*n*x

An alternative after the closing of 64-bit Adobe Flash Player September 11, 2010

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.