Adobe releases beta of Flash for Linux

Adobe Systems has released a beta of a Flash Player 9 for Linux and said that it is working on 64-bit editions of Flash.

The final Flash Player 9 on Linux is due early next year. According to an FAQ put out by Adobe, the Linux version will support the same features as Flash on Macintosh and Windows.

The beta of Flash Player 9 for Linux, released Wednesday, supports most of the features except a full-screen mode and support for SSL (secure sockets layer) encryption.

The company declined to indicate when the final version of future 64-bit versions will be available.

People can develop applications using Adobe's Flex 2 software developer kit, and those Flash programs will run on systems using Microsoft Windows, Apple Computer's Mac OS or Linux, Adobe said.