I'm not sure I agree with all of the arguments about "oh closed source, don't use it". The fact is that Firefox allows the use of proprietary plugins, for better or worse. It doesn't prevent me from using things that don't agree with it's own license (thankfully; I'd rather have this crappy Flash integration than none). Open-source alternatives are fine, but try to find a new machine that doesn't use an ATi or Nvidia graphics card. And I can't imagine the time it would take to come up with a complete drop in replacement for Flash.
Proprietary is here; we need to deal with it. Now, my own point is that a single Linux user has about zip power to influence Adobe. I think Redhat and to a lesser extent the Mozilla organization has a lot more. There should be direct talks between these commercial operations about problems like these, and if there have been, it'd be nice to know.
Also, Firefox allows a single bad plugin to make the brower unusable. Maybe it shouldn't do that? Seems to me there's a legitimate argument to be made there.
I don't think the "that's proprietary, deal with it" arguments are helpful.
Hugh
Message: 7 Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 17:20:39 -0700 From: Craig White craigwhite@azapple.com Subject: Re: Firefox 3 hogging 90% CPU, can anything be done about this? To: "Community assistance, encouragement, and advice for using Fedora." fedora-list@redhat.com Message-ID: 1239668439.13027.648.camel@lin-workstation.azapple.com Content-Type: text/plain
On Mon, 2009-04-13 at 16:26 -0700, Hugh Caley wrote:
I do definitely get the problem on sites such as youtube; however, I also get the problem on sites that don't have any obvious flash content, and frankly, I'm not sure which ones at this point. Flashblock doesn't seem to catch all of them. Still trying to find out.
I think it would be a good thing if Fedora and Mozilla/Firefox talked with Adobe about fixing this.
just so you understand that Adobe ships Flash (and of course Adobe Reader and everything else) in what we tend to refer to as a binary blob and thus only they retain the source code. While some of the Adobe software might be free in terms of no cost, they aren't free as in open source and so the only set of eyeballs that ever looks at the program code is theirs.
The distinction is a very important one. Adobe has sole responsibility for compatibility as they can download the source code for Mozilla Firefox and fully understand how to implement their software in Firefox. The responsibility completely lies with Adobe and if you are unhappy, you should be complaining to Adobe, not the list. The list might help you with some workarounds but that's going to be as far as it goes.
The ultimate solution would be to use the open source variants (perhaps gnash) because then you could participate in the software development.
No one from Fedora or Mozilla software development is going to waste their time on Adobe proprietary software that they can't even see the source code to possibly make a knowledgeable suggestion.
Craig
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card. And I can't imagine the time it would take to come up with a complete drop in replacement for Flash.
Probably a lot less now than before as a lot of the documentation has finally been published - presumably because Adobe finally realised that a mostly open microsoft spec versus a totally proprietary Adobe one was a bad idea ;). I'd rather reimplement Flash than Nvidia drivers - by a large margin.
Also, Firefox allows a single bad plugin to make the brower unusable. Maybe it shouldn't do that? Seems to me there's a legitimate argument to be made there.
FC10 uses the plugger stuff to try and keep them apart (its important for security too) however the interface plugins used is a very old, rather inelegant hack from way back when. Easy for firefox to move from it (and indeed it basically has with the extensions model of its own) but your proprietary plugins don't move themselves.
I don't think the "that's proprietary, deal with it" arguments are helpful.
Unfortunately that is reality for a lot of this. There are some things you can do to isolate misbehaving plugins but there are a lot of things you can't fix that easily including some of the less nice properties of the flash plugin.
Increasingly flash isn't needed. The javascript DOM can do a lot in javascript that used to justify flash. With SVG graphics much of the animation and gaming is going that way, with Firefox and HTML now going the theora path the video will become less important too.
Alan
Guess I'll just go look at Youtube with my javascript DOM/SVG viewer and ... wait ;)
Personally, I think if Alan Cox contacted the head Linux programmer at Adobe that would be helpful.
