Adobe is not done killing off the Flash Player. It announced that it would be dropping mobile efforts last year and now it's revealing that it will no longer be providing a Flash Player download for Linux.
The only way to get Flash on Linux beyond the upcoming Flash Player 11.2 is to use Google Chrome, which will continue to come bundled with future versions of Flash Player. Flash Player 11.2 will be updated with security patches for five years on Linux.
Linux users won't be very happy about this as it means that Flash won't be supported on their favorite operating system on Firefox or any other browser than Chrome.
There is one slight possibility that there is a future for Flash on Linux, a Pepper-based version of the plugin for other browser. But Mozilla said it has no plans to support the alternative plugin API dubbed PPAPI that Google has been working on.
What's more, Adobe has said that there will be no downloadable versions of Flash Player for Linux.
PPAPI is still labeled as experimental and Google has, so far, only based some internal Chrome plugins on it, such as the built-in PDF Viewer.
One of Pepper's big advantages is that plugins have to be less customized for different operating systems. This is why Adobe will able to offer a Pepper version of Flash for Linux, it is virtually identical to the one for Windows and Mac OS X.
"The PPAPI, code-named “Pepper” aims to provide a layer between the plugin and browser that abstracts away differences between browser and operating system implementations," Adobe
explained.
"Because of this work, Adobe has been able to partner with Google in providing a 'Pepper' implementation of Flash Player for all x86/64 platforms supported by the Google Chrome browser. Google will begin distributing this new Pepper-based Flash Player as part of Chrome on all platforms, including Linux, later this year," it added.
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