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The new player, states Adobe, provides efficient memory utilisation, advanced features for graphics, video and text, as well as the ActionScript Virtual Machine (AVM2), which supports up to 10 times faster scripting performance.

Adobe recently contributed source code from the AVM2 to the Mozilla Foundation's new Tamarin open source project, which hopes to accelerate the development of the standards-based technology for creating rich Web applications.

'With the proliferation of video on the Web, Adobe Flash Player is quickly becoming the de facto industry standard for delivering engaging interactive content and applications,' said Emmy Huang, senior product manager

Flash Player 9 will be included in the Novell SUSE and Red Hat Linux distros later this year. The Mac and Windows versions were released last June, and Adobe's Mike Melanson discusses the reasons for the long wait for a Linux equivalent in his Penguin.SWF blog.

Adobe Flash Player 9 for Linux is available from adobe.com/go/getflashplayerlinux. The standalone and debug versions of Adobe Flash Player for developers are available from adobe.com/support/flashplayer/downloads.html.

Linux developers can also download the free Adobe Flex 2 Software Developers Kit (SDK) and Flex Data Services 2 Express for creating, testing and deploying rich Internet applications (RIAs) from adobe.com/products/flex/productinfo/overview.