Flash to become Chrome exclusive under Linux

Bad news everyone. The Flash plugin for Linux will become Google Chrome exclusive after version 11.2.
This is bad, but maybe not as bad as people think and I'll explain why later, but first some backstory to this.

Adobe and Google (mostly Google) has apparently been working together to develop a new API for hosting browser plugins. Google Chrome, as well as Firefox, Opera and Safari (Not Internet Explorer above 5.5SP2) use the Netscape Plugin Application Programming Interface (NPAPI) to run plugins such as Adobe Flash Player. Google and Adobe is developing a replacement for NPAPI which will be more secure and portable, and they are calling it "Pepper".

So that's the backstory. Adobe wrote on their blog that Flash Player will support Pepper on all x86 32bit and 64bit platforms which supports Google Chrome.
All future GNU/Linux versions of FlashPlayer won't support NPAPI, which means you will have to use a browser which supports Pepper, like Chrome. Adobe also says that there won't be any direct download link for future Adobe Flash players for Linux, so you have to get it with Google Chrome. As far as I know, nothing is stopping Mozilla and other browsers from adding support for Pepper in their browsers and maybe somehow extract the plugin from the Google Chrome browser, but according to MozillaWiki, Mozilla is not interested in Pepper, but that might change from now on.

So why is this not really really bad? Well the older versions will still be available for use. Not only that, but Adobe will also continue making security updates for older Flash versions in 5 years from its release. So it will be quite a while before GNU/Linux users run into major problems when the newest NPAPI based Flash Player no longer get security updates, but with a bit of luck Flash player will have been replaced (at least for web applications) by the plugin free HTML5 standard.
Please note that this only affects the GNU/Linux version of Flash Player. The Windows and OS X version will still support NPAPI and therefore work on non-pepper browsers such as Firefox.

Source: Adobe's Official Adobe AIR and Adobe Flash Player Blog