An alternative after the closing of 64-bit Adobe Flash Player September 11, 2010
Posted by claudio in Uncategorized.Tags: 64-bit, adobe, Desktop
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EDIT: A new 64-bit alpha release for flash has been released on Nov 30 2010. The original 64-bit Howto adapted. This post is about using the 32-bit version on 64-bit GNU/Linux.
The success of my post on how to install the beta 64-bit Flash Player worries me a little: over 160000+ views since publication (around Ubuntu 9.04). The combination of 32-bit flash, a wrapper and 64-bit Firefox, was/is problematic and crash-prone. Using the 64-bit alpha/beta flash binaries was a good-working alternative for the many 64-bit users (why install 32-bit when you paid for a 64-bit processor?) that for one reason or another needed flash.
Adobe, when confronted with a security-related bug, chose to get rid of Flash Player 10 altogether and push an upgrade to 10.1. Sadly, this meant the end of the beta program with no date on a 64-bit solution (may be somewhere in the future). In the mean time, running the old beta is an option. However, the security bug is still there. Adobe released a new 64-bit preview release of Flash.
A workaround, that does not feel like one, is running chromium – the free sibling of Google’s chrome – with 32-bit flash. Chromium architecture tames the normally crashy 32-bit flash by running flash as a separate process. It works fine and stable. What a surprise… and everything can be installed from the Ubuntu repositories.
To install chromium and 32-bit flash on your 64-bit computer do this from a terminal (Accessoires-Terminal):
sudo apt-get install chromium-browser flashplugin-installer
Now you can run flash on you 64-bit computer without worrying about the security vulnerability of the previous Flash version.
[...] An alternative after the closing of 64-bit Adobe Flash Player [...]
You call running a 64 bit Firefox with a wrapper and 32 bit Flash plug-in problematic, but running a 64 bit Chrome with its built-in wrapper and 32 bit Flash is fine? To me it is exactly the same, except that for solution 1 you need a third party wrapper and in solution 2 the wrapper is built in the browser itself…
It’s exactly the same binary and (nsplugin) wrapper on both cases. The only difference is that Firebox can not handle the setup well – at least on all the computers I’ve tried – and chromium can. It’s just a question of time before a new firefox that supports process separation is added to Ubuntu and other distributions. In the mean while, it’s a great “workaround” as most people don’t even know that chromium exists and it is included in the repositories…
I have a problem that is different than crashing. Often I can’t get any response out of flash buttons. In these cases rollover works but clicking play or on suggestions from utube has no effect. I have the same problem in both firefox and chrome! Is chromium really that different from chrome?
Hi John,
This post fixes the problem. It’s a nspluginwrapper thing, so I works with firefox and chromium. I haven’t installed chrome so I don’t know if it uses nspluginwrapper (the system one or built-in).
I don’t really understand why people think they need Flash at all? Especially now that HTML5/Video “exists”. I don’t have Flash installed and don’t notice any problems.
Flash sucks terribly.
However there is a big chance your significant-non-technical-other needs access to a crappy site (school, webshop, etc) that uses flash. Personally, I have flash installed but blocked.
New native 64-bit flash for linux
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/
I haven’t tried it yet.
Thx, wannes!