Comments on: Flash: better without Flash

By: Super Jamie

Super Jamie — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 22:14:13 +0000

I’m not sure what’s in the repos right now, but Adobe’s own download of Flash 10 is working great for me on all my Ubuntu machines :)

By: Darren

Darren — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 22:11:46 +0000

I think in months to come we will see this becoming more common knowledge, as in trying to find a fix for my own similar issues I have read many, many unsolved forum posts describing identical symptoms. (100% CPU, very slow framerate) I haven’t figured out how I managed to install libswfdec without noticing on my home PC, my laptop, *and* my work PC running various flavours of Debian/Ubuntu… but after reading your post, they now all work flawlessly again.

I did an ‘aptitude search swf’ and removed all flash related packages, then ‘aptitude search flash’ and did the same, then an ‘apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree’ and bingo! Decent flash. The trouble is apparently having multiple flash decoders installed at once.

Thanks for the pointer!!

By: Super Jamie

Super Jamie — Mon, 26 May 2008 08:29:20 +0000

No problems :)

I actually just solved my own Flash player problem tonight. I use Swiftfox, which only checks /usr/lib/firefox/ for plugins. Debian installs them under /usr/lib/iceweasel/, which Swiftfox doesn’t check. A link called “firefox” but pointing to “iceweasel” fixed this up for me.

I suspect this would also be the issue if you were using Firefox (not Iceweasel) under Debian, but installing Iceweasel plugin packages with apt-get/aptitude/synaptic.

By: isilanes

isilanes — Mon, 26 May 2008 08:20:39 +0000

Thanks for the info, Super Jamie. I was obviously describing some symptoms, not claiming I understand the underlaying issues :^)

By: Super Jamie

Super Jamie — Mon, 26 May 2008 02:52:22 +0000

whilst you might not have a flash player PACKAGE installed as far as aptitude knowns, the files will definitely be there somewhere, probably as a remnant of all your flash/swb/lib/gnash installs/uninstalls

an about:plugins in the address bar will tell you which flash player you’re using, and the .so file that the plugin uses. i imagine it’ll be nested under /usr/ somewhere

By: isilanes

isilanes — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 18:12:39 +0000

From this post in my former WP.com blog:

Ian Ferguson says:

“None of this worked for me. I deleted all flash files and then installed adobe flash from their website. Now it works perfectly.
However when i download .flv files totem cant play them and vlc only plays sound. Both could play them in Ubuntu though. Ephiny web browser plays flash without problems too.”

My answer:

“Ian, I can’t follow you: where does not Flash work for you? With another Linux distro? (you say that it works in Ubuntu).

I don’t really claim to understand how or why Flash works. I just say that I have no package with “flash” or “swf” in the name in my Debian computers. Obviously, Firefox might have built-in support, and Flash support could be available through other packages with “codecs” in their name, for example.”

By: mb

mb — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 05:11:19 +0000

Thanks I had the same exact problem. You pointed me to the correct solution.

By: isilanes

isilanes — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 09:10:08 +0000

The only thing running is firefox-bin. I only play flash videos with Firefox and with MPlayer, and both seem to work OK without further packages.

By: walken

walken — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 07:31:30 +0000

So you must have *some* player installed - when you play flash videos, can you look up in ‘top’ and see what’s using CPU time ???

(not having anything installed here, and flash definitely won’t play :)

By: Nishu

Nishu — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 20:21:19 +0000

Flash websites are awesome ..
I m currently wording on a ruby on rails website .. would soon start a flash website ..