this post was submitted on 21 Jan 2024
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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[–] [email protected] 91 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Fun fact- Dinnerbone, from Minecraft, works on this for free!

[–] [email protected] 15 points 9 months ago

I was wandering if it's him.

[–] [email protected] 45 points 9 months ago (1 children)

This project just warms the cockles of my nerdy old heart :)

Bringing a crappy CRAPPY old protocol to life with awesome, secure, new 100% FLOSS technology so boatloads of homegrown art and culture can be saved?

YES PLEASE! :)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (2 children)

But I thought ppl didn't do work for free...

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago

Open source is the antitheses to so many modern adags.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

They certainly can if it's a passion project! :)

[–] [email protected] 40 points 9 months ago

Wow, I'm amazed by the number of contributors that a relatively niche product like this has managed to gather - very cool!

[–] [email protected] 34 points 9 months ago

Ruffle is one of the most important pieces of game preservation currently out there, and it warms my heart to see it constantly improving!

[–] [email protected] 29 points 9 months ago (4 children)

Are flash games still a thing? I remember those old sticky fighting flash games on newsgroupe.

Someone kind enough in webdev to elaborate why someone would care to revive/reimplemente old flash player tech?

[–] [email protected] 63 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Adobe Flash Player was deprecated some years ago, so there is no longer any functioning official software that can play Flash games. The modern equivalent are mobile games.

The reason why reimplementing it is a worthy thing to do is to preserve old software, same reason why console emulators exist.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago (1 children)

No, the modern equivalent is Web HTML5 games.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago (1 children)

From a technical point of view you are right. But commercially, I am pretty sure many companies and developers that used to make Flash games now make mobile games. There are many mobile games that are ports of old Flash games.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

I see mobile games as the commercial successor of Facebook games. But the spirit of flash games stated in the Web scene for sure.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Some? It was more than 10 years ago iirc.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 9 months ago (3 children)

Wikipedia says at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Flash#End_of_life that the EOL was announced in 2017 and took effect in 2020, much less than 10 years ago.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago

Same section also has this:

In November 2011, about a year after Jobs' open letter, Adobe announced it would no longer be developing Flash and advised developers to switch to HTML5.

You can see why someone might think it was ten years ago based off this.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

Yeah but it was an unsecure piece of shit for more than the past decade

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I remember much earlier announces.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

It was on its way out when smartphones and HTML5 became widely adopted. Smartphones didn't support Flash and HTML5 made sure that the things you used to need Flash for were just implemented in web browsers. Maybe you remember something along those lines.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

What I remembered was abandoning Linux NPAPI Flash plugin in 2012. The PPAPI plugin indeed existed for longer time.

[–] sleepyTonia 46 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Game and media preservation, for one. But I'm sure part of it is the technical challenge. There's still websites where you can download those old flash games to run them locally, but one day Adobe Flash player will cease to work on modern operating systems.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Exactly. Flash was hugely popular, there's a wealth of content, media, projects and entire websites made with Flash (not just games) that would otherwise be lost and this unbelievable effort brings all that content back to life.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

I miss the old flash games honestly

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago

Thanks :) !

[–] [email protected] 17 points 9 months ago

Adding to sleepyTonia's comment, many flash games have been preserved through Flashpoint Archive, which is like an epic DRM-free Steam client for flash games (as well as other web game technologies, like the shockwave player). However, Flashpoint uses old flash player binaries that, as stated, may one day stop working as hardware and operating systems evolve. If that happens, it'll be great to have a replacement interpreter ready to go that can be compiled to run on newer tech.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago
[–] [email protected] 15 points 9 months ago (1 children)

blog updates seem to be signed by someone named Dinnerbone

ɐɯ I ʇɥᴉuʞᴉuƃ oɟ ʇɥǝ ɹᴉƃɥʇ pᴉuuǝɹqouǝ ɥǝɹǝ¿

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago

Looks like it. There's a direct link to Nathan Adam's GitHub within that article

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago

Incredible improvements! Love seeing people so dedicated to such an important project

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago

Nice to see older projects being rejuvenated 👍

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

I really like this project, but may be it's just a my desktop problem the nitrome games I downloaded like to lag using it. It's still really cool, though.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (2 children)

The performance is really bad though, can't see it improving any time soon. Maybe it has to do with how it relies on wasm.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago

my experience with it is that it performs significantly better than the official Flash Player

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

I tried a few games that are considered classics and didn't notice any performance problems, maybe open an issue with a test case?