Flash plugin on Firefox crashes - non-SSE2 PC

[soundgeek]

I have installed 32-bit Lubuntu 14.04.2 on an old PC. It included Firefox 39.9+build5-0

Flash player does not seem to work at all. It crashed when I tested it with BBC iPlayer.

On another 64-bit PC, Flash on Firefox on 64bit Ubuntu works fine.

How do I fix this problem?

[Vladlenin5000]

What are the specs of that old PC?

[soundgeek]

It has 765 MB memory and AMD Athlon XP/MP processor, 2GHz "frequency" with 250kB cache.

Plenty of disk. I gave it 1.5 GB swap partition.

I've swapped out the old 64MB Nvidia card for a similar card with 512MB of memory in case a lack of video memory was causing the crashes. Will Linux/Flash automatically make use of the extra video memory?

I still get crashes.

[mörgæs]

An Athlon XP has SSE but not SSE2, which is necessary for Flash.
If you click the Old Hardware link in my signature there is a workaround in post 2.

[tristan16]

I have the latest version of Ubuntu, a 4.3Ghz processor, and 8GB of RAM. Flash Player support in the latest version of Firefox is absolutely terrible. I think YouTube was the only website that didn't crash, and even then, the HTML5 player works much better.

Basically, Flash Player doesn't support Ubuntu anymore and doesn't provide updates, which means it's no surprise it doesn't work.

[soundgeek]

Thanks for this reply mörgæs . I don't know what SSE2 is, but I'll check it out.

Flash does seem very fussy!

tristan16, I have a PC running 64 bit Ubuntu and Flash seems to run fine. BBC iPlayer is glorious!

After the success with the new 64 bit machine, I thought I would try Lubuntu on the old 32 bit PC and that's when I hit the Flash player problem. So many sites use Flash; it is hard to avoid it. BBC iPlayer seems totally dependent on it and an alternative player Beebotron stopped working (though may now be re-surrected).

I have heard of HTML5 player, but I don't know how to invoke it. Is it packaged in with Firefox?

[monkeybrain20122]

The mpv addon works for iPlayer and many other sites (e.g Youtube, Vimeo etc) Performance is better than flash anyway even if flash works.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/fir...atch-with-mpv/

To use this you need to install up to date version for mpv and youtube-dl (repo version is too old to work)

For mpv, either https://launchpad.net/~mc3man/+archive/ubuntu/mpv-tests (Trusty)
or https://launchpad.net/~mc3man/+archi...u/ffmpeg-test1 (vivid)

For youtube-dl
https://launchpad.net/~nilarimogard/...ubuntu/webupd8

See instructions in links for how to add ppa to your sources list.

[Sweet_Baby_Jamie]

Usually installing ubuntu-restricted-extras has been enough for my computer.

[tristan16]

tristan16, I have a PC running 64 bit Ubuntu and Flash seems to run fine. BBC iPlayer is glorious!

After the success with the new 64 bit machine, I thought I would try Lubuntu on the old 32 bit PC and that's when I hit the Flash player problem. So many sites use Flash; it is hard to avoid it. BBC iPlayer seems totally dependent on it and an alternative player Beebotron stopped working (though may now be re-surrected).

I have heard of HTML5 player, but I don't know how to invoke it. Is it packaged in with Firefox?

HTML5 is a code standard, and Firefox has good support for it. However, the HTML5 Video player is only used if the website uses it. If the website wants to use Flash, it will use Flash.

[soundgeek]

Usually installing ubuntu-restricted-extras has been enough for my computer.

Yes I installed restricted extras on both machines. Flash works on the new 64 bit PC, but not on the old 32 bit PC.

The mpv addon works for iPlayer and many other sites (e.g Youtube, Vimeo etc) Performance is better than flash anyway even if flash works.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/fir...atch-with-mpv/

To use this you need to install up to date version for mpv and youtube-dl (repo version is too old to work)

For mpv, either https://launchpad.net/~mc3man/+archive/ubuntu/mpv-tests (Trusty)
or https://launchpad.net/~mc3man/+archi...u/ffmpeg-test1 (vivid)

For youtube-dl
https://launchpad.net/~nilarimogard/...ubuntu/webupd8

See instructions in links for how to add ppa to your sources list.

Thank you for the links monkeybrain. I'll check them out later.