I also think you guys (we) are winning the Open Source versus proprietary war, slowly but surely. At the moment, that doesn't make my Linux desktop experience suck much less.
Hugh
Alan Cox wrote:
card. And I can't imagine the time it would take to come up with a complete drop in replacement for Flash.
Probably a lot less now than before as a lot of the documentation has finally been published - presumably because Adobe finally realised that a mostly open microsoft spec versus a totally proprietary Adobe one was a bad idea ;). I'd rather reimplement Flash than Nvidia drivers - by a large margin.
Also, Firefox allows a single bad plugin to make the brower unusable. Maybe it shouldn't do that? Seems to me there's a legitimate argument to be made there.
FC10 uses the plugger stuff to try and keep them apart (its important for security too) however the interface plugins used is a very old, rather inelegant hack from way back when. Easy for firefox to move from it (and indeed it basically has with the extensions model of its own) but your proprietary plugins don't move themselves.
I don't think the "that's proprietary, deal with it" arguments are helpful.
Unfortunately that is reality for a lot of this. There are some things you can do to isolate misbehaving plugins but there are a lot of things you can't fix that easily including some of the less nice properties of the flash plugin.
Increasingly flash isn't needed. The javascript DOM can do a lot in javascript that used to justify flash. With SVG graphics much of the animation and gaming is going that way, with Firefox and HTML now going the theora path the video will become less important too.
Alan
On Tue, 2009-04-14 at 11:58 -0700, Hugh Caley wrote:
Guess I'll just go look at Youtube with my javascript DOM/SVG viewer and ... wait ;)
Personally, I think if Alan Cox contacted the head Linux programmer at Adobe that would be helpful.
I also think you guys (we) are winning the Open Source versus proprietary war, slowly but surely. At the moment, that doesn't make my Linux desktop experience suck much less.
---- as a counterpoint but probably unhelpful is my opinion that...
- every time I go to youtube.com, the stuff works fine.
- I no longer get the race conditions FF 3.07/Fedora 10 but when I had problems with FF, they always seemed to be related to AdobeReader plugin in FF which I just simply removed and my problems went away. PDF files downloaded and AdobeReader opened in its own memory space instead of within Firefox.
- I'm using KDE 4.x on Fedora 10 and I don't think the Linux desktop experience sucks at all.
- I don't tell Alan Cox what to do about anything and I wouldn't expect him to listen to me if I did.
Craig
Hugh Caley wrote:
Guess I'll just go look at Youtube with my javascript DOM/SVG viewer and ... wait ;)
FYI, YouTube works fine with Gnash, assuming you have gstreamer-plugins-ugly, gstreamer-plugins-bad and gstreamer-ffmpeg installed. (Yes, some videos there need one of the "bad" plugins.)
Kevin Kofler
On Tue, 2009-04-14 at 11:23 -0700, Hugh Caley wrote:
Proprietary is here; we need to deal with it.
Yes, but because of its nature, we only have few ways to "deal with it". If we're lucky, it works. If we're not, it doesn't, and we probably can't do anything about it (we can only do workarounds if we know how to use it, even if we don't know how it works, and some things just don't give you all the information you need). If we're more unlucky, we can't do a damn thing about it.
Now, my own point is that a single Linux user has about zip power to influence Adobe. I think Redhat and to a lesser extent the Mozilla organization has a lot more. There should be direct talks between these commercial operations about problems like these, and if there have been, it'd be nice to know.
I wouldn't be surprised if Redhat, et al, have tried to deal with closed source companies. I also wouldn't be surprised if they don't have a great deal of luck, either.
Also, Firefox allows a single bad plugin to make the brower unusable. Maybe it shouldn't do that? Seems to me there's a legitimate argument to be made there.
Yes, though you're chatting to the wrong people, now. That's a Firefox issue, and you'd need to take it up with them.
Have a look at Google's browser. Or, since it's not for Linux, have a look at what they say about their browser: Tabs run as independent processes. One can't crash the other. You can kill one without stuffing up the others, etc.
