My thoughts on Slackware, life and everything

Update for Chromium and another Flash security fix

Chromium (and Widevine):

chromium_iconI built new Slackware Chromium packages for the latest update in the Chrome Stable Channel.  The new version is 40.0.2214.111  and comes with several security fixes (among which, a Flash Player update, see below) Both chromium and chromium-widevine-plugin have version 40.0.2214.111 actually – use the matching version numbers as a sign that they will work together. The Widevine plugin reports itself as version “1.4.6.738” in chrome://plugins .

Repeat message: Widevine is a Content Decryption Module (CDM) used by Netflix to stream video to your computer in a Chromium browser window. With my chromium and chromium-widevine-plugin packages you no longer need Chrome, or Firefox with Pipelight, to watch Netflix. The chrome-widevine-plugin is optional. If you don’t need it, then don’t install it. It is closed-source which for some is enough reason to stay away from it. The Chromium package on the other hand, is built from open source software only.

Flash browser plugins:

adobe_flash_8s600x600_2 With Flash it seems to be like my central heating. Last year I needed to connect the waterhose once a month and regulate the pressure in the pipes… it got worse to the point that I needed to re-pressurize every day. Until I called the maintenance guy who fixed a leak permanently. There is yet another leak in the Flash from Adobe and security updates have been added to my repository yesterday: the plugins for chromium (PPAPI) and for mozilla-compatible browsers (NPAPI).

The new Slackware package for chromium-pepperflash-plugin has version 16.0.0.305. The new Slackware package for flashplayer-plugin has version 11.2.202.442.

The update for pipelight can be done manually. As root, run the script:

# pipelight-plugin --update

Next time the pipelight plugin is loaded in your browser, it will update your Windows plugins to their latest versions where needed.

Eric

10 Comments

  1. Didier Spaier

    flashplayer-plugin is now upgraded here, thanks Eric!

  2. Mike Langdon (mlangdn)

    Thanks Eric. 🙂

  3. SL

    10x,
    what about LibreOffice?

  4. Niki Kovacs

    Adobe Flash should be renamed Adobe Tamagotchi.

  5. Ahmad

    Hi Eric,
    First I must say that your provided builts have always run smoothly. Thanks for your efforts. Recently I’ve had a problem with the latest chromium.

    I’ve installed the chromium 40.0.2214.111 with chromium-pepperflash-plugin on Slackware-14.1(with latest patches), running on ThinkPad T61 which uses i915 for intel graphics. I never had problem with your chromium builds, but this one made my screen go black. I use external monitor with the laptop since laptop’s LCD is broken. The Xorg.log.old is attached ( http://pastebin.com/E0C9BE5u )

    I can’t think of anything except new chromium install, obviously, or glibc updates that we had recently. I didn’t post that on linuxquestions. Any ideas?

    Thanks.

  6. alienbob

    Hi Ahmad

    The crashes occur in X.Org, no idea if those are triggered by Chromium or something else.
    I use this version of Chromium without issues on my T400 laptop, also with Intel graphics.

  7. luis

    Hi Eric.
    I have a problem with the last chromium. When Iam playing flash videos and the screen of my laptop power off and no way for power on. I must push the power bottom for shutdown the laptop and power on for work again.
    I used slackware current on toshiba satellite A205 and intel 915 video card.

    Bye from chile.

  8. alienbob

    Hi luis, no idea. That must be an issue with your power management settings.
    Have you measured how many minutes it takes until the laptop screen powers off? Start a video, don’t touch the laptop anymore and start counting.

  9. Ahmad

    Hi Luis,

    I had the same problem with Intel i915 & Kernel (Slackware-14.1)… Xorg.log hinted “GPU hung” error, ‘dmesg’ revealed more. I looked up on Google for those errors, turns out lot of people are having this issue & Kernel bugs were reported. It’s not distro specific (http://askubuntu.com/questions/272200/on-12-10-13-04-with-i915-detected-a-hung-gpu-disabling-acceleration). Switching from UXA to SNA didn’t help. Other solution was to try old kernel, so I have switched back to Slackware-14.0 and it’s smooth sailing from here on.

  10. Luis

    Hi Ahmad.
    Thanks for you answer.
    So, I will follow using firefox like until now.

    Bye.

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