Why not use swfdec-mozilla? (was Re: Installing Flash on the OLPC)

[Peter Robinson]

>> swfdec{,-mozilla} use gstreamer, are LGPLed, and support most of the
>> Flash 9 features whereas gnash supports only a few of the Flash 9
>> features. swfdec is also the default Flash player on Fedora, and is
>> the preferred flash player on Ubuntu.
>
> Quick clarification.  We discussed making swfdec installed by default
> during the development of Fedora 9, but decided against doing so since
> we felt it wasn't quite ready for that.
>
>> Were there some specific problems with using swfdec? Or was it not
>> under consideration due to some factors?
>
> I'm not sure if it was considered, but as the maintainer of swfdec in
> Fedora I can state that swfdec is very cpu-intensive, and I have my
> doubts whether the performance on the XO would be comparable to gnash's,
> though it might be worth investigating.

I've found it very cpu intensive on Fedora 9 and 10 with a penryn dual
core processor. It basically pins one of the cores to 100% CPU but if
I download the video by saving it from the properties box within the
plugin I don't see that issue using the swfdec-gnome player so there's
probably some low hanging fruit within the actual plugin that might be
able to improve the problem easily for someone that knows where to
look.

Peter