2009/4/14 Tim ignored_mailbox@yahoo.com.au:
On Tue, 2009-04-14 at 11:23 -0700, Hugh Caley wrote:
Proprietary is here; we need to deal with it.
<snip>
I wouldn't be surprised if Redhat, et al, have tried to deal with closed source companies.
They must have done or still do:
Name : flash-plugin Repo : rhel-i386-client-supplementary-5
Name : acroread Repo : rhel-i386-client-supplementary-5
(For the uninitiated, those are Red Hat provided "official" packages for Adobe Flash and Adobe Acrobat Reader for Red Hat Enterprise Linux)
To get the rights to package and distribute those, they must at least have a working (or commercial) relationship with Adobe.
On Wed, 2009-04-15 at 07:06 +0930, Tim wrote:
On Tue, 2009-04-14 at 11:23 -0700, Hugh Caley wrote:
Proprietary is here; we need to deal with it.
Yes, but because of its nature, we only have few ways to "deal with it". If we're lucky, it works. If we're not, it doesn't, and we probably can't do anything about it (we can only do workarounds if we know how to use it, even if we don't know how it works, and some things just don't give you all the information you need). If we're more unlucky, we can't do a damn thing about it.
Now, my own point is that a single Linux user has about zip power to influence Adobe. I think Redhat and to a lesser extent the Mozilla organization has a lot more. There should be direct talks between these commercial operations about problems like these, and if there have been, it'd be nice to know.
I wouldn't be surprised if Redhat, et al, have tried to deal with closed source companies. I also wouldn't be surprised if they don't have a great deal of luck, either.
Also, Firefox allows a single bad plugin to make the brower unusable. Maybe it shouldn't do that? Seems to me there's a legitimate argument to be made there.
Yes, though you're chatting to the wrong people, now. That's a Firefox issue, and you'd need to take it up with them.
Have a look at Google's browser. Or, since it's not for Linux, have a look at what they say about their browser: Tabs run as independent processes. One can't crash the other. You can kill one without stuffing up the others, etc.
From: http://www.google.com/chrome/intl/en/linux.html?hl=en
Google Chrome for Linux is in development and a team of engineers is working hard to bring it to you as soon as possible.
Please enter your email address below and we'll let you know when it's released.
Nataraj
-- [tim@localhost ~]$ uname -r 2.6.27.21-78.2.41.fc9.i686
Don't send private replies to my address, the mailbox is ignored. I read messages from the public lists.
Hugh Caley wrote:
Open-source alternatives are fine, but try to find a new machine that doesn't use an ATi or Nvidia graphics card.
Intel integrated chipsets.
In addition, several older, but still produced, ATI chipsets (up to the r5xx series) have working 3D support in the Free Software radeon driver, and work is ongoing (but not yet usable) on 3D support for the remaining common hardware (current Radeons, i.e. r6xx and newer, thanks to AMD/ATI finally having released specs; Nvidia hardware, by the nouveau project, with no support whatsoever from Nvidia, so don't buy from them!). (WARNING: I strongly recommend not buying hardware for which 3D support is not yet working, it might take longer than expected to complete. Nouveau has been working on 3D support for a while and it's still not ready. Buy an r5xx or older Radeon (basically, the models which do NOT have "HD" in the name) or an Intel integrated chipset (but NOT the GMA500 "Poulsbo").)
Kevin Kofler
While discussing issues related to Adobe Flash Player and Adobe Reader on this list may help bring the problem out to people on this list, it would be most effective to report the problem at respective forums or bugzilla so that the problem gets addressed.
The place to start for Adobe Reader for Linux is: http://forums.adobe.com/community/adobe_reader_forums/adobe_reader_unix
And for Flash Player: http://forums.adobe.com/community/adobe_labs/flashplayer10 OR http://bugs.adobe.com/flashplayer/
Best regards, - Varun
Varun Khaneja wrote:
While discussing issues related to Adobe Flash Player and Adobe Reader on this list may help bring the problem out to people on this list, it would be most effective to report the problem at respective forums or bugzilla so that the problem gets addressed.
