Posted on Friday 23 October 2009
Flash has not been working properly since I first installed Ubuntu 9.04 a few weeks ago. I tried numerous fixes including this, this, and a few more.
However, rather than Googling ‘flash not working ubuntu 9.04′, I though that perhaps I should try looking at how to get flash working on Ubuntu 9.04 rather than focussing on why it’s not working. My search revealed success via this article.
Fantastic…now the iPlayer is working, I can access the menus in AdWords and Analytics (somewhat vital to my job!) and a host of other great things.
EDIT: the link to the article that solved my problem was incorrect, it’s now updated.
EDIT 2: this did not permanently fix my flash issue. Will update once I find a solution.
Have you found any negative consequences of removing those packages?
Currently running 32 bit Kubuntu on my laptop, have toyed with making the change to 64 when 9.10 or 10.4 are released, but compatibility with things like flash have held me back in the past.
Although not sure if there is a KDE version of Swfdec, so not sure if this fix would solve the problem.
Hi Ian,
Do you mean removing the packages that are outlined in the two fixes? No.
Flash never worked from the first install, so removing flash packages couldn’t really do much to my flash situation!
I’m also not sure if this is strictly a 64bit issue or not, I don’t think it worked on a 32bit install that I tried either…but I can’t remember exactly.
Sorry to not be of more help…
Those commands you linked to effectively re-installed flash. You can actually remove the flashplugin-nonfree package because it’s a metapackage that simply installs flashplugin-installer. If you open Syanptic, search for flash, click on flashplugin-nonfree you’ll see the package description:
Glad you’ve got it sorted.
Done…thanks.
What problems do you have with Flash now?
[Just followed a trackball to here]
Firstly, I’ve now un-installed Ubuntu, so this issue is no longer relevant to me, but may be to other people.
Flash movies were working, but some functionality was not. Hard for me to know what the root problem was, but my main symptom was no response when right clicking on online video controls (such as youtube, BBC iPlayer – my main use of flash). First click worked, then further clicks don’t work. Workaround – left click, then right click works once.
Were you using the Adobe Alpha/Beta for 64? Or the normal 32? Or worse the free plug-ins.
Anyway all works fine here…except full screen video which is choppy…
I think it was the flashplugin-nonfree that I was using.