Arch Linux

655321

Member

From: Costa Rica

Registered: 2009-12-08

Posts: 412

Website

Arch installation flash free?

As you may or may not know, new macbooks are shipped without flash, I have always hated depending on some propietary techonology to just browse the web and I have tried to figured ways to live without flash but still keep the funtionality (I have tried both gnash and lightspark but they dont work for me).

So my question is, is it possible to have an Arch system without adobe flash but still keep the funtionality (for example, use html5 on youtube)?

ps: Sorry is this is the wrong section, hope I got it right

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Linux user #498977
With microsoft you get windows and gates, with linux you get the whole house!
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karol

Archivist

Registered: 2009-05-06

Posts: 25,440

Re: Arch installation flash free?

Some YT movies are converted to html5, some are not. I don't remember if downloading is legal - when watching a downloaded video you're not seeing the commercials overlay.
It really depends on how do you browse the web, what sites.

Last edited by karol (2011-08-23 20:54:50)

jac

Member

From: /home/jac

Registered: 2009-05-19

Posts: 431

Website

Re: Arch installation flash free?

For videos which are not yet available over HTML5, you can usually get a non-.flv file out of them using youtube-dl.

I personally don't encounter many sites that make you use flash. Unless I'm just missing huge chunks of the web by not having it installed haha

Wintervenom

Member

Registered: 2008-08-20

Posts: 1,011

Re: Arch installation flash free?

Try get_flash_videos.  It works across a large range of sites that stream Flash videos.  If you are using Pentadactyl, you can bind a script to a key to automatically try to play a video from the URL you're currently at in your local media player.

~/.pentadactylrc:

map -modes=n,v <C-o> y:!gfv-play<Space>-b<space>"<S-Insert>"<CR>

~/bin/gfv-play:

#!/bin/bash
gfv () {
    get_flash_videos -q -y -r 720p --subtitles -p --player 'mplayer -really-quiet %s; rm %s' "$*"
}
if [[ "$1" == '-b' ]]; then
    shift
    gfv "$*" &
fi
gfv "$*"

the sad clown

Member

From: 192.168.0.X

Registered: 2011-03-20

Posts: 837

Re: Arch installation flash free?

There are some things that I still need flash for, and so I do have it installed, but for most videos, youtube-dl and mplayer is a vastly superior option to flash.

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graysky

Wiki Maintainer

From: :wq

Registered: 2008-12-01

Posts: 10,729

Website

Re: Arch installation flash free?

+1 for youtube-dl

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AUR packages • Zsh and other configs

Awebb

Member

Registered: 2010-05-06

Posts: 6,688

Re: Arch installation flash free?

If you encounter anything that youtube-dl can't do, you might want to check out jdownloader.

458italia

Member

Registered: 2011-02-04

Posts: 20

Re: Arch installation flash free?

Why not try to use minitube with the mplayer or vlc backend for phonon? It works reasonably well, and you can either get results from keywords or load a channel and watch videos that way. The program does break every once in a while when the youtube devs decide to change something about their API or their url stream definitions, but then again what program doesn't break?

Just my two cents...

aparthia

Member

Registered: 2010-09-04

Posts: 46

Re: Arch installation flash free?

Personally I have made it work with VLC. If you copy the youtube URL you can press ctrl-V in VLC and it will enter the URL automatically for you, press enter and it will start streaming in the highest quality available.