+1, problems with proprietary software have to be reported to the company producing it.
Kevin Kofler
On Thu, Apr 16, 2009 at 7:24 PM, Kevin Kofler kevin.kofler@chello.at wrote:
Varun Khaneja wrote:
While discussing issues related to Adobe Flash Player and Adobe Reader on this list may help bring the problem out to people on this list, it would be most effective to report the problem at respective forums or bugzilla so that the problem gets addressed.
+1, problems with proprietary software have to be reported to the company producing it.
Kevin Kofler
Very interesting. While what you say is true to some extent, I'm afraid I don't agree completely. Isn't what you mentioned a case with open source software too?
The problems need to be reported where they can be addressed: In case of proprietary software, it is the organization's forum or bug base. In case of open source software, it is the software's bug base.
Best, - Varun
-----Original Message----- From: fedora-list-bounces@redhat.com [mailto:fedora-list-bounces@redhat.com] On Behalf Of Hugh Caley Sent: Tuesday, April 14, 2009 11:23 AM To: fedora-list@redhat.com Subject: Re: Firefox 3 hogging 90% CPU, can anything be done about this?
Open-source alternatives are fine, but try to find a new machine that doesn't use an ATi or Nvidia graphics card.
I'm not sure where you get your data, but Intel integrated graphics outnumbers ATI and nVidia both (not together, though it gets close at times) by a wide margin.
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/819/1024819/graphics-market-booming -while
http://www.i4u.com/article19455.html
However, what this has to do with Firefox, Flash or Adobe Reader is not clear. Are you getting this problem on machines with ATI and nVidia graphics cards and no others?
_ Paul
Paul Blondé wrote:
-----Original Message----- From: fedora-list-bounces@redhat.com [mailto:fedora-list-bounces@redhat.com] On Behalf Of Hugh Caley Sent: Tuesday, April 14, 2009 11:23 AM To: fedora-list@redhat.com Subject: Re: Firefox 3 hogging 90% CPU, can anything be done about this?
Open-source alternatives are fine, but try to find a new machine that doesn't use an ATi or Nvidia graphics card.
I'm not sure where you get your data, but Intel integrated graphics outnumbers ATI and nVidia both (not together, though it gets close at times) by a wide margin.
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/819/1024819/graphics-market-booming -while
http://www.i4u.com/article19455.html
However, what this has to do with Firefox, Flash or Adobe Reader is not clear. Are you getting this problem on machines with ATI and nVidia graphics cards and no others?
_ Paul
The problem with Flash is it is video intensive. It requires a good video system.
FWIW, I have a Dell that has an integrated Intel Video controller that won't work properly with Linux. Installing an older Nvidia card and using the legacy driver from Nvidia (rpmfusion) made the system seem like a brand new computer.
Since installing No Script and Flash Block plugins, I find that Firefox never uses many resources. Over 170 tabs open and Firefox is only using about 3% of my resources. I would have to check on my home system but it is much better since installing the tools. There were times that it was so slow due to flash.
It is surprising the number of flash based ads and other items on many web pages. It can quickly add a massive load onto your system.
On Tue, 21 Apr 2009 09:35:10 -0600 Robin Laing wrote:
Since installing No Script and Flash Block plugins
Isn't that a bit redundant? Noscript can be set to block flash.
I used to install both NoScript and Flashblock myself.
The reason? Even when I "trust" a site, I still don't want it loading Flash whenever it wants. Bogs down my browsing. So even when I trust a site, Flashblock keeps the extra flash games and ads from running, unless I want it to.
I eventually got rid of Flashblock -- I discovered NoScript has a "disable automatic stuff even on trusted sites" option, so I turn that on. It works similar to Flashblock -- flash is replaced by a clickable box, which I can use to enable the flash video. I do turn off the "are you sure you want to run this flash video?" message though.
NoScript on its own works just fine, and does all I need it to. Very handy.