It’s been a week with a lot of novelty. I got a new monitor, a nice 21″ LCD and it seemed appropriate to install a more recent, so to speak new, Linux distribution to go with it. I decided for Kubuntu and so far I quite like it.

I’ve been a Linux user for more than a decade, but for last few years I haven’t really used my machine for everyday browsing. One reason were bookmarks accumulated in my powerbook and the other absence of Flash plugin for x86-64 platform. Flash plugin is still missing, but clever folks contrived a way to use the i386 one. Basically you install compatibility libraries and another, 32 bit version of Firefox.

Still, I mostly use the one without a plugin and so far it has certainly been an eye opening experience. Once upon a time sites fell in two categories, those made more or less completely with Flash and others, which didn’t use it at all. I have no idea when this changed, but it’s certainly not true anymore. These days most sites seem to be combination of both approaches.

As with Javascript it can work quite nicely when used sensibly and in an unobtrusive way. However, there are lots of sites like this , which you simply can’t use without Flash. With proliferation of video and widgets, that play ever more important roles, I feel that web is becoming less open with every day.

I probably wouldn’t mind that much if Flash player itself was open (I don’t really care about development tools). Well, when all else fails, you can always hope.