Alright, for the few who have paid attention, I'm one of the people who has had a substansial issue with Macromedia's failure to give halfway decent support for Linux. When Adobe entered the scene not much changed as the Linux version of Flash 9 has already been in the works. 2 days ago, the public beta for it was made available and after using it on countless sites and hardcore animations I have some initial impressions of this beta.
First there is CPU utilization which was one of the largest issues with Flash 7 for Linux. The overall utilization has drastically improved to where the speed now matches and in some cases is better than the Windows version of Flash 9. Gone are the days where any page with more than 2 flash animations on it would slow things down horriffically which is the biggest gripe that I had.
Second, most Linux Flash users remember that the sound was horriffically offsync by 1-2 seconds. It took a few years, but this has been finally fixed and now viewing IIDX and Pop'N videos on youtube is no longer nerve wracking for me.
Finally, from what I've seen all newer work done in flash 8 work like a charm and stability appears to be rock solid despite being only in a beta state. I have played numerous flash games and Flash Flash Revolution to check everything out and it all ran with no issues.
Overall, for anybody using Linux, I strongly recommend getting this as it's a huge step up from Flash 7. More information about this release is available on the official Flash 9 for Linux blog at
http://blogs.adobe.com/penguin.swf/.
Flash 9 for Linux Beta Review! 
