Post by Kevin McAleavey on May 9, 2012 4:09:04 GMT -5
Because numerous banks use Adobe flash for "two factor verification" in banking transactions, as well as other security measures on other sites which use Flash as a security measure for their users, The KNOS Project has been forced to upgrade the Adobe Flash Player included in KNOS to their "11.2.202.228 FINAL VERSION for Linux." Because Adobe never made a Flash Player for BSD, we've always had to use Linux emulation in order to allow the use of the Linux Adobe Flash player in KNOS. And while our unique design prevents Flash security issues from being a problem in KNOS, more sites each day are refusing to serve content to older Flash versions. This version of the Linux Adobe Flash player is necessary because of these requirements as well as Adobe's plans to move all users from previous versions of Flash Player which will render earlier versions obsolete in the coming months. We've been given no choice other than to provide this final version of Adobe Flash in KNOS and cannot make use of earlier, working versions any longer.
Unfortunately, the "11.2.202 FINAL VERSION for Linux" is a horribly defective product which is already adversely affecting video playback on many websites. Adobe has expressed no interest in maintaining or fixing the bugs in this final release. Users of Adobe Flash on both KNOS and on all Linux platforms no longer have access to "hardware acceleration" which is necessary for smooth video display, particularly "full screen" with higher resolution streaming video. In our design for KNOS Secure Desktop Version 9, we have streamlined kernel level video piping and provided all means possible in our design to make the impact of Adobe's removal of hardware acceleration as tolerable as possible, to the point where many sites will be largely unaffected by their changes. However, some videos will stall, tear, and force CPU utilization to 100% while doing so. There is nothing further we can do in our design to ameliorate this situation on the occasions where it occurs. Fortunately, they're few now.
A discussion on Adobe's issues can be read here:
forums.adobe.com/thread/911321
And their announcement can be read here:
blogs.adobe.com/flashplayer/2012/02/adobe-and-google-partnering-for-flash-player-on-linux.html
Only problem is that the "Pepper API" for Google Chrome is experimental, extremely "beta" and is not yet ready for "prime time." The KNOS Project currently is shipping the "Chromium" browser which does not yet have "Pepper support" because it isn't yet fully functional in "Chrome" and there is no "Chrome browser" as yet for BSD. Further, the Chromium project is not permitted to use or ship modules written for "Chrome." Therefore, there are currently no "new PPAPI" versions of Adobe available to us at this time even if they were functional. Once they become available we will update KNOS if we're satisfied that they work better than our own solution to this problem.
The issue with this last release of Adobe's Flash Player is that because they've chosen to disable all hardware acceleration for video despite our own ability to work around their bugs, videos must be decoded by Flash player on the CPU rather than on the video card's internal "GPU." Video card GPU's are far more powerful than most consumer CPU's and thus using hardware acceleration normally allows the video card's GPU to perform the decoding and rendering work resulting in decent video performance. By not permitting this, all decoding and pixel-mapping must now be done by your computer's CPU and as a result, the CPU can be easily driven to "saturation" at 100% which will cause video and the system to stall until the overload passes during transitions and fast video motion. When rendering MP4 videos which require even more decoding, this overload is even more severe than native "FLV" lower resolution video and can result in very poorly performing video playback.
We have mitigated this problem as best as is possible by designing KNOS to use multiple threads, and on multiple core computers in our 64 bit version, by creating as many threads on all available cores to do this work as is possible. Therefore, if you have a relatively modern multicore CPU running KNOS 64 bit at a fairly decent CPU speed above 2.66 GHz, then you'll probably never notice any issues with Adobe's poorly designed "Final version." However, those on older, slower computers on 32 bit KNOS, this issue will be more noticeable. We wanted to explain why and what this was all about. At the moment, we've had to hold up the release of KNOS Secure Desktop version 9 in order to continue optimizing our workarounds for this most unpleasant surprise.
