Just read the word straight from the source, Tinic Uro. The next version of Flash player to appear on Linux will be 8.5. I know your average Slashbot could care less, and thinks Flash is just an advertising devil, but I don’t doubt many others have been waiting for another release.

I think this is a good choice. I’ve heard version 7 of the player is pretty buggy, so I know I wouldn’t want to dig into that code again just to churn out our friend, the 8-ball. Tinic says that they’re compiling 8.5 with the open source compiler gcc. Between that and Eclipse, it looks like someone’s a big open source fan over there. Either that, or they’ve realized that if they want Flash to become even more cross-platform, they’ve got to standardize as much as possible or they’ll be drowning in the zillions of tools and compiler oddities, and who knows what other muck.