SWF blog, the details surrounding this OpenGL acceleration within the Flash Player is covered...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=NjQ5OA

[kriko]

Content has to be modified in order to support acceleration?
What a crap. Youtube videos are choppy as hell on my machine with nvidia card (7600gt).

[Jimmy]

Content has to be modified in order to support acceleration?
What a crap. Youtube videos are choppy as hell on my machine with nvidia card (7600gt).

Are you sure that's not because you reached the end of your ISP's burst?

I only have two problems with flash performance under Linux. The Windows one seems to get better transfer rates. I don't know how that works, but the cache bar fills faster and stays ahead of the currently playing position. My second problem has to do with Linux flash not doing transparencies correctly.

And yes Compiz really does break or cripple everything GL. Even when Compiz isn't involved users who have Nvidia or ATI accelerated drivers installed don't have them installed correctly. Even though they once may have had them working correctly. Something got "updated" and broke the configuration. Often a system still runs fine and doesn't complain at all that direct rendering went away. The system ends up using non-accelerated drivers/components and the user hasn't a clue about it. That is until they run a 3D application and come clambering to some forum for said application complaining about poor performance. The user is instructed to check glxinfo and then to ask their distro/cpu provider how to fix the problem.

Constant nonstop broken record disable Compiz fix your GL and drivers.

bah. I'm ranting and trolling, sorry.

[kriko]

Are you sure that's not because you reached the end of your ISP's burst?


Nope, tested with my machine on two different locations - on 1Mbps line and here currently on 100Mbps line - same result. Problem is when viewing videos in fullscreen.
Flash seems to be so unoptimized - a64 2800+ with gf7600gt is not enough for smooth video playback (though mplayer can play same files super-smoothly @ 1600x1200).

[Redeeman]

Nope, tested with my machine on two different locations - on 1Mbps line and here currently on 100Mbps line - same result. Problem is when viewing videos in fullscreen.
Flash seems to be so unoptimized - a64 2800+ with gf7600gt is not enough for smooth video playback (though mplayer can play same files super-smoothly @ 1600x1200).
i think the word you are looking for is not unoptimized, but rather abomination_of_a_crappy_take-your-freedom_worstsoftwareever_crappier_than_ie developers_should_be_fired_adobe_should_be_forcibl y_closed_crapblob_securityhole.

[deanjo]

i think the word you are looking for is not unoptimized, but rather abomination_of_a_crappy_take-your-freedom_worstsoftwareever_crappier_than_ie developers_should_be_fired_adobe_should_be_forcibl y_closed_crapblob_securityhole.


I still think that's going too soft on them.

[kriko]

Adobe did open specs for flash, didn't they? I hope gnash gets mature (spec support for ver. 9 at least) and we can get rid of this binary piece of junk.

[Vadi]

Um, just don't use Flash. It's that simple.

[Shakey_Jake33]

^That would be ideal, and certainly I avoid websites that use Flash extensively over their website, because it's just annoying.

But I use YouTube, VEOH, Google Video and the like all the time. swfdec works with YouTube, but not the other two. I've yet to get Gnash to work with either of them. It's all very well to say 'its that simple', but when you actively use websites /w Flash as part of your everyday computing, it's anything but simple.

Of course, the sooner non-free Flash can be ditched, the better. Along with unrar-nonfree.

[Creak]

I still don't really understand how the Adobe flash player can be so slow on Linux compared to Windows...
I'm a game developper and I don't really see where is the difficulty in porting this kind of program to Linux. I heard a year ago on the same swf blog, that the port was really hard because of the amount of asm code that had to be ported on each platform. But... It just Flash technology, it's not like guessing the weather for the ten years ahead! We have CPUs that goes incredibly faster than two years ago, the same for GPUs that are specialized in scalar computing, but still, Flash is slow as hell on Linux...

Don't understand... I hope the guys of Gnash will rock this out in few months!

[deanjo]

Along with unrar-nonfree.

p7zip will do what you want.

[butdie]

gnash plays youtube well right now, but still need better support for swf8/9.

[Redeeman]

^That would be ideal, and certainly I avoid websites that use Flash extensively over their website, because it's just annoying.

But I use YouTube, VEOH, Google Video and the like all the time. swfdec works with YouTube, but not the other two. I've yet to get Gnash to work with either of them. It's all very well to say 'its that simple', but when you actively use websites /w Flash as part of your everyday computing, it's anything but simple.

Of course, the sooner non-free Flash can be ditched, the better. Along with unrar-nonfree.
oh i disagree.. i used to use sites with flash and crap, but then i realized what a piece of crap flash was, and so i issues i think only 1 command, to end it, i would call 1 command pretty damn simple.

[zerix01]

Okay so compiz breaks GPU acceleration but what about other OpenGl programs? What about KDE4 Compositing?

This also does not make sense. Why is it I am able to have compositing on and play games (native and in WINE)? I thought OpenGL related code is handled at the GPU driver level not the application level. Or maybe they are trying to control a part of GPU memory which breaks everything else, DRM anybody?

[some-guy]

This is with non-Nvidia cards, the nvidia driver doesn't use DRI, so it isn't affected by DRI's shortcomings.

DRI2/Gallium (which is in development), should fix this