Announced by the Free Software Foundation earlier today is Gnash. Gnash is a GNU Flash (Macromedia) movie player. Gnash is compliant with SWF version 7 and high-quality imaging -- it is also considered one of the free software movement's high priority projects. Although Gnash is still heavily under development, none of them support features greater than version 4, while this project uses GameSWF and supports many of the v7 features. Below are some of Gnash's stated features.

Runs standalone

Gnash can run standalone to play flash movies.

Firefox plugin

Gnash can also run as a plugin from within Firefox.

SWF v7 compliant

Gnash can play many current flash movies.

XML Message server

Gnash also supports an XML based message system as is documented in the Flash Format specification.

High Quality Output

Gnash uses OpenGL for rendering the graphics.

Free Software

Gnash is 100% free software. For more information on the GPL, go to the Free Software Foundation web site.

Available from the Gnash home-page is a tarball snapshot (taken on December 26, 2005) but for the most accurate testing we had acquired the source-code from their CVS server. Below are a few of our screenshots from its initial run.

In addition to offering a wealth of integrated features, and best of all being FOSS, Gnash offers the ability to run with x86_64 hardware and software, which presently isn't available through Macromedia's proprietary Linux software. For those interested in the official Linux Macromedia Flash software, Tinic Uro had recently announced in his blog that v8.5 is presently being worked on (rather than v8.0) and there will be a 64-bit build to come, however, this is all coming after the Windows and Macintosh release. The Gnash project maintainer, Rob Savoye, has made a plea to Linux users and developers that with a bit more of assistance, the program could be completed within a matter of a few months. Ending off this piece, below is the output with the present options available when running Gnash.

gnash

no input file
gnash -- a standalone OpenGL player.

usage: gnash [options] movie_file.swf

Plays a SWF (Shockwave Flash) movie using OpenGL
options:

-h Print this info.
-s <factor> Scale the movie up/down by the specified factor
-c Produce a core file instead of letting SDL trap it
-d num Number of milli-seconds to delay in main loop
-a Turn antialiasing on/off. (obsolete)
-v Be verbose; i.e. print log messages to stdout
-va Be verbose about movie Actions
-vp Be verbose about parsing the movie
-ml <bias> Specify the texture LOD bias (float, default is -1)
-p Run full speed (no sleep) and log frame rate
-e Use SDL Event thread
-1 Play once; exit when/if movie reaches the last frame
-r <0|1|2> 0 disables renderering & sound (good for batch tests)
1 enables rendering & sound (default setting)
2 enables rendering & disables sound
-t <sec> Timeout and exit after the specified number of seconds
-b <bits> Bit depth of output window (16 or 32, default is 16)

keys:
CTRL-Q Quit/Exit
CTRL-W Quit/Exit
ESC Quit/Exit
CTRL-P Toggle Pause
CTRL-R Restart the movie
CTRL-[ or kp- Step back one frame
CTRL-] or kp+ Step forward one frame
CTRL-A Toggle antialiasing (doesn't work)
CTRL-T Debug. Test the set_variable() function
CTRL-G Debug. Test the get_variable() function
CTRL-M Debug. Test the call_method() function
CTRL-B Toggle background color