Lack of true Ubuntu 64-bit support for Connect add-in

Question

Dear Adobe,
This well-worn conversation seems to have been asked a few times before, and ignored a few times before, so you'll forgive me for re-opening it again.
I downloaded the 64-bit debian package of your Adobe Connect add-in yesterday from Adobe's website. Here it is sitting on my local disk:
$ ls ~/.shared/
total 540108
drwxrwxrwx 2 root     root          4096 2012-05-31 15:00 ./
drwxr-xr-x 5 root     root          4096 2012-04-23 22:24 ../
-rw-r--r-- 1 root     root     540016672 2012-05-27 00:03 temp.tar
-rw-r--r-- 1 root     root       4026194 2012-05-30 22:51 ConnectAddin64.deb
I then installed the package. However, when I tried to join my meeting, before the "Connecting..." screen appears with the progress bar, a blank white page flashed very briefly saying "Adobe Connect add-in not installed". Unsurprisingly, I wasn't able to join my meeting, and your online diagnostics site also confirmed that the add-in wasn't installed in my browser (Firefox 11).
Then, reading other users' tales of woe, I located and analysed the installed binary, and this is what I saw:
$ readelf -h /usr/local/connectaddin
ELF Header:
  Magic:   7f 45 4c 46 01 01 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
  Class:                             ELF32
  Data:                              2's complement, little endian
  Version:                           1 (current)
  OS/ABI:                            UNIX - System V
  ABI Version:                       0
  Type:                              EXEC (Executable file)
  Machine:                           Intel 80386
  Version:                           0x1
  Entry point address:               0x8055810
  Start of program headers:          52 (bytes into file)
  Start of section headers:          7629080 (bytes into file)
  Flags:                             0x0
  Size of this header:               52 (bytes)
  Size of program headers:           32 (bytes)
  Number of program headers:         9
  Size of section headers:           40 (bytes)
  Number of section headers:         42
  Section header string table index: 39
This is a 32-bit binary. There is absolutely no mistake about it. And even though it is a GTK binary,  it fails to work on a 64-bit system with 32-bit dual support due to the fact it appears to have the search paths to its libraries hard-coded into it:
$ export GTK_PATH=/usr/lib32/gtk-2.0
$ ./connectaddin
(connectaddin:5416): Gtk-WARNING **: /usr/lib/gtk-2.0/2.10.0/immodules/im-ibus.so: wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS64
(connectaddin:5416): Gtk-WARNING **: Loading IM context type 'ibus' failed
You notice how GTK_PATH is ignored. The path in the above message is where the 32-bit binary would be sitting if I were on a 32-bit native system. However, as I'm on a 64-bit system, my 32-bit libraries are in:
$ ls /usr/lib32/gtk-2.0/2.10.0/immodules
total 180
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root  4096 2012-05-31 17:23 ./
drwxr-xr-x 5 root root  4096 2012-05-31 17:38 ../
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 18740 2011-04-15 02:48 im-am-et.so
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  5516 2011-04-15 02:48 im-cedilla.so
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  7060 2011-04-15 02:48 im-cyrillic-translit.so
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 17976 2011-03-04 13:49 im-ibus.so
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  7484 2011-04-15 02:48 im-inuktitut.so
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  6160 2011-04-15 02:48 im-ipa.so
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  9620 2011-04-15 02:48 im-multipress.so
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  9540 2011-04-15 02:48 im-thai.so
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 18728 2011-04-15 02:48 im-ti-er.so
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 18728 2011-04-15 02:48 im-ti-et.so
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  7372 2011-04-15 02:48 im-viqr.so
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 26284 2011-04-15 02:48 im-xim.so
Will somebody please let us users know when Adobe will be (or won't be, for that matter) actually providing a true 64-bit linux version of their Adobe Connect add-in, instead of packaging the 32-bit version of the add-in in an archive that says 64-bit?
Thanks in advance,

Answer 1

That is the last supported player for Linux using the NPAPI. Chrome's new API, PPAPI, is still going to be supported in Linux, Mac and PC OS's and will have the current version of Flash Player for all those OS's.
Here is Adobe's statement regarding Flash Player on Linux OS's.
Adobe wrote:
Linux:
Adobe has been working closely with Google to develop a single, modern API for hosting plug-ins within the browser. The PPAPI, code-named "Pepper", aims to provide a layer between the plug-in and browser that abstracts away differences between browser and operating system implementations. You can find more information on the Pepper API at http://code.google.com/p/ppapi/.
Because of this work, Adobe has been able to partner with Google in providing a "Pepper" implementation of Flash Player for all x86/64 platforms supported by the Google Chrome browser. Google will begin distributing this new Pepper-based Flash Player as part of Chrome on all platforms, including Linux, later this year.
For Flash Player releases after 11.2, the Flash Player browser plug-in for Linux will only be available via the "Pepper" API as part of the Google Chrome browser distribution and will no longer be available as a direct download from Adobe. Adobe will continue to provide security updates to non-Pepper distributions of Flash Player 11.2 on Linux for five years from its release.
Flash Player will continue to support browsers using non-"Pepper" plug-in APIs on platforms other than Linux.
Adobe will be providing a debug player implementation of the Flash Player browser plug-in on Linux, and will update this document once there are more details on how it will be distributed.
The full release can be seen here: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplatform/whitepapers/roadmap.html