HOW TO: Install the Flash Player release candidate

[SteveRiley]

UPDATE: see post #5. New (and final) version now in repositories.


I have noticed that the Flash player release candidate casues fewer crashes in Rekonq than the player included in adobe-flashplugin. You can manually install the release candidate over the existing package, which essentially involves replacing the binary .so file and a few others by following the steps below.

NOTE: whenever an upgrade or dist-upgrade includes a new adobe-flashplugin, you will have to repeat the steps below.

Browse to the Adobe Labs download page and click the link for the Flash player release candidate. Download the 64-bit or 32-bit Linux plugin, whichever is appropriate for your system's architecture. It lacks an installer, so you'll have to extract and copy the files by hand.

For 64-bit users: Unfortunately, Adobe's 64-bit packaging puts one of the files in /usr/lib64 rather than /usr/lib, so the hand install is a bit different than what they document in the readme.

First, find out where the current Flash binary lives:

sudo find / -type f -iname libflashplayer.so

After you download the file, follow the appropriate set of steps below for 64-bit or 32-bit systems:

64-bit

mkdir flash.d
tar -zxvf [i]name-of-downloaded-file[/i].tar.gz -C flash.d
sudo cp -v flash.d/usr/bin/* /usr/bin
sudo cp -v flash.d/usr/lib64/kde4/* /usr/lib/kde4
sudo cp -rv flash.d/usr/share/* /usr/share
sudo cp -v flash.d/libflashplayer.so [i]location-of-older-libflashplayer[/i]
rm -rv flash.d

32-bit

mkdir flash.d
tar -zxvf [i]name-of-downloaded-file[/i].tar.gz -C flash.d
sudo cp -rv flash.d/usr/* /usr
sudo cp -v flash.d/libflashplayer.so [i]location-of-older-libflashplayer[/i]
rm -rv flash.d

If you're running KDE installed from the repositories rather than the actual Kubuntu distro, you'll probably need to:

sudo apt-get install libkutils4

Although it's labeled a dummy package, the System Settings control module for Flash depends on a file that's inside this package. Without it, the module won't load.

[heinkel_111]

On Adobe pages, there was a download link for 64-bit ubuntu Flash 11. To enable this I had to enable the ubuntu partners repository. However, there may not be a need for the manual install you described - it was packaged for ubuntu already (and I guess kubuntu is still ubuntu, even if it was tagged as made for firefox I have not in 5 years seen anything like a native konqueror or rekonq flashplayer plugin.

[SteveRiley]

The version of Adobe Flash in Oneiric's partner repository is:

sriley@SRiley-T410:~$ [B]apt-cache policy adobe-flashplugin[/B]
adobe-flashplugin:
  Installed: 11.1.102.63-0oneiric1
  Candidate: 11.1.102.63-0oneiric1
  Version table:
 *** 11.1.102.63-0oneiric1 0
        500 http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu/ oneiric/partner amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

The version from Adobe Labs is newer:



The 11.2 release candidate is much more stable than what's in the repository, at least when using with Rekonq.

Rekonq follows traditional symbolic links to find plugins. So first install the version of Flash in the repository, because that creates the necessary subdirectories and configures the necessary symlinks:

sriley@SRiley-T410:~$ [B]update-alternatives --get-selections | grep flash[/B]
firefox-flashplugin            auto     /usr/lib/adobe-flashplugin/libflashplayer.so
iceape-flashplugin             auto     /usr/lib/adobe-flashplugin/libflashplayer.so
iceweasel-flashplugin          auto     /usr/lib/adobe-flashplugin/libflashplayer.so
midbrowser-flashplugin         auto     /usr/lib/adobe-flashplugin/libflashplayer.so
mozilla-flashplugin            auto     /usr/lib/adobe-flashplugin/libflashplayer.so
xulrunner-addons-flashplugin   auto     /usr/lib/adobe-flashplugin/libflashplayer.so
xulrunner-flashplugin          auto     /usr/lib/adobe-flashplugin/libflashplayer.so

Then follow my procedure to update the Flash player binary.

[heinkel_111]

Uhmmm now I get it because this time adobe redirected me to a different download page. Funny what is more funny, when I hit browser back from the page you had found, then forward I came back to the one where if you select linux 64 bit they send you into the partner repositories of our favorite distros again. Next time I go into such a maze, I will bring a red thread to show me the way back while my browser bounces across the hyperspace.

[SteveRiley]

Adobe has released version 11.2 of Flash Player, and this will be the final release for us. Packages for Lucid and later are now all updated.