Lightspark plugs into BBC video streams

The developers at the Lightspark project have published a major update, version 0.6.0.1, to their open source Flash player implementation for Linux; this adds initial support for desktop applications that use the Adobe AIR runtime. Another notable addition in Lightspark 0.6.0.1 is the introduction of support for the video player used by the BBC on its web site, but the developers note that users will need to enable AdBlock to use it as it does not support the features required by Flash advertisments.

The new release also includes support for LLVM 3.1. The ability to play RTMP streams, which was added in version 0.5.3 and requires the librtmp library, is now enabled by default. Improvements have also been made to string and name­space pool­ing to reduce overall memory use, as well as fonts support, serialisation robustness and matrix handling. Additionally, the developers say that the update fixes a number of bugs "both internal and visible to users", such as problems related to PulseAudio flat volumes; these prevented Lightspark from manipulating the system volume.

More details about this major update can be found in an announcement post on the Technology Temple blog and in the release notes. Lightspark 0.6.0.1 can be downloaded as a source tar ball or as a PPA package for Ubuntu from the project's Launchpad site. Lightspark is licensed under the LGPLv3.

See also:

• Gnash 0.8.10 GNU Flash player released, a report from The H.
• Chrome only future for Flash on Linux, a report from The H.
• Adobe stops porting AIR to desktop Linux, a report from The H.

Note: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated how AdBlock needed to be set when viewing the BBC site.

(crve)