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@Rich, could you also tell me which Linux distribution you are using. Is it Debian based, BSD based, say Ubuntu (KDE, XCE, GNOME), Red Hat (Fedora), Suse, is it Live (Knoppix, Zen, etc). Just in case I can think of any distribution specific issue.

GµårÐïåñ wrote:Actually they are likely to affect them at randomly the same statistical probability on both systems. However, given that the Flash build for Linux is slightly less native than the one on Windows and often tends to lag behind a bit, artifacts tend to extend further than in Windows. For all of its faults, Windows allows the best compatibility when it comes to stuff like this, even compared to say Mac, for the simple fact that all things are generally designed to windows specs before any other platform.

OK, thanks. Was unclear about why the identical diagnostic that we'd use on a Windows issue would solve what appeared to be a platform-specific issue -- as Rich said, a Fedora bug or Flash-on-Fedora bug, which is still possible.

But no reason not to first rule out what you said.

My money is on a OS specific (here Linux) issue than a wider across the board issue. But no way to be sure, it could also be how any OS level hooks that NS may be using that is affecting Linux differently, there is that possibility too, however slight.

Firefox is the default install? How did you install flash? (standalone package, official repository for restricted stuff, custom repository)

GµårÐïåñ wrote:@Rich, could you also tell me which Linux distribution you are using. Is it Debian based, BSD based, say Ubuntu (KDE, XCE, GNOME), Red Hat (Fedora), Suse, is it Live (Knoppix, Zen, etc). Just in case I can think of any distribution specific issue.

OP, several references to it, and UA string all say Fedora.

Ok, even knowing fedora, we don't know which desktop he is using KDE/GNOME/XCE and yes they make a difference. Also as dhouwn pointed out, it depends on how and where he got his flash from. I thought this statement I made earlier would have made that evident:

However, given that the Flash build for Linux is slightly less native than the one on Windows and often tends to lag behind a bit, artifacts tend to extend further than in Windows.

GµårÐïåñ wrote:Ok, even knowing fedora, we don't know which desktop he is using KDE/GNOME/XCE and yes they make a difference.

I read your question as (1) which Linux distro is he using. Sorry if I misread it.

Also as dhouwn pointed out, it depends on how and where he got his flash from.

Figured that was a separate question vs. on which distro. My reading skills must be off today, or I'm getting senile.
Sad, having been able to read an encyclopedia at age 5.

I thought this statement I made earlier would have made that evident:

However, given that the Flash build for Linux is slightly less native than the one on Windows and often tends to lag behind a bit, artifacts tend to extend further than in Windows.

It explained why you wanted him to do the diagnostic, and I understood. Still thought that the individual question of which distro had already been answered.

Hardly worth the typing. Please, let's drop this side discussion, I'll buy you a beer , and drop out to let you guys hash it out.

Tom T. wrote:I read your question as (1) which Linux distro is he using. Sorry if I misread it.

Nope you read correctly, I was hoping by asking for the distro I can have a better handle on his global configurations, each distro or custom distro is a bit differently tweaked.

Figured that was a separate question vs. on which distro. My reading skills must be off today, or I'm getting senile.
Sad, having been able to read an encyclopedia at age 5.

Again, you were correct and understood correctly, the reason that is significant is that some distros will open the OS to other than canonical sources (trusted sources) and open it to community, or even OTHER repositories allowing code that is made but not necessary gone through peer review to be installed, that's something you can make by default on a distro or manually per your own configuration, hence part of it will get answered by my question, more specifically we get an answer through dhouwn's question, the overlap will give us a better clue of the source and build of the flash.

It explained why you wanted him to do the diagnostic, and I understood. Still thought that the individual question of which distro had already been answered.

Sorry I didn't elaborate but the reason I said that and followed that most are built for windows specs first was to indicate that they built on different cycles and even codebase. Something I want to make clear, you know LInux, I know you do, but keep in mind that each distro is different in some way. Just because the base is Fedora, BSD, Debian, or what not, doesn't mean that a distro that is running that base is the same as another that runs it. There are hundreds, if not thousands of different variations of Debian based LInux distros, BSD based Linux distros and since Red Hat went business and made Fedora their public bitch, to a lesser extent, but Fedora based distros, although most noobs and even some old school folks, including myself, have pretty much been using Ubuntu for regular stuff, leaving the more hard core stuff for having fun.

Hardly worth the typing. Please, let's drop this side discussion, I'll buy you a beer , and drop out to let you guys hash it out.

Don't be like that, actually I want you to stick with this, if you are willing, so you can see how it goes on the other side of the track But up to you my friend. This wasn't meant to be offensive or to discourage anyone's participation, its just the animal known as Linux support professor

GµårÐïåñ wrote:.... Something I want to make clear, you know LInux, I know you do,

Actually, I don't, never having had time, energy, or motivation to fool around with it. Which is why, if something truly appears to be platform-specific, I would call it to the attention of Linux-friendly teammates.

but keep in mind that each distro is different in some way. Just because the base is Fedora, BSD, Debian, or what not, doesn't mean that a distro that is running that base is the same as another that runs it. There are hundreds, if not thousands of different variations of Debian based LInux distros, BSD based Linux distros and since Red Hat went business and made Fedora their public bitch, to a lesser extent, but Fedora based distros,....

Another reason why I haven't put any time or effort into it. Say what you like about Windows -- and I do, frequently -- there are only a few flavors of each supported version at any given time, minus the OEM cr*pware and tweaks. So once one is familiar, one can speak with some confidence to everyone with that version, without those thousands of variations on the same *nix distro as you cited.

Hardly worth the typing. Please, let's drop this side discussion, I'll buy you a beer , and drop out to let you guys hash it out.

Don't be like that, actually I want you to stick with this, if you are willing, so you can see how it goes on the other side of the track But up to you my friend. This wasn't meant to be offensive or to discourage anyone's participation, its just the animal known as Linux support professor

Your turn to misunderstand me, my friend. Of course I'll watch the thread, as I'm interested in the outcome. If it is in fact a NS issue, then even if IDK Linux, I can remember the next time someone posts similarly, and refer them to this thread. I just meant that I'd stay out of the diagnostic discussion, having done what I could: suggest that Rich contact Fedora support, or possibly Adobe (they won't want to fool with those thousand variations either), since it isn't reproducible on Windows.

Of course no offense was taken!

Tom T. wrote:

GµårÐïåñ wrote:.... Something I want to make clear, you know LInux, I know you do,

Actually, I don't, never having had time, energy, or motivation to fool around with it.

You would rather manually slim down proprietry Windows in unsupported and unrecommended ways rather than create a slim (GNU/*)Linux-based installation that fits your needs? I don't want to force you into anything, but I would recommend you to think about it.
Maybe you could first have give it a go side-by-side with Windows to get used to it and then maybe leave XP for it once XP becomes unsupported (April 2014) because trimming down post-XP Windows (while retaining a working state) is way more of a hassle I would guess.

*RMS interjected.

@Tom, as I said in my earlier post, say what you will about Windows, at least they are consistent with their specs and that's why most vendors will make for them first and THEN go to the others. Unfortunately, that gives Windows a bad name because the bugs tend to surface on their releases first which gives them the appearance of being flawed. Not saying they are not, but pretty consistent as an OS and platform for the most part, if it works, it works great, if it doesn't, it fails miserably. LInux on the other than lends itself to A LOT of tweaking and trimming and this and that but also takes more time, expertise and you can end up having 20 people discussing the same distro only to find that they are dealing with VASTLY different setup, something as you pointed out is largely mitigated by Windows's pretty consistent flavoring.

@dhouwn, I agree that LInux has potential but even as someone who started on it (actually Unix but not to split hairs) and has worked extensively in it, before even the GUI was ever introduced, the old days of manually initializing and forcing xwin on pizza boxes, ah those were the days, and then such interfaces as KDE and GNOME tried to idiot proof it and make it look like the rest and kind of in my opinion took the fun out of it. KDE catered to the windows crowd and GNOME catered to the mac crowd. It has great flexibility and if you know what to do you can make a very tiny less than 100 MB distro that is solid as a rock, but not that easy to do unless you grew up in that culture or have the time to screw with it, admit that its not an easy task for most and that's just the way it is. This is why no matter what we preach about Linux, I am willing to bet that it will NEVER become commonplace or dominant in the mainstream, period. No matter how hard Ubuntu and alike to make it so idiot proof as to attract new users, in the guts of it, its still an unfriendly and dare I say elitist platform.

dhouwn wrote:You would rather manually slim down proprietry Windows in unsupported and unrecommended ways rather than create a slim (GNU/*)Linux-based installation that fits your needs?

Yes.

GµårÐïåñ gave some very good reasons. Plus the number of native apps, vs. having a Win emulator. And the OP's problem, which can't be reproduced on Windows. And the tech support (from OEM, in this case, not from MS.)

And starting with a fully-operational system, then trimming the fat, is a lot easier that building a system from various downloads and repos. For one thing, you can stop any time you want, and still have a working OS. Not so with cobbling together *nix components.

dhouwn wrote: I don't want to force you into anything, ...

How, exactly, could you?

Maybe you could first have give it a go side-by-side with Windows to get used to it and then maybe leave XP for it once XP becomes unsupported (April 2014) because trimming down post-XP Windows (while retaining a working state) is way more of a hassle I would guess.

MS has consistently pushed back the end-of-life for XP (as has MZ for Fx 3.6.x), especially as Vista flopped so badly. They may well push back the April 2014 EOL date. Current stats, among all Windows home users (i. e., clients, not servers):

Win 7 = 49%
XP = 36%
Vista = 15%

New machines bought with Windows OEM preloaded obviously will have Win 7. So if we look at upgrades, Win 7 clearly cannibalized far more from Vista than from XP.

Seeing these numbers, on the off-chance that MS has a brain , I'd offer Vista users a very cheap (free?) upgrade to 7, so they have only two systems to support in that niche, and continue with XP.

Going into its 11th year -- the longest support life of any MS OS *ever*, even going back to DOS days, it's been pretty thoroughly vetted, by both the marketplace and the hackerspace. This month's Patch Tuesday had *no* Critical security updates for the core OS that were XP-exclusive, whereas there were a couple for Vista-7 only.

Old saying: "Never buy the first version of anything", so a new OS would have to be at least three years old, so that the low-hanging fruit has already been picked.

With so many Linux distros out there, as GµårÐïåñ notes, I understand that support is spotty, and holes may go unpatched for a long time. esp. if that distro drops from the marketplace.

In short, as G said, it's a full-time toy for the hard-core. I need to make a living in the Real World (non-IT-related), plus donate time here, not to mention having a life. Not inclined to learn a completely different system from scratch, when I have this one exactly as I like it.

RMS interjected

Why is there a Google search query in your post?

dhouwn wrote:

Tom T. wrote:

GµårÐïåñ wrote:.... Something I want to make clear, you know LInux, I know you do,

Actually, I don't, never having had time, energy, or motivation to fool around with it.

You would rather manually slim down proprietry Windows in unsupported and unrecommended ways rather than create a slim (GNU/*)Linux-based installation that fits your needs? I don't want to force you into anything, but I would recommend you to think about it.
Maybe you could first have give it a go side-by-side with Windows to get used to it and then maybe leave XP for it once XP becomes unsupported (April 2014) because trimming down post-XP Windows (while retaining a working state) is way more of a hassle I would guess.

I know Tom is happy with his copy of Windows (and he would know, since he's thoroughly customised it), but for the benefit of anyone else who may be reading, I'll just mention that there are already prepackaged tiny+fast GNU/Linux distributions. The only one that I've used is Puppy Linux, so I can't speak for the others, but what I found in Puppy, at least, was an impressive list of applications and features, plus access to package repositories so that you can quickly and painlessly download anything else that you want. In less than 150MB - small enough to run entirely from RAM - it fits word and spreadsheet processors (plus quick links to download OpenOffice if you prefer), multimedia players, DVD burning, multiple advanced text editors, a minimal web browser (plus quick links to download Firefox/Seamonkey/Chromium), games, a partition manager, and a stack of other applications.

Of particular interest is Puppy's universal installer, which walks you through installing it onto pretty much any device: USB drive, SD card, hard drive, you name it. Which makes it an excellent rescue system.

I'm running Puppy Linux from an SD card on my laptop, and it picked up and used all of the hardware, seamlessly and silently, except for some of the special keyboard keys. On our desktop system, it initially couldn't see our WiFi adapter, but I had the CD for that adapter, and Puppy used the Windows driver (via ndiswrapper) without any trouble. On the whole, I'm quite happy with Puppy's hardware support.

And if you went through a trimming-down process like Tom did - which would be pretty easy when it's on a USB drive - to get rid of any applications you don't strictly need, then I don't know just how small it would get, but very small indeed.