We also want to assure our customers that more and more sites are transitioning to HTML5 and WEBM video which has been supported in KNOS fully since 2010. Further, if you have the option of downloading Flash videos and then playing them back directly in KNOS' Movie player, then downloaded Flash videos will play just fine on even older machines since we have our own FLV codecs built into KNOS. The problem resides solely in Adobe's Flash plugin product for browsers. We still hope that enough complaints will be placed at Adobe's feet to cause them to at least consider fixing the bugs in their "Final release" before abandoning it entirely. We also believe that this decision, coupled with their increasing problems on other platforms will be the final nail in the Flash coffin that brings HTML5 video to the internet and eliminates the need for Flash altogether.
Unfortunately, the "11.2.202 FINAL VERSION for Linux" is a horribly defective product which is already adversely affecting video playback on many websites. Adobe has expressed no interest in maintaining or fixing the bugs in this final release. Users of Adobe Flash on both KNOS and on all Linux platforms no longer have access to "hardware acceleration" which is necessary for smooth video display, particularly "full screen" with higher resolution streaming video. In our design for KNOS Secure Desktop Version 9, we have streamlined kernel level video piping and provided all means possible in our design to make the impact of Adobe's removal of hardware acceleration as tolerable as possible, to the point where many sites will be largely unaffected by their changes. However, some videos will stall, tear, and force CPU utilization to 100% while doing so. There is nothing further we can do in our design to ameliorate this situation on the occasions where it occurs. Fortunately, they're few now.
A discussion on Adobe's issues can be read here:
forums.adobe.com/thread/911321
And their announcement can be read here:
blogs.adobe.com/flashplayer/2012/02/adobe-and-google-partnering-for-flash-player-on-linux.html
Only problem is that the "Pepper API" for Google Chrome is experimental, extremely "beta" and is not yet ready for "prime time." The KNOS Project currently is shipping the "Chromium" browser which does not yet have "Pepper support" because it isn't yet fully functional in "Chrome" and there is no "Chrome browser" as yet for BSD. Further, the Chromium project is not permitted to use or ship modules written for "Chrome." Therefore, there are currently no "new PPAPI" versions of Adobe available to us at this time even if they were functional. Once they become available we will update KNOS if we're satisfied that they work better than our own solution to this problem.
The issue with this last release of Adobe's Flash Player is that because they've chosen to disable all hardware acceleration for video despite our own ability to work around their bugs, videos must be decoded by Flash player on the CPU rather than on the video card's internal "GPU." Video card GPU's are far more powerful than most consumer CPU's and thus using hardware acceleration normally allows the video card's GPU to perform the decoding and rendering work resulting in decent video performance. By not permitting this, all decoding and pixel-mapping must now be done by your computer's CPU and as a result, the CPU can be easily driven to "saturation" at 100% which will cause video and the system to stall until the overload passes during transitions and fast video motion. When rendering MP4 videos which require even more decoding, this overload is even more severe than native "FLV" lower resolution video and can result in very poorly performing video playback.
We have mitigated this problem as best as is possible by designing KNOS to use multiple threads, and on multiple core computers in our 64 bit version, by creating as many threads on all available cores to do this work as is possible. Therefore, if you have a relatively modern multicore CPU running KNOS 64 bit at a fairly decent CPU speed above 2.66 GHz, then you'll probably never notice any issues with Adobe's poorly designed "Final version." However, those on older, slower computers on 32 bit KNOS, this issue will be more noticeable. We wanted to explain why and what this was all about. At the moment, we've had to hold up the release of KNOS Secure Desktop version 9 in order to continue optimizing our workarounds for this most unpleasant surprise.
We also want to assure our customers that more and more sites are transitioning to HTML5 and WEBM video which has been supported in KNOS fully since 2010. Further, if you have the option of downloading Flash videos and then playing them back directly in KNOS' Movie player, then downloaded Flash videos will play just fine on even older machines since we have our own FLV codecs built into KNOS. The problem resides solely in Adobe's Flash plugin product for browsers. We still hope that enough complaints will be placed at Adobe's feet to cause them to at least consider fixing the bugs in their "Final release" before abandoning it entirely. We also believe that this decision, coupled with their increasing problems on other platforms will be the final nail in the Flash coffin that brings HTML5 video to the internet and eliminates the need for Flash altogether.