Flash 10

Adobe released generation 10 of its Flash player software today.

Good:
Adobe provides a "yum" channel for the Flash player, so my PCs were automatically updated. This is nice and responsible: Many security problems on home computers are actually due to 3rd party software which isn't automatically patched when the user performs a base system update. After fixing a problem (see below), Flash 10 seemed to run fine.

Bad:
Unfortunately, Adobe still doesn't seem to provide x86_64 versions of the player. And consequently, 64-bit PCs need to have a bunch of -- otherwise irrelevant -- compatibility software installed. The need to maintain parallel 32 and 64 software worlds can also be tricky.

I wonder what's keeping Adobe from making life a little bit easier for users by adding a 64-bit download option. Which reminds me that it's probably time to take a closer look at the The Lively Kernel and Moonlight soon.

Flash 10 systematically crashed on my home PC, until I added a 32-bit curl package to the system (Flash 10 seems to link to libcurl -- something that earlier versions didn't). Strangely, the Flash RPM package doesn't carry a dependency for libcurl, although it's clearly needed.