I feel compelled to give some recognition to Gnash developers for
developing a Free substitute for something that no one seems to like,
yet remains important for living in today's world.
I'm not (yet) running a fully Free system, as I'm using a distro that
supports Adobe Flash download and install. I've signed up for a
EOMA68-based laptop (https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68/micro-desktop)
which won't run Flash, regardless of operating system, because Adobe
won't provide it for this architecture (without an expensive contract).
And I've been encouraging others to sign up too, but I wanted to be able
to advise people on what a Flash-free life would entail. So I
uninstalled the Flash browser plugin and installed the Gnash plugin.
Now, how to test Gnash? What are the must-have websites that use
Flash? YouTube is critical, but no longer requires Flash. But if you
have young children and you live in the U.S., pbskids.org has lots of
Flash-based games, and it would be a hard sell to parents of small
children that they can't use this web site.
My own kids have outgrown these games, but I dutifully signed on to a
randomly-selected one, "Kart Kingdom". There I was, watching an
animated go-cart and thinking, "I don't really want to be here, but I
need to just test it out so I can tell people with kids that an EOMA68
system will work for them." Then it occurred to me, "As much as people
complain about Flash, I bet some Gnash developers don't really want to
be developing Flash either, but they're doing it because it's critical
to enable people to use Free software. Also, it's not an easy thing to do."
So three cheers for Gnash developers, for doing tough, thankless work!
For the record, "Kart Kingdom" played the same with Flash and with
Gnash. Also, after almost a week, I really haven't noticed the lack of
Flash. And of course I no longer get Flash updates. I wish I had done
this earlier.
Jim Garrett
