gHacks technology news » flash plugin http://www.ghacks.net A technology blog covering software, mobile phones, gadgets, security, the Internet and other relevant areas. Tue, 24 Nov 2009 23:31:44 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 en hourly 1 Installing Flash in Ubuntu 9.04 with Firefox http://www.ghacks.net/2009/05/04/installing-flash-in-ubuntu-904-with-firefox/ http://www.ghacks.net/2009/05/04/installing-flash-in-ubuntu-904-with-firefox/#comments Mon, 04 May 2009 12:54:32 +0000 Jack Wallen http://www.ghacks.net/?p=12570 firefoxIf you’ve spent enough time over the years with Linux you know that the browser plug-in has been a source of agony for many. When plugins first became a necessity for browsing Linux was at an “early” age and adding these plugins was truly a nightmare.

That was then, this is now. During my first trials with Ubuntu 9.04 I discovered just how far the installation of browser plugins has come. This article will illustrate to you this fact.

Ideally, of course, the distribution would ship with all of the necessary plugins installed. By default there are a number of plugins already for you:

  • Demo Print
  • DivX
  • Quicktime
  • VLC (handles many media formats)
  • Windows Media Player

But the number one plugin is still missing. Why? The reason for flash missing is because there are actually three different flash plugins you can install. One is the official Adobe plugin and the other two are open source versions. Although I am a big supporter of open source software, both open source flash plugins are still in their infancy and are not yet up to par with the official version. I made the mistake of installing one of the open source versions and had to uninstall so I could get the official version.

How to install

As is typical for Linux, there are a number of ways to install the flash plugin. You can download the plugin from the Adobe site. You could open up a terminal window and issue the command:

sudo apt-get install flashplugin-installer

You could open up Synaptic (Add/Remove Software utility) and search for adobe and select “flashplugin-installer”.

Or you could browse to a web site that requires Flash.

The latter is the easiest and reliable.

Figure 1

Figure 1

When you go to a site that requires flash you will see a bar appear with a button on the right side labeled “Install Missing Plugins” (see Figure 1). Click that button and a new window will open (see Figure 2). This new window asks you to choose which flash player you want to install. There are three choices:

Figure 2

Figure 2

  • Swfdec: The GNOME version of the flash player
  • Adobe Flash Player: Official version
  • Gnash: GNU SWF player

Choose the Adobe version and click Next. You will then be warned that the Adobe Flash Player will download and install another application. This is okay. You will be required to enter your user password to continue.

Once the installation has finished you will need to click the Finish button.

Check the installation

After the installation is complete you can check it by opening up the plugins page. Do this by typing about:plugins in the address bar. In this page you will see all installed plugins listed. The first one listed should be the most recently installed, which will be flash.

Using this method does not require you to restart Firefox. You have completed the process of installing the Adobe Flash plugin for Firefox.

Final thoughts

If you have any history with Linux then you know how much of a relief it is to be able to install browser plugins so easily. If you have any interest in using the open source version of these plugins, give them a try. You can uninstall them by looking at the about:plugins page to know which version you have installed. When you know which plugin you have installed search for it in Synaptic and remove it. Once removed you can go through the process of installing through Firefox again.

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]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2009/05/04/installing-flash-in-ubuntu-904-with-firefox/feed/ 25 Installing Firefox and Flash From Source http://www.ghacks.net/2009/02/19/installing-firefox-and-flash-from-source/ http://www.ghacks.net/2009/02/19/installing-firefox-and-flash-from-source/#comments Thu, 19 Feb 2009 17:39:41 +0000 Jack Wallen http://www.ghacks.net/?p=10663 Normally you will hear me professing to always install using your Linux distributions’ package management system. This is true for most cases. There is one case, however, that defies that philosophy: Installing Firefox. I have, on many occasions, installed Firefox using the distributions package management system only to have issue with either plugins or updates. Because of this, one of the first things I do after a fresh installation is install Firefox from source. This gives you more control over the application which will ensure things run much more smoothly.

Naturally the first thing you will need to do is to download the Firefox source. Once the source is downloaded you have a choice to make. You can install Firefox for each user on the system (if there is only one user you don’t really have much to worry about) or you can install Firefox “system wide”. If you choose to install for just one user then place the source file in the users home directory. If you want to install it “system wide” move the file to the /opt directory (you will have to have root permissions or use sudo to do this.)

Now that the file is in place it is time to unpack the file. More than likely the source package will be in bunzip2 format. To unpack the file you will issue the command bunzip2 firefox-XXX.tar.bz2. (Where XXX this the release number you downloaded.) Once bunzip2 has done its thing you will be left with a tar file firefox-XXX.tar (Again where XXX is the release number.)

When you unpack the Firefox tar file a new directory will be created called simply firefox. This new directory contains everything Firefox needs to run. All you have to do now is issue the command ~/firefox/firefox to start up the browser.

Starting Firefox

Naturally you don’t want to have to start Firefox from command line every time you want to run the browser. What you will want to do is edit the preferences in either your menu entries or the Firefox application icons on either your Panel or your desktop. When you do edit the preferences you will want to change the command entry. The entry that came with the pre-installed Firefox will most likely be:

firefox %u

You will to change that to:

~/firefox/firefox %u

Installing Flash

Once you have Firefox up and running you can install plugins manually. For instance, installing the Macromedia Flash plugin involves downloading the Flash plugin, (download the source, not the binary) unpacking the file with the command: tar xvzf install_flash_player_10_linux.tar.gz, change into the newly created directory with the command cd install_flash_player_10, issue the command ./flashplayer-installer, and answer the necessary questions. When you are asked where the installation directory is you will enter ~/firefox.

You’re done. Now you can fire up Firefox and enter about:plugins to make sure the flash player plugin is installed (it will also tell you which flash version you are using.)

Final Thoughts

It may not be the easiest method of installation, but it’s the best when you want to have more control over your web browser. You will also find it much easier to keep up to date with both the browser itself as well as the plugins you install.

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