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Flash and Debian


raymac46

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If there is a more annoying plugin out there than Adobe Flash I don't know what it is - security problems, poor Linux support, two different implementations - yech.

I would love to NEVER use it but there are a few sites - namely Canada's news networks - that won't work without it.

So I was faced with trying to get it working in Debian Stretch. Here's what I've done so far:

  • Firefox - it should support the NPAPI version installed by flashplugin-installer. However the flashplugin-installer is buggy and won't download the plugin. I got the plugin in a package from Adobe, unpacked it, installed the plugin in the right directory, geeked around with permissions and Debian alternatives and it works. I expect when they update the flashplugin-installer everything will break again, Life in the fast lane.
  • Chromium - requires the PPAPI version. The installer isn't available in the Testing repos for some reason. I cannot find out how and where to manually install the plugin in Chromium. The only workaround is to install Chrome itself which comes in a nice deb package. Flash works fine in Chrome.

If anyone knows what to do to get the flash plugin working in Chromium I'd be glad to hear about it.

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Hedon James

Google doesn't like flash...not even a little. Their implementation is "Pepperflash", but I've never really messed with it. I always viewed Chromium as the "vanilla" browser, and Chrome as the "kitchen sink" browser. With respect to Adobe Flash, I read recently where Adobe is picking up support for Linux again and ensuring its on par with Windows version. Might be useful information for you?

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Yes I am aware of that but the pepperflash installer isn't available in Debian testing unfortunately. I have Antergos in VBox and their Chromium browser works just fine with Flash. So it can be done - just not with Debian testing right now.

 

Google doesn't like flash...not even a little. Their implementation is "Pepperflash", but I've never really messed with it. I always viewed Chromium as the "vanilla" browser, and Chrome as the "kitchen sink" browser. With respect to Adobe Flash, I read recently where Adobe is picking up support for Linux again and ensuring its on par with Windows version. Might be useful information for you?

I think you are right because the Flash version that is working in Firefox is now up to 23.X and at one time you couldn't run anything never than 11.X

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V.T. Eric Layton

Pepperflash works fine in Chrome/Chromium. I never had any issues with it when I had those browsers on my systems. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to run Chrome/Chromium on any of my Slackware systems since v52.x. It just crashes with segmentation fault. I spent weeks troubleshooting this issue sometime back and never resolved it. I GAVE UP! Back to Firefox, PaleMoon, Seamonkey these days. Can't even run Opera anymore because it's built on Chromium now and fails the same way as mentioned above.

 

Now, about Adobe Flash in Linux. I've never had issues with Adobe Flash in Firefox, T-bird, or any other Mozilla based apps. However, I do NOT use installer apps or Flash from any distro repos. I MANUALLY install Flash on my systems. It's easy-peasy. Just download the tar.gz from Adobe. Unpack it and grab the libflashplayer.so and paste it into:

 

/home//.mozilla/plugins/ (for Firefox and PaleMoon)

 

/home//.mozilla/seamonkey/sm_profile.default/plugins/ (for Seamonkey)

 

and

 

/home//.thunderbird/tb_profile.default/plugins/ (for Thunderbird)

 

That's it. How hard is that?

 

Watch for Corrine's posts about Flash updates and go download a new one every time she alerts you. Reinstall right over the old one as shown above.

 

Rock solid and easy. What more could one ask for?

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Yep I had no trouble with a manual install for Firefox ESR - well a little getting the permissions right but otherwise - however for Chromium I haven't been able to get it going at all. No problem though because it's easy to install Chrome in Debian and I just use that.

Edited by raymac46
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@HJ thanks for this however I cannot find out how to get this thing working with Debian 9 as the pepperflash installer is not in the repos and the repos are now frozen for impending release. No big deal as Chrome works great in Debian and I have Chromium as a backup. Just one of those things I'd like to fix for the fun of it. I know you can use pepperflash in Chromium as other distros like Antergos have it working out of the box.

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Having switched over to Debian Sid the pepperflashplugin-nonfree package is available and after installation the pepperflash player works in Chromium now. :clap:

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securitybreach

Having switched over to Debian Sid the pepperflashplugin-nonfree package is available and after installation the pepperflash player works in Chromium now. :clap:

 

I knew you will. :D

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Yes, flashplugin-nonfree has been broken/unmaintained for a little while. Flash is really easy to install manually so I have been doing that.

I think BunsenLabs has a Pepperflash installer that still works for Chromium (and maybe Firefox with an extra freshplayer plugin). It install a systemd timer to check for updates every day. I haven't used it so no guarantees.

I still believe that if you want Flash in Chromium then you may as well just use Chrome. There are a couple of local TV channels that don't like Flash in FF but work fine in Chrome.

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