Play swf games in Trisquel 8
Hey everyone,
I don't know if it's possible or not, I downloaded a game from a website that comes in a swf file. Trying to open it with VLC didn't gave me the expected result... Is if possible to play these games in Trisquel 8? Using only free software of course.
Thanks.
Have you tried gnash?
$ sudo apt install gnash
$ gnash file.swf
Lightspark is in the repository too:
Lightspark supports most of ActionScript 3.0 and has a Mozilla-compatible plug-in. It will fall back on Gnash, a free SWF player on ActionScript 1.0 and 2.0 (AVM1) code.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightspark#Features
Don't hold your breath: the odds for having the Flash game (is it free software?) run in Gnash or Lightspark are small
Lightspark might work. But the best way to deal with Flash apps is to redirect them to /dev/null
Thanks everyone who gave a reply.
Gnash did the trick very well :)
nadebula.1984 why do you mention "redirect them to /dev/null"? Sorry but I have no idea what you are talking about :-P
This is a joke that can be found on gnu.org
I'd just like to mention that SWF files contain software. If the SWF file is proprietary (almost always the case), then any execution of it involves running proprietary software.
Thanks, please clarify, running a swf game in gnash is similar to running a nes game ROM in a nes free software emulator? Or is there a difference?
Thanks.
> Thanks, please clarify, running a swf game in gnash is similar to running a
> nes game ROM in a nes free software emulator?
Running a proprietary game in a free software emulator doesn't address the freedom issue either. An emulator doesn't give you the ability or legal right to modify and redistrubute the game.
I'm not quite sure but if you think about it, there is actually now way that gnash can just "forward" the execution of the swf code since then gnash itself would not be neccessary and the OS could just understand the code on its own.
So gnash has to be some kind of translater or pipe and it sure won't execute malicous code intentionally, since it is free software.
The question is rather: can it execute malicous code unintentionally, i.e. is it for gnash ok if the swf file wants to access your file system and do data manipulation.
For an emulator it sure is not since no nes rom would ever want to do that if it's a valid nes rom.
For the swf file i suspect the same but i don't know for sure.
However, this only matters if privacy is your primary goal.
Many people here have freedom as their primary goal and believe that the execution of any proprietary code, no matter if it is sandboxed or not, is not acceptable.
It's your choice.
Even if we manage to reverse-engineer the proprietary games to make them playable using free software, they are still proprietary, because their copyright holders don't re-license it under free licenses. And I don't think Gnash or free emulators, etc. can be solutions to the ultimate problem. Those free software such as emulators can be classified as "trapped free software", because they require non-free software (the dumped ROMs, for instance) to function.
Even if those proprietary games become "public domain" one day, the problem persists. This is possibly because the source code is lost way before that, or there is no hardware to support them. We call this "digital dark age".
Thanks guys.
Well, it's truth that I see Software Freedom as a way to the end of Software Security, and not as an end by itself. To that end if I really must use a swf file I will gnash and protect it with FIrejail just to be on the safe side. But better yet I will avoid using it. Thanks anyway :)