How to install the latest Adobe flash player in Linux?

Submitted by Priyank on Fri, 06/11/2009 - 17:36
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Adobe® Flash® Player 10, introduces new expressive features and visual performance improvements that allow interactive designers and developers to build the richest and most immersive Web experiences. If you visit sites like Youtube.com, then you must be having the Adobe flash player, as most of these websites work with Adobe flash player only.

Installation using Package Manager

Most of the time, you can install the Flash Player from the Synaptic Package Manager. In the Synaptic there are two packages:

  • gnash - The free flash player
  • flashplugin-nonfree - Adobe flash player

You can choose whatever flash player you want.

Manual Installation

Adobe today released the latest Adobe flash player 10 beta (code-named "Astro") for Linux, but Synaptic won't provide that latest beta from Adobe. So, I downloaded the flashplayer10_install_linux_051508.tar.gz manually from the http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer10.html
(Note: Please use the latest version, at the time of writing this article, flashplayer10 beta was the latest.)

To install the flash player, you have to extract the folder: install_flash_player_10_linux from the archive and then run the installer:
sudo ./flashplayer-installer

and follow the instructions, like closing all the browsers and providing directory for Mozilla. But unfortunately it didn't recognize the Firefox plugin directory and didn't installed successfully on my machine for unknown reasons.

Hacking

I try to do little hacking here, so I uninstall the gnash and flashplugin-nonfree from the Synaptic Package Manager and searched in these directories:

  • /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins
  • /usr/lib/firefox/plugins
  • ~/.mozilla/plugins
I found a link file: flashplugin-alternative.so in those directories, and when I see the properties of that link, it was finally pointing to the plugin file: /usr/lib/swfdec-mozilla/libswfdecmozilla.so. I closed my browser, and rename that plugin file, then copy the new flash player libflashplayer.so from the downloaded archive to that directory (/usr/lib/swfdec-mozilla/) and renamed it to libswfdecmozilla.so.

sudo mv /usr/lib/swfdec-mozilla/libswfdecmozilla.so /usr/lib/swfdec-mozilla/libswfdecmozilla.old
sudo cp libflashplayer.so /usr/lib/swfdec-mozilla/libswfdecmozilla.so

also I copied the libflashplayer.so to the /usr/lib/firefox/plugins directory.
sudo cp libflashplayer.so /usr/lib/firefox/plugins/libflashplayer.so
sudo cp libflashplayer.so /usr/lib/flashplugin-nonfree/libflashplayer.so

Testing

When you open the Firefox addons dialog box, you should see the Shockwave Flash 10.0

Firefox Plugins

Now you can browse to the Adobe Flash Player 10 demo website: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/demos/ and confirm that everything is working fine.

Flash Player 10 Demo

Once everything is working fine, you can go back to that plugin directory and delete the previous flash plugin.
sudo rm /usr/lib/swfdec-mozilla/libswfdecmozilla.old

References

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