An Adobe developer revealed in his blog that his company will not offer a Flash Player 8 for Linux. Instead, Adobe, which recently acquired Macromedia, plans to release version 8.5 for the open source operating system. Tinic Uro explains the decision with Adobe's intention to avoid further delays of the Flash Player 8.5 for Windows and Mac.
Macromedia also responded to community inquiries about a 64-bit version of the Linux Flash Player. While product manager Emmy Huang simply states that the company has "not announced plans to develop a 64-bit player on Linux," Uro mentioned that the "64 bit versions will take a little longer." He explains the uncertainty with technical difficulties: "Just recompiling will not work unlike what you might think. The main issue here is the x86 JIT in the virtual machine and the mark&sweep garbage collection which are not 64bit aware right now, work on 32bit pointers only," he writes.
