A couple of days ago, I attempted to view some photos on Google StreetView but I realised they use Flash instead of SVG like Google Maps. Frustrated, then I came up with the idea of running Opera portable version with Wine.
I was using Opera portable exclusively when I hadnt migrated to the BSD world. Its a complete package; it contains mail, personal settings...and plugins. So I thought, sounds very "Wine friendly" and why dont I give it a try.
Unfortunately, its very slow on Google StreetView (I guess because there are too many Flash "actions" and it slows down the Wine rendering), but
for videos, it works!
Experiences videos with Flash 9:
- No audio sync issue.
- Minor lagging (but I do experience the lag on Flash 7, so pretty sure its because of my 1.2Ghz Pen M cpu. It would be very smooth on powerful CPUs).
- No freezing problem, you will feel like running another browser. The wine processes take less than 50% cpu usage
Code:
19953 gu 9 96 0 103M 65316K select 1:37 46.73% wine-pthread
29185 root 1 107 0 199M 34948K RUN 88:42 21.53% Xorg
41337 gu 1 105 0 250M 169M select 623:10 17.48% opera
19955 gu 1 4 0 4380K 2628K kqread 0:07 1.07% wineserver
Screenshot
So the verdict is, its very usable.
Ok, so here is the howto
0. Download Opera portable
http://www.opera-usb.com/download.htm
(The version I use is 9.27. If you downloaded 9.5 and it doesnt work, try the older one)
1. Install Wine, of course
2. Lauch Opera with wine
Note: the file to run is
Op.com, not operausb.exe
%wine /opera/path/Op.com
3. Check plugin path by enter the following line into the address box:
opera:config#UserPrefs|PluginPath
Should be "program/plugins" dir
4. Copy the 2 Flash 9 files into the plugin directory:
NPSWF32.dll
flashplayer.xpt
They can be extracted from another Windows machine or you can download here:
http://asternix.org/misc/Flash9.zip
5. That is. Restart Opera and enjoy!