64bit flash player: complaint and a fix

[Jim March]

For some reason Karmic's repos want to give you 32bit flash along with nspluginwrapper. The results stink - lots of Firefox doing the "gray pause", sometimes the flash player crashing outright.

I've installed a real 64bit release-code flash player from Adobe and it's working great on a fresh install of Karmic Alpha4/64bit. Here's what I did to make it run:

1) Get rid of any existing flash-crap at the command line:

sudo apt-get purge flashplugin-nonfree gnash gnash-common mozilla-plugin-gnash nspluginwrapper swfdec-mozilla

2) Go get the real 64bit flash player:

wget http://download.macromedia.com/pub/labs/flashplayer10/libflashplayer-10.0.32.18.linux-x86_64.so.tar.gz

Warning: for some reason this is actually a pain in the butt to even find. Adobe's official flash download site doesn't include 64bit code for some reason, even though this is release gold stuff (not beta or even RC). That suggests Adobe may not intend to support Linux 64bit?

3) Unpack it:

tar zxvf libflashplayer-10.0.32.18.linux-x86_64.so.tar.gz

4) Put the new player into the right place:

sudo cp libflashplayer.so /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/

NOTE: if there's an error there, make sure that directory exists...but if you had already put in Ubuntu's suggested flash player from the repos (or possibly Gnash) it will already exist.

Done! Restart Firefox, Flash will be about as good as it ever gets .

Sidenote on Gnash:

Prior to going this route I tried Gnash for a bit. It's come a LONG ways, actually works fine for Youtube, but it fails on too many other things. It's not ready yet for me, but GO GUYS GO!

[phenest]

Originally Posted by Jim March ...even though this is release gold stuff (not beta or even RC).

Version 10.0.32.18 is an alpha released on 30/7/09.

[Jim March]

OOPS!

Oh crap...OK, so where's the release code? Or at least something later?

[phenest]

That *is* the latest.

[Jim March]

Ah. That explains much.

Well still, this is the best Flash setup I've ever had running in Linux.

[eyelessfade]

Originally Posted by phenest Version 10.0.32.18 is an alpha released on 30/7/09.

and? Its still a thousand times better then stiching the 32-bit version togetther with the duct-tape called nspluginwrapper.

If flash-32bit is release, then it became pre alpha when combined with nspluginwrapper. In my book alpha > exprimental

[Harper45]

thanks for sharing this great information..

[Jim March]

Yeah, I mean...I was able to figure out that this was the last one issued. I thought it was release code because I recall reading about a Flash64 alpha a hell of a while back. I just assumed they must have got it right by now.

Silly me.

Still, this does work.

[eyelessfade]

alpha is just a name. Look at google they had gmail in beta for 5 years. Was it stable Yes. And look at Windows Vista (just because I had one vista experience last week). Its been in stable for 3 years and its still not anything near stable.

Adobe have alpha label on x64 because they won't release a "stable" x64 to gnu/linux before windows and mac.

[martijntje]

I completely agree the 64-bit flash plugin is way better then the 32-bit with nspluginwrapper.

IMHO it should be shipped with Karmic.