LINUXUSER Gnash ROLLFree player for Flash movies ’EM! Ferenc Szelepcsenyi , Fotolia

Until recently, the Flash format has been the uncontested domain of a standalone player. The disadvantage of this is that, for example, training videos Adobe. Gnash introduces a free Flash player for and BSD with a will only run in a . Adobe offers variants of its Flash player for design that aims far beyond the capabilities of Adobe’s king of the hill. Linux as a free download [1]. The plugin supports any recent Mozilla-based BY ERIK BÄRWALDT browser, such as or Seamonkey, as well as Opera. he small web format or Shock- nection, avoiding the typical waits in- To allow Linux users to choose a free wave Flash format has long es- volved when a user needs to download Flash player, the Free Software Founda- Ttablished itself as a standard a movie in a legacy format. tion launched the Gnash Project [2]. for multimedia content on the Internet. Properties geared to the needs of the The name is a combination of the words Users of video or TV platforms such as Internet age have helped Flash establish “GNU” and “Flash.” The free Gnash YouTube and Lulu.tv enjoy Flash mov- itself in record time; however, the format player aims to provide not only the same ies, and the format is rapidly conquering has one major disadvantage: As a propri- functionality as the Adobe player – as a the field of professional multimedia edu- etary software, it is not freely available, plugin for popular web browsers – but cational materials, too. and development is currently in the also to add standalone capabilities that On top of this, web designers like the hands of just one company, Adobe. make it easier to use Flash movies in format, originally developed by Macro- educational scenarios. media, because it supports elaborate Flash in the Browser The software is still in alpha, but de- graphical animations, allowing them to What is by far the most widespread velopment is progressing nicely. Source enhance a website’s design. The Flash player software for Flash animations is code archives and documentation in var- format’s streaming capabilities make it also by Adobe and only available as a ious formats are available on the web perfect for a narrow-band Internet con- plugin for various web browsers, not as [3]. Building a binary from the sources

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distribution and its derivatives [4][5][6]. is why the is Besides the archive, you also need to not attempting simply to support version download the Libgnash0 and Libgtk- 4 of the Adobe format with Gnash, but glext1 libraries to fulfill the dependen- to implement the full feature set of the cies. If you will be running Gnash Player latest version 7. as a plugin for a major browser, you also One thing noticeable about Gnash is need to install the mozilla-plugin-gnash how quickly the movie appears in the package on your system. browser plugin – this is because of the After completing the installation, you player’s excellent streaming abilities. The will find Gnash in the Applications | quality of the playback is fine for even Entertainment menu on Gnome; look for the most exacting requirements. After all, the Gnash SWF Viewer entry. If you click Gnash uses OpenGL for hardware-based on the menu entry, nothing much will 3D support. Another positive is a lack of happen at first. If you right-click an SWF stability issues with the two Gnash ver- file you have stored locally and then se- sions I tested, 0.7.2 and 0.8.1. The CPU lect the Gnash Player, a spartan-looking load was also well within limits. window will appear and play the content of the file. Conclusions So far, the only way to control Gnash Gnash has finally gotten the ball rolling is to right-click in the program window, in the Flash player landscape. The soft- which lets you fast forward or reverse ware, which is currently still at the alpha the movie and gives you access to typi- stage, is developing quickly with the cal functions such as Start/Stop, Pause, Free Software Foundation pushing to Close, and Quit. As of this writing, there provide a free alternative to Adobe’s is no menu. Flash Player. Gnash has a number of conceptional Functionality advantages compared with its proprie- The free Flash Player left me with an tary Adobe counterpart; for example, ambivalent impression in our lab – al- the player is also designed as a stand- though the browser plugin played vari- alone application and does not depend ous samples and video files from You- on a web browser. Additionally, Gnash’s Tube without any trouble, the stand- amazing streaming capabilities are al- alone player was unable to handle any ready starting to shine through. of the Flash animations I fed to it with- Because it keeps system load pleas- out throwing an error (Figure 1). ingly low, Gnash is suitable for use on can be a trying experience, even for Either visual aspects of the movie had less powerful machines, and the image more versed Linux users, because of the issues or the sound was distorted or quality is excellent. The short release many dependencies you need to resolve. even missing, deficits attributable to the cycles show that Gnash is a high-priority Fortunately, Gnash binary packages are proprietary nature of the Flash format. project, and bugs in the current alpha now available for almost any popular Those wanting to develop a free player version should be resolved fast. In short, for SWF files can’t expect it looks like Gnash will soon be a genu- Adobe to disclose the ine alternative to the Adobe Player. I Flash specifications to them. The only option INFO you have is to painstak- [1] Download: ingly reconstruct the http:// www. adobe. com/ shockwave/ codec, a time-consuming download/ download. cgi?P1_Prod_ trial and error procedure. Version=Shockwave Flash On top of this, Adobe [2] Gnash: typically introduces new http:// www. . org/ software/ gnash technologies with each [3] Gnash sources: http:// www. gnu. org/ new version of the for- software/ gnash/ #downloading mat, so it is not enough [4] Packages for Fedora/RHEL: http:// dag. to develop a codec for just wieers. com/ rpm/ packages/ gnash one version of the Flash [5] Packages for Ubuntu: format. On the contrary, http:// packages. ubuntu. com the developers are forced [6] Packages for Mandriva, openSUSE: Figure 1: The fish obviously feel quite happy with Gnash in to follow every single step http:// rpm. pbone. net the browser. that Adobe takes, which

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