Adobe brings back 64-bit Flash for Linux

Adobe has announced a beta of Flash Player 11 for desktops, and among its features is 64-bit Linux support. The path to a supported 64-bit Linux Flash Player has been long, with various usually less-than-leading edge versions being made available. In June 2010, it withdrew the Labs version of Flash Player and a few months later, began shipping preview versions of a 64-bit player. Now though, the 64-bit Linux version is part of the beta for the main product and 64-bit support for Linux is listed as a feature.

Adobe says that the Flash Player 11 Beta includes new Stage3D APIs for GPU accelerated 3D graphics and better 2D performance, support for creating cubic bezier curves in the drawing API, G.711 audio compression for developers writing telephony applications and H.264/AVC encoding when taking video from a system's local camera. For Linux users, Adobe has added vector printing, a feature already on Windows and Mac versions, to the player for "sharper, crisper" printing.

Internal enhancements include support for fast parsing and generation of JSON, the ability to hint when garbage collection will pause and a way to check for data transmission progress on sockets. Adobe has also added support for TLS Secure Sockets to the Flash Player.

Detailed release notes are available and the new beta version is available to download from Adobe Labs. Adobe recommends that the pre-release software not be used on production or mission-critical systems and requests that bug reports be submitted to bugs.adobe.com/flashplayer.

(djwm)