The 64-bit plugins for all operating systems are coming fast and furious now. After holding out (or holding up?) for so long, the commercial vendors are finally getting the message.
Among those who actually deserve some credit for getting the job done is Mike Melanson of Adobe, the principal developer for Flash on Linux. His little “victory dance” can be found here, along with a link for download. Mike has the distinction of being first, I think, in getting his 64-bit product out the actual door.
As I said in the comments on Mike’s blog, his efforts have earned him consideration for divine status, in a pagan Roman kind of way.
Testing so far: Everything works. Of course. Even SciFi. So far the only one of the new 64-bit plugin releases that’s actually useful for something beyond pure research.
Just started testing this on x86_64 Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid). The release I’m working with is jre-6u12_b03 (22 Dec 2008). The archive name is jre-6u12-ea-bin-b03-linux-amd64-22_dec_2008.bin. The direct download link is here (for now!).
The new plugin file is now called libnpjp2.so. It is now located under $JRE_HOME/lib/amd64. On my system that would be /usr/java/jre1.6.0_12_amd64/lib/amd64/libnpjp2.so. The actual archive unwinds with the directory name jre1.6.0_12.
Installation is as simple as symlinking from that file to where ever your system reads 64-bit browser plugins. On Ubuntu 8.x this would normally be /usr/lib64/firefox-addons/plugins.
Here’s the main forum thread.
After installing was able to watch ol’ Duke do his little dance by going to the plugin test page.
Although I’d really love to use the packaged versions of Java available for my distribution, these are unfortunately too inflexible, and eccentric, for my purposes, just as they are over on Red Hat (jpackage)– especially given that I still need to switch easily from 64 to 32 bit for some applications. Of course, no distro is perfect. Although there’s always time for someone to prove me wrong on that…
Initial Test Results: Passes on most counts. Still fails to properly run Runescape, and as a result that site now becomes the new gold standard for compatibility.