Re: [gentoo-amd64] AMD browsing and multimedia

[Boyd Stephen Smith Jr.]

On Friday 22 December 2006 13:03, "Mark Knecht" <markknecht@×××××.com> 
wrote about '[gentoo-amd64] AMD browsing and multimedia':
> Hi,
>    I'm wondering what the best solutions are right now for a full
> featured browser in GentooAMD64?
>
>    I use a number of Investing web sites. Some of them won't even try
> to run certain features telling me I'm on an unsupported OS. The ones
> that do try to run the features seem to fail in one area or another.
> Is it possible to make all 3 of these technologies work in a single
> browser on AMD64?
>
> 1) Java
> 2) Flash
> 3) 32-bit streaming media?

#1 "Just works" for me on konqueror.  I believe the relevant USE flag is 
nsplugin.  I believe the relevant package is anything satisfying 
virtual/jre with the nsplugin USE flag non-binary.

#2 Adobe's flash doesn't work in 64-bit land, so you have to have  some 
32-bit compatibility layer.  At one time, that was as simple as using 
firefox-bin.  Even now, you can just do the whole system as x86 CHOST (is 
which case everything is 32-bit) or set up a 32-bit chroot 
(well-documented, but a little wasteful on disk space) or even use the 
un-supoorted package ported from debian that allows 64-bit konqueror to 
load 32-bit plugins.

#3 You'll have to be more specific.  The only media I've ever had problems 
with are Microsoft-specific, generally undocumented formats, and some of 
those even work now that we've got a reversed-engineered source-based 
implementation.  Standard media formats and, in particular, open media 
formats have always "just worked" for me, although they do often have an 
associated USE flag.

>    It seems that if I run firefox-bin I get most Flash and streaming
> media, or at least as much as I think I need. However I definitely do
> not get Java.

Try getting a 32-bit -bin jre/jdk.  It may provide a plugin (via the 
nsplugin USE flag) that can be symlinked to the correct place to work in 
your firefox-bin.

>    It seems that if I run firefox compiled for 64-bit then Flash
> doesn't work and I don't think all Java does either, or at least on my
> system.

Adobe's flash just doesn't work in 64-bit land.  You might try gnash 
though, it's just as much of a memory and CPU hog, and it certainly 
allowed websites to annoy the !@#$% out of me with ads the few days I had 
it installed.  That is, it did work as a flash player (mostly); it was not 
able to play items from YouTube, so I just don't watch YouTube.

HTH

-- 
"If there's one thing we've established over the years,
it's that the vast majority of our users don't have the slightest
clue what's best for them in terms of package stability."
-- Gentoo Developer Ciaran McCreesh