gnash vs flash

GI Jack · 2011-07-09 04:18:11

I was thinking of replacing the official adobe flash on my arch project with gnash, if for nothing but security reasons. Is this worth it?

what are the pros and cons of each, and what won't I be able to do in gnash?

Army · 2011-07-09 05:49:34

I tried to switch to gnash many times, mostly after reports about a big update with a ton of new features. But I always went back to flashplugin. The reason is simple. If you have flash / gnash installed, you want it to work for websites, which require it. If you don't care if it works, why install it in the first place?

Flashplugin now has the (imho) big improvement of allowing us to configure, how it should handle its cookies (the so-called super-cookies, which can't be deleted from within the browser). Just execute flash-player-properties, disable all you want to be disabled and you are save. Maybe there will be sites, which don't work without a super-cookie. In that case you can configure it to allow them for this site and you can delete it afterwards. So that's pretty nice.
When it comes to security issues, simply use a webbrowser, which is capable of blocking plugins and only allow it on sites where you really need it. And you always have to remember, you are running linux, so the security risks are always lower than on other platforms.

Still, it's always interesting to look and see how gnash improves. Lightspark is another one, which really might become a real alternative someday. But it absolutely doesn't work here, so I'm stuck with flashplugin, which, like I stated above, doesn't bother me that much.

Amanda S · 2014-06-24 16:33:25

GI Jack wrote:

I was thinking of replacing the official adobe flash on my arch project with gnash, if for nothing but security reasons. Is this worth it?
what are the pros and cons of each, and what won't I be able to do in gnash?

Flash is a terrible package for those who care about privacy and security. I don't have it installed on my Host machine, only in Virtual Machines. It's really a shame we need this filthy package in 2014. Fortunately, HTML5 seems to be kicking, at least you can see 99.999999% of the videos on Youtube. Sometimes companies like VEVO ("Very Evil Video Organization") will try to force you to use Flash, but for those videos you can install a package in Firefox named "Youtube FLASH to HTML5", assuming you care for your privacy enough not to use Chrome or Chromium or any Google product, along with any Microsoft/Yahoo/AOL/Twitter/Apple/Facebook product or service. That also includes Android.

For all I remembered, Gnash didn't work on websites like Facebook or askfm or any major websites. I assume that's mostly due to the fact that supporting multiple players would cost a lot. And that could be a limitation on the Gnash side.

But hey, I'd also assume you don't use Facebook if you really care about your privacy If you don't bother with Facebook then don't bother with Flash too, just make it more secure: http://www.wilderssecurity.com/threads/ … er.284280/

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo … 5/?src=api

Last edited by Amanda S (2014-06-24 16:49:58)

jasonwryan · 2014-06-24 19:16:44

Please don't necrobump: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Fo … Bumping.27

Closing

Arch Linux

#1 2011-07-09 04:18:11

gnash vs flash

#2 2011-07-09 05:49:34

Re: gnash vs flash

#3 2014-06-24 16:33:25

Re: gnash vs flash

#4 2014-06-24 19:16:44

Re: gnash vs flash

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