Ubuntu is a great linux OS, if not the best, that offers so much in the opensource world. I’ve used it for almost a year, fully, and up to this point, have not had one major complaint. Now it is my primary desktop system, yeeha!!!
One of the reasons why ubuntu has been so successful is its ability to support different file formats, like mp3, wma, MPEG-4, .doc. PDF and others. This support codecs are not enabled by default, however ubuntu developers will be porting default codecs that will read these files.
One of the codecs I like is the adobe flashplayer. This allows my PCs the ability to watch online movies. To do that, you need the media file that can view online media content, that being adobe flash.
In Windows you have to install flash from the adobe website and off you go. The same is true in ubuntu, huge points given for this. The difference is you have to download the .deb or .tar.gz compressed file package. I rather use .deb because it allows the system to install the file automatically. This is done for the 32bit version of ubuntu, however, it is more trickier for the 64bit version.
I started out with the 32bit version of ubuntu, which, for lack of a better phrase, “just works”.Now I am using an AMD64 dual core architecture and want to take full advantage of its power, so 64bit ubuntu was installed. As you can imagine, what I did in the 32bit I wanted to do in the 64bit.
The first thing to do was enable adobe flashplayer. Unfortunately, there are no .deb package files to install, it has to be done manually. This is when you start to get into the nuts and bolts of the command line.
Adobe flash for 64bit ubuntu is still in the alpha mode and adobe plans to release the stable version for linux 64-bit sometime in the year of 2010. Goods news though, the alpha release is stable for the most part and works fine on my system.
To get things started, you will need to download “libflashplayer-latest_closed_beta.linux-x86_64.so.tar”.
You can download it directly from this site: http://go2.wordpress.com/?id=725X1342&site=nxadm.wordpress.com&url=http://home.scarlet.be/var/tmp/libflashplayer-lasted_closed-bete.linux-x86_64.so.tar.gz&sref=http://nxadm.wordpress.com/2009/04/26/install-64-bit-adobe-flash-player-on-ubuntu-904/
I prefer to download the file to your preferred folder through the terminal using the wget command.
cd <to you preferred folder>
wget <download link>
Once the file is downloaded, it will be in a .tar zip file. Unzip the file.
Within the folder thar flash file was downloaded to:
tar xvzf libflashplayer-latest_closed_beta.linux-x86_64.so.tar
Now you are going to create a plugin folder in your home directory instead a system directory. Flashplayer is a browser plugin that allows internet browsers to decode media content. The plugin is accessed by the browser from an application plugin folder located on your system.
To create the plugin folder, change to your home folder:
cd <home folder.
sudo mkdir –p .mozilla/plugins
Then you are going to move the decompressed libflashplayer.so file to the plugin folder.
mv <location of the decompressed libflashplayer.so file>/libflashplayer.so .mozilla/plugins
If you can’t move the file into the plugin folder form the terminal, as I had that problem, you can do it manually by dragging and dropping.
Go to places>home folder>
Type, ctrl+h, this will reveal all hidden folders and files.
Move the libflashplayer.so file to the .mozilla/plugins folder.
Restart firefox and go to the about:plugins to see if libflashplayer.so is visible.
In the address bar, type, about:plugins
Under shockwave flash, you should see the libflashplayer.so file. This mean flash is enabled.
You are all done. Now you can listen to you favorite online music sites or watch your favorite online movies and videos.
Conclusion:
Flashplayer only works for the user account it was installed under. To use it for any other accounts on your system, you will have to repeat the process.
To view the site where I got this information visit,
http://nxadm.wordpress.com/2009/04/26/install-64-bit-adobe-flash-player-on-ubuntu-904/
