Raspberry Pi OS Update Kills Flash

News
By
published

Gone in a Flash

Raspberry Pi OS No Flash
(Image credit: Future)

The end has finally come for Adobe Flash on the Raspberry Pi. What once powered many memes and early Internet games is no more. With the latest update to Raspberry Pi OS, Adobe Flash has been removed from the official Raspberry Pi operating system but this brings about an issue of its own.

Adobe Flash was once the darling of the late 1990s and early 2000s web. Embedded games, interactive interfaces and full blown applications were built with Flash, but over time it became bloated, buggy and a security risk. The removal of Flash from Raspberry Pi OS has been on the cards for quite some time and with the January 11 update they have finally removed it. The removal of Flash does have one impact on Raspberry Pi OS. The popular Scratch 2 programming application will now no longer work as it relies upon Flash. So before you update your Raspberry Pi to the latest OS, ensure that your projects work with the Scratch online editor.

Looking through the release notes, the other changes to Raspberry Pi OS in this release are largely bug fixes for the new PulseAudio configurations introduced in the December 2020 update. There are a few fixes for the Chromium web browser, notably removal of artifacts in Google Maps 3D view.  An updated Linux Kernel, now 5.4.83 and updated Raspberry Pi firmware keeps your Pi securely up to date. 

Raspberry Pi OS is available from the Raspberry Pi website, where it can be downloaded as a disk image, or via the Raspberry Pi Imager tool.

Les Pounder
Les Pounder

Les Pounder is an associate editor at Tom's Hardware. He is a creative technologist and for seven years has created projects to educate and inspire minds both young and old. He has worked with the Raspberry Pi Foundation to write and deliver their teacher training program "Picademy".

3 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Go I.T. Pro
    This is nothing special flash is dead and has been dead and has been being removed out of all browsers and OS's over the past 30 days.
    Reply
  • One wants to say finally. Flash was nice, it allowed websites to be interactive, but eventually it became a nuisance. It's dead and R.I.P. flash.
    Reply
  • Go I.T. Pro
    The writer just make it Sound like it was a raspberry pi foundation decision only and it is not. It is an industry decision that everyone is implementing. As easy as it is to work with it’s also very easy to put in Malicious code and in my opinion and experience it is probably responsible for 80% of Windows, MAC OS and Linux users getting malware, adware, ransomware and / or virus from. For peoples personal security and to prevent their identity from being stolen this is Long overdue.
